Irish Animal Folk Tales for Children

by Doreen McBride

  Finn McCool was furious when he heard the wizard went every year to feasts at Tara and played magic music to make everyone go to sleep. When everyone was soundly snoring the wizard set the place on fire.

  Finn McCool decided he was going to go to a feast and to stay awake. Whenever the wizard played his harp Finn stuck the point of his sword into the palm of his hand. It hurt so he couldn’t sleep!

  When the wizard saw everyone was asleep he laughed, belched, did a big loud smelly one, stopped playing his harp and began setting the place on fire. Finn McCool jumped up and killed him.

  The other wizards were annoyed with Finn McCool because he’d killed one of their friends. They didn’t dare attack him, so got their revenge by turning Fiona’s children into dogs.

  One day when Finn McCool was hunting with Bran and Skeolan they smelt a witch on the slopes of Slieve Bloom. They hated wizards and witches, so decided to kill her and ran after her.

  The witch was very frightened. She knew the dogs could run like lightning so she turned herself into a deer. The witch ran for her life as Bran and Skeolan chased her the length and breadth of Ireland. Eventually she became tired and the dogs began to catch up with her in County Donegal. She was terrified and gasping for breath, so she spun round and cast a spell that turned them into rock. They were going so fast they couldn’t stop until they’d travelled forty miles. They came to a halt in County Fermanagh and turned into two small mountains, Big Dog and Little Dog. If you go to Fermanagh’s Big Dog Forest you can climb them.

  Do you smell a witch?

  There’s a steep road leading from the North of Ireland through the Slieves of County Armagh and the Mountains of Louth into the South. It’s called ‘The Gap of the North’ and it has a strange haunted atmosphere. It’s a place where the birds never sing as a mark of respect for all those who died there in battle. It’s filled with ghosts and feels as if it’s full of danger, a real Bearna Baoghall (Gap of Danger).

  It was here Queen Elizabeth’s soldiers built Moyry Castle in 1601. It’s what’s known as an ‘Elizabethan Tower House’ and you can visit the ruins. It was originally a tall square building that once controlled the border between County Armagh and County Louth. A warden and a garrison of men lived in it.

  Moyry Castle was a strange building because it didn’t have any stairs. Ladders were used to get from one floor to another.

  It had a lot of places for guns. The drawbridge leading to the entrance had a hole above the door used to pour boiling oil and other nasty things, like buckets of piddle and poo, on top of unwanted visitors.

  One day a strange old man with a large tiger cat came out of the woods and walked up to the drawbridge. He told the warden he was a wizard who’d visited all the castles in the country. He asked if he could come in and entertain the troops.

  The guards invited him in and enjoyed watching him juggling and doing magic tricks. His tiger cat was fantastic! It jumped through rings of fire!

  The wizard told the soldiers his tiger had been abandoned by its mother and he’d hand-reared it. He said, ‘I love that big cat as if it was my own child and it loves me. It’s very affectionate. It follows me around like a dog. It protects me and keeps anyone from hurting me. He can be the wild fierce boy and kill people but he likes my friends and doesn’t attack them.’

  Every time the cat did a trick the wizard gave it a treat and it rolled over and purred.

  The guards enjoyed the performance and paid for it, so the wizard said he’d call again sometime in the future.

  The wizard and the huge cat went and lived in a cave in the mountains. Each day the cat foraged for food. When the wizard gave a shrill whistle it replied with a loud ‘murrow’ and came bounding back with prey in its mouth.

  The wizard stroked and petted the cat and gave it catnip treats before cooking the prey over an open fire, dividing it into two and giving half to the cat.

  The big cat didn’t kill for pleasure. It just killed enough to feed them, and at night they slept curled up together, covered by furs on a soft pile of leaves, as snug as bugs in a rug.

  Eventually the wizard and the cat set out on their travels again. They were away for a long time and the guards at Moyry Castle had changed by the time they came back. The new soldiers weren’t friendly. When the wizard went up to the drawbridge a sentry shot him dead with his bow and arrow.

  The cat was furious. He took a deep breath and jumped up on the ramparts.

  GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

  The sentry didn’t see the cat, but a shadow made him wonder what was going on.

  ‘Who goes there?’ he shouted.

  ‘Mur-row!’ mewed the cat.

  “Ha! Ha! Ha!’ laughed the sentry, ‘You Irish have very peculiar names. Well Mur-row, where do you come from?’

  ‘Maaa-yo.’

  All cats come from Mayo.

  ‘What’s the password?’ yelled the sentry.

  ‘Three blind mice,’ replied the cat.

  ‘Rats!’ shouted the sentry.

  The cat saw red at the sentry’s rudeness. He pounced and sank his teeth into his skull. It shattered with a terrible crunching sound. The noise woke a second sentry who was dozing on the other side of the keep, and he came to see what was happening. The cat tore his throat out!

  The sight of so much blood made the cat go mad with a blood lust. He went silently from room to room killing all the garrison’s soldiers by cracking their skulls open and shredding their flesh into mincemeat.

  When he’d avenged his master’s death he washed the blood off his fur, curled up into a ball and fell asleep.

  He was wild with grief and rage and started killing all the animals he met, dragging their bodies back to Moyry Castle and eating them. He thought all humans were evil, except his master. He pounced on travellers and shattered their skulls and tore their throats, and he spent a lot of time sitting on the castle ramparts howling horribly.

  One day the big cat caught a toddler in his jaws, carried it off to a clearing in the woods, set it on the ground and played cat and mouse. He allowed it to crawl away then pounced and carried it back to the centre of the clearing in his ferocious jaws. The poor baby was terrified and screamed. Luckily a group of O’Hanlon’s men heard him, saw what was happening and rushed at the cat with their long spears. The cat realised it was outnumbered, backed into a thicket and snarled before disappearing into the woods.

  The toddler wasn’t hurt. He was taken back to his mother, who was crying her eyes out because she thought her son was dead.

  The big cat terrorised the countryside. It was clever and cunning. Once, when surrounded by local men it sprang up a tree and had fun by putting its nose round the trunk and making cat laugh sounds as arrows pinged into the bark. Eventually it sprang over their heads and vanished.

  Traps and snares were set but the cat had a sixth sense warning it of danger and he was able to avoid them.

  People became scared to go out alone.

  Gradually the pain of his master’s death faded and the cat began to enjoy living on his own. He could come and go as he pleased and life was easier because he’d only one mouth to feed. He began to think of himself as King of the Castle. He realised he was free. Then he thought, ‘All cats should be free. Humans shouldn’t keep cats as slaves. It’s against their cat rights!’ He decided to start a cat league for the emancipation of cats. He became ambitious and wanted to be recognised as King of the Cats, a Catamount.

  One night, when he felt the time was ripe for a revolution, he stood erect on Moyry Castle’s battlements and gave a loud cat-call summoning all the cats in the neighbourhood to hear what he had to say. He stood proudly on his hind legs with his front paws supported on a battlement and addressed the crowd. He realised a lot of big words begin with the word ‘cat’ so he used as many ‘cat’ words as possible. There’s a copy of his speech below. I admit, I don’t know what all the ‘cat’ words mean. Do you? Can you find out?

  Friends, I say by Bubastis the wife of Pthah
and the goddess of cats, humans keep us as slaves to kill rats and mice. Slavery is wrong. It should cease. Cats should be free.

  We must stop killing rats and mice. What harm has a rat or a mouse done to a cat? We should kill humans instead.

  Each cat must sign its name in a catalogue as a Member of The League for the Extermination of the Human Race and the Emancipation of Cats.

  We will stop being catspaws. We must realise we are the cats’ pyjamas. We must cause a catastrophe that wipes the human race off the face of the earth. We must put all humans in the same category. They are slave owners. They must die!

  Now listen carefully while I catechise you how to act.

  Catenate yourselves in a great chain, surround the houses and catacaluptify all the inhabitants. When they are seized with catalepsy lay them out on catafalques and bury them in catacombs.

  Tomorrow we will meet carrying catapults. Only those with cataracts are excused.

  Any cat that fails to come up to scratch shall be cursed and lose its nine lives.

  Beware of the cataclysm engineered by me, your Catamount.

  When we have won the battle I, your leading cat, your Catamount, your King of the Cats, shall stand erect to receive you.

  We must cause a catastrophe.

  There was great clapping of paws, and the cats swore they’d never lick fur again until they’d licked their enemies.

  The Catamount gave them the secret sign and disappeared into the night.

  Tom kitten didn’t agree with the Catamount’s plans. He loved his owners and told them about the plot.

  When the people heard they were going to be attacked they had a meeting and decided the Catamount had to be killed.

  Telltale cat.

  Chief O’Hanlon said, ‘We could send an armed posse but the cat would hear it coming and be warned. I think it would be better if one well-armed person sneaked up, caught the brute off guard and killed it.

  Nobody wanted to face the cat alone so Chief O’Hanlon said he’d go. If he didn’t come back in a reasonable time an armed posse should be sent out.

  He dressed in his strongest armour, fetched his sword and shield and set off. He was careful not to make a sound. When he reached the castle he had a stroke of luck. The killer cat had eaten a lamb and was fast asleep curled up into a ball. Chief O’Hanlon crept up and sliced its head off.

  I think it’s a pity that Moyry Castle’s guard murdered the wizard. If they hadn’t done that there wouldn’t have been a catalogue of disasters.

  One cold December day I was sitting beside a cosy fire in an old cottage in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum with my friend Linda Ballard, and she told me this story about a spider.

  I like spiders. They have a bad reputation because some other countries have a few dangerous ones, like the black widow that is found in Australia. It has a poisonous bite and a nasty of habit of lurking under toilet seats and biting people’s bare bums when they sit down!

  Spiders are very useful animals. You should love them because they eat insects. If we didn’t have spiders we’d die of starvation because there would be so many insects they’d destroy our food.

  If you look at a spider’s web you’ll probably find it has caught flies, killed them and wrapped them up in strands of web to form a larder.

  In the past, cobblers used sharp tools to mend footwear. If they cut themselves they stopped bleeding by wrapping cuts in spiders’ webs. That sounds crazy unless you know webs are sterile and make good bandages. They are very fine so they catch blood cells coming out of a cut. That helps to form clots and stop the bleeding.

  Spiders like me bring good luck.

  I admit spiders look sort of creepy with their eight legs and their feelers out on stalks, but I still like them. They can’t help how they look and I’m sure they think we look peculiar with our two eyes and our ears on the side of our heads.

  Our bodies are divided into three parts, head, chest and tummy, or if you want to use posh language, head, thorax and abdomen.

  Our bodies have our heads at the top with our arms stuck on to our chests (thorax) while our legs hang out of the end of our tummies (abdomen).

  Spiders’ bodies have only two parts to their bodies. Their heads and chests are fused together to form a carapace and their tummies are joined on at the end.

  Most spiders have six or eight eyes at the front of their carapace and they hear through hairs on their legs! They have feelers, called palps, at the front of their carapaces to feel things. The palps are very peculiar because when they feel something they can tell how it would taste! Wouldn’t that be useful? I’d like to be able to know how something tastes without putting it into my mouth, wouldn’t you?

  Spider’s mouths are very strange. They look like two thorns at the front of the carapace. They can’t bite us but they can bite their prey, inject poison and eat their food by sticking their mouthparts into, say, a fly. The fatal injection they give turns the inside of the victim’s body into a liquid so the spider can suck it up and only a dried-up skin is left.

  I find spiders so interesting I’ve drawn one. Can you see all the bits I’ve described? Now I think I should get back to the story!

  A long, long time ago an innkeeper’s wife saw a spider sitting in the corner minding its own business. She didn’t like it and nearly wet herself before lifting a brush and yelling, ‘Get out you dirty brute! You’re very ugly!’ as she swept it out the door.

  The poor spider was very upset. All of a sudden he was homeless and he’d been told he was dirty and ugly. He longed to find somewhere he could feel safe and hide. He crawled into the grass and looked around. There was no place to hang a web. He gave a big sigh because he loved spinning webs. A jumping spider landed beside him and frightened him, so he ran as fast as his long legs would carry him and climbed a tree.

  He had a lovely view and was happy until a bird tried to eat him. He quickly spun a long thread of web and swung, like Tarzan, on to the ground. He ran and ran and ran. Eventually he came to a cave and ran inside.

  It was so dark he couldn’t see anything.

  ‘This is great,’ he thought, ‘I should be safe here and nobody’ll see how ugly I am.’

  He climbed up the wall, held on to the ceiling and looked carefully at it as he decided where he should hang his web. Suddenly he heard a noise and looked down. He was so surprised he’d have done a big loud smelly one, but he was a spider and spiders can’t do that! His eyes had adapted to the light and he saw the cave was full of animals.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to intrude. I didn’t realise there was anyone here. I’ll go away immediately.’

  ‘Why go away?’ said the cow, ‘It’s safe and dry here.’

  ‘Bbbbbbbut bbbbbut I’m so ugly,’ stammered the spider.

  ‘I don’t think you’re ugly. Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. You’re not ugly, you’re just different! Now look at us. We are all different. Being different makes life interesting. You’re very welcome.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the donkey, ‘You’re very welcome. In fact you’re more than welcome because you’ll be useful catching flies. They come in here and bite us.’

  ‘Please stay,’ said the sheep.

  ‘You mean it? You really mean it? I can stay? I’m welcome?’

  ‘YES!’ shouted all the animals in a loud chorus.

  The spider smiled as well as he could. (It’s very hard to smile when you’ve a mouth that looks like two thorns, but he did his best.)

  The spider was very happy living in the cave. He thought, ‘I may be ugly but I can do good work. I’ll spin the most beautiful web in the whole wide world.’ He spun a web that was wide and thick. He made it rectangular in shape so it was different from all other spiders’ webs. He was very proud of it and spent a lot of time sitting beside it and admiring it. When the weather turned cold he crept inside, curled up and was nice and warm.

  One cold winter’s night he was sleeping when he heard people
talking. He looked down and saw a baby sleeping in the animals’ manger. A young woman was gently touching the back of its neck. She turned round to the man and said, ‘The baby’s cold. I don’t know what to do. I’ve put everything we have on him.’

  The spider thought, ‘My web would keep the baby warm.’ Then he thought, ‘My web’s the most beautiful in the whole wide world. I can’t bear to part with it. I’d be cold without it.’

  Then he thought, ‘I shouldn’t be greedy. That poor baby’s cold! Cold won’t hurt me and I can spin another web. It’ll take a long time but sure that doesn’t matter.’

  He cut the corners of his beautiful web and set it free. It drifted down and landed on the baby. The woman tucked it in, looked up and said, ‘Thank you. That was a beautiful thing you did. Would you like to come down and see the baby?’

  The spider was delighted. He jumped down and stood on the edge of the baby’s bed. The baby was so beautiful that the spider smiled.

  The lady said, ‘Can I grant you a wish?’

  The spider felt very excited, ‘Yes! Please! Please make me beautiful.’ He gasped, ‘Please! Please! Please make me beautiful like a butterfly.’

  The lady smiled as she said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What I can do is make you lucky.’

  From that day to this, spiders have been lucky – so the next time you see one don’t hurt it because it’s a useful animal and it could bring you good luck.

  The oral tradition says St Patrick loved a bit of craic and was never happier than when sitting round a fire listening to stories. He doesn’t seem to have been a stuffy saint, all good deeds and no fun, and he had a bit of a temper, but that’s another story. The oral tradition says this was his favourite story because it acts as a link between the old pagan beliefs and the new Christian religion.

  A long time ago Ireland was inhabited by strange people called the Tuthna De Danaan, who were beautiful, very tall and never died. If they became very ill they fell into a deep sleep that lasted a thousand years.