Irish Animal Folk Tales for Children

by Doreen McBride

  The swans were happier after Kermock arrived. They grew to love him and enjoyed working with him. He loved to hear them singing and taught them strange new tunes. They grew more and more excited as the day approached for St Patrick to arrive. Eventually they spotted a boat on the horizon and watched as it drew close to shore. A man stepped out and the church bell rang for the first time.

  ‘OOOOOOH!’ spluttered Aed, ‘I feel queer!’

  Fionuala screamed, ‘So do I!’

  There was a loud BANG and a flash of lightning. Silver chains around their necks grew larger. Fiacre choked and gasped, ‘I can hardly breathe.’

  A splitting sound rent the air as the chains snapped and the swan plumage fell around their feet, allowing four small ancient people to step over the feathers.

  Aed burst out laughing, ‘Look at you Fionuala! The last time I saw you, you were a tall beautiful young girl. Now look at you! You’re tiny!’

  Yer man’s dead on!

  ‘What do you expect? I’m now more than 900 years old! And what makes you think you’re any oil painting? You’ve shrunk and your beard is down past your knees! And look at Conn and Fiacre! They’re not young children any more! They look ancient. The spell has been broken!’

  Time passed. One morning, Kermock noticed the siblings hadn’t got up. He went to see what had happened. Everything looked quiet and peaceful. He went to the door of their hut and peeped in. He thought they were sleeping but when he went closer and touched them he found they were stone cold. They’d died peacefully in their sleep. They were buried with Fionuala lying on her back and Conn and Fiacre in her arms facing her, while Aed lay on top with his arms stretched around his siblings.

  Kermock said, ‘I’m going to miss them, but I should be happy for them. Look at the way they are smiling. They must have gone straight to heaven and are singing in paradise.’

  When I was a wee girl, my mummy and daddy used to take me camping in the Sperrin Mountains. I thought they were so high, so remote and so beautiful, they must be near heaven. I pictured God sitting on his throne above me with a huge watering can at his side, and every time he wanted it to rain he picked the watering can up and watered the land below!

  Now I’m grown up I know God’s not sitting beside a watering can in the sky, but I still think the Sperrins are beautiful.

  One day I was in Omagh when I noticed a signpost pointing to An Creâgan and thought, ‘That looks interesting,’ so I followed it and drove what seemed like miles along a country road through the mountains, eventually coming to a beautiful modern building set down a slight hollow. I parked my car and went inside the centre. It was fascinating.

  An Creâgan is Irish for the Sperrin Centre. It has an excellent shop and cafe, interesting displays, a camp site, self-catering accommodation and friendly staff, who told me about the Creágan white hare, the song written about it and the sculpture of it that sits in their grounds:

  The Creágan White Hare

  In the lowlands of Creágan there lived a White Hare,

  As swift as a swallow that flies through the air.

  You may search through this world but find none to compare

  With the pride of lower Creágan, our bonny white hare.

  The fame of the white hare spread far and wide. Everybody wanted to capture her. The song goes on to say that one day:

  There were some jolly sportsmen came here from Pomeroy,

  Coalisland, Cookstown and likewise the Moy.

  With their pedigree greyhounds they brought from afar

  And they landed in Creágan in a fine motorcar.

  The poor hare was chased up hill and down dale until eventually she was cornered and surrounded by seven men and nine dogs. She must have been terrified! But:

  When she looked at the greyhounds, she raised her big ear,

  She rose on her toes and with one mighty spring,

  Jumped over the greyhounds and cleared through the ring.

  That was some jump, wasn’t it? She was so good at escaping that people thought she must be a witch, because in the past people thought witches would turn into hares and do wicked things, such as put a spell on farmers’ cows so their milk couldn’t be turned into butter.

  One day a farmer was walking, with his dog, through his fields. He was worried because he didn’t have enough money to pay his rent and if the rent wasn’t paid he knew he’d be made homeless.

  Yon hare must be a witch.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happened to my cows,’ he muttered. ‘It’s impossible to churn their milk into butter. If I had butter to sell I’d have all my rent money.’

  A huge hare ran in front of him. He stamped his feet on the ground and said to his dog, ‘Come on Nell! That hare’s a witch. She’s stolen our cow’s milk. Let’s kill her and have her for dinner.’

  He chased the hare and shot at her, and hit her, but his bullet had no effect. She turned around and laughed at him. The only sort of bullet that can kill a witch is one made from silver. The farmer laughed too because he had a silver bullet in the back pocket of his trousers! He put it into his gun, shot at the hare and hit her leg. She gave a terrifying scream and ran for her life, leaving a trail of blood behind.

  The farmer and his dog followed the trail, which led to a tiny cottage hidden deep in the woods. They pushed the door open and found an old woman sitting by the fire tying a bandage around her bleeding leg!

  My friend Graham Mawhinney told me about the gigantic hare of Cavanreagh that was captured about the 1850s. It lived for years on land belonging to James Smyth of Cockhill and annoyed him by spending the winter eating his crop of turnips! A group of hunters decided they were going to get that hare come hell or high water. They knew local farm dogs were no match for it so they scoured the countryside looking for fast dogs and managed to find a pair of greyhounds.

  The hare outpaced most of the dogs but the greyhounds kept on chasing her. She would have been running yet if she hadn’t made a big mistake and dashed into a muddy field where she got stuck in the mud. One of the dogs jumped on top of her and when the hunters caught up they found the hare was dead and the dog was so exhausted it had to be put in the doggy equivalent of intensive care! An ordinary hare weighs between 7 and 8 pounds, while the Cavanreagh hare weighed 20 pounds! In other words it was huge – but it was caught, and so it never became as famous as the Creâgan White Hare.

  You know what a robin looks like, don’t you? It’s the small bird with a red breast you see on Christmas cards. It’s very common in gardens and it’s cheeky. I had one that used to land on my spade when I was digging!

  When I was wee I thought when a robin sang it was saying things like, ‘it’s a beautiful day’, ‘I’m very happy’, ‘listen to my song’, or even ‘you are my friend’. Then one day I was playing in the garden with my favourite doll, Jennifer. She was wearing a new dress granny had made her and sitting on a seat in the garden. A robin sat on a bush and sang his heart out. I thought he liked Jennifer and was singing a lovely song to her. I was very surprised when he flew down and attacked her!

  I chased the robin off and told my mummy, who said, ‘Robin didn’t like Jennifer’s red dress. Robins look cute, but they’re nasty. They pick a place to live and fight any other robin who comes near. Their red breasts are warning signs that say, “Push off, or I’ll fight you!” They’re sensible because although they’d fight to the death, they avoid doing that by flashing their red breasts as a warning. If that doesn’t work, they sing loudly. The best singer wins the battle! So if you hear a robin singing it’s really shouting insults like, ‘Clear off! Your bum’s a plum!’

  Clear off or I’ll knock the stuffing out of you!

  There’s a folk tale about why a robin has a red breast. I don’t believe it, but I like it so I’m going to share it with you. It’s a nice idea.

  A long time ago a robin watched a group of soldiers roughly grab a man and nail him to a cross. The man groaned softly. The cross was lifted up into the air. The robin
watched and was furious. ‘That’s a good man,’ he thought. ‘He’s never done any harm. He’s just helped people. The soldiers shouldn’t be hurting him.’

  Lots of soldiers and people stood around the cross and made fun of the man. The robin did his best to make them go away. He sat on a bush and sang all kinds of insults like, ‘Wind yer neck in!’, ‘Your face is like my bum!’ and ‘Your head’s up your backside!’

  Nobody paid any attention so the robin buzzed them. Again people didn’t pay any attention. The robin thought, ‘Drastic action is needed. I’ll dive bomb them.’ He flew over the people and pooed on them! Nobody took any notice, apart from a soldier who got poo in his eye!

  By this time the robin was very upset. He looked at the man and flew into a temper! ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he fumed. ‘Those brutes have hammered thorns into the poor man’s head. It looks like a crown. That must be sore. I wonder if I could pull them out.’ He flew down, tried to pull the thorns out with his beak and became covered in blood.

  The man, although he was in great pain, smiled and said, ‘Don’t worry, robin. Soon I’ll be in paradise and from this day onwards you’ll have a red breast.’

  Ireland’s counties Armagh, Cavan, Down, Leitrim, Monaghan and Longford are full of the mysterious, huge, double earthen banks with a ditch in between them that are along some of the roads. Nobody knows why they’re there, what they were for or who made them. People used to think they marked borders, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense. What were they bordering and why? They might once have been joined and bits of it may have been flattened. Nobody knows! They are called the Black Pig’s Dyke and the longest piece is in County Longford. It stretches 6 miles (10.3km) between Lough Kinale and Lough Gowna.

  There are a lot of stories about the Black Pig’s Dyke. Most of them tell of a bad-tempered school teacher who had a magic wand. If his class annoyed him he’d turn them into pigs and send them out into the playground, where they frisked around all day. He changed them back into children before going-home time so their parents never knew how they’d spent the day! Perhaps the spell caused them to forget or maybe they enjoyed being pigs and chasing each other all day rather than having to do sums and reading so they didn’t tell anyone!

  School was a quare joke!

  My favourite Black Pig’s Dyke story is about a place outside the village of Meigh, near Newry. A hill with shrubs growing on it is part of the Black Pig’s Dyke. It’s at a dip in the road where a bridge crosses the Flurry River.

  Once upon a time, in the days before St Patrick, the village of Meigh had a school master who had the Black Art. He was very bad tempered and when he flew into a rage he used to get out his magic wand and turn his pupils into hares and hounds. That was good fun if you happened to be a hound but terrible if you were a hare! He was a mean nasty bully and he had favourites. Michael was a shy quiet wee lad some of the other boys used to bully so the master was always turning him into a hare. The poor wee lad spent his days being bitten by the hounds and he started having nightmares. Night after night he woke up screaming his head off. Eventually his father discovered what the master was doing. He was furious! Apart from anything else, he didn’t like having his sleep disturbed!

  Michael’s father went into school, grabbed the master’s wand, tapped the master with it and turned him into a gigantic pig with huge tusks. The boys laughed and laughed. The pig was raging, stuck his tusks into the ground and ran all round the countryside digging a trench that formed the Black Pig’s Dyke.

  I’m sure you’ve heard of the monster called Nessie that lives in Loch Ness. Do you know Ireland has its own monster? It’s in Lough Ree, West Meath. Athlone, which is in the middle of Ireland, is at the northern end of the lough.

  You’d wonder why few people know about Ireland’s monster. Perhaps it’s because of its name? Nessie sounds cute and it’s easily remembered, while Ireland’s monster is called the Dabhur Chur, which means ‘Irish crocodile’.

  There’s a very old story about the monster and St Mochua, who lived a long time ago near Lough Ree. He must have been very famous because somebody wrote a book about him called Life of St Mochua of Balla. It says that one day St Mochua was out with some friends hunting a stag and it swam across to an island in Lough Ree. Most of his friends decided to let the stag escape. They were frightened because they’d heard a terrible monster was hidden underneath the deep waters. One of the men didn’t believe the monster existed so he swam across to the island to kill the stag. He got over safely, found his prey and killed it, but when he was swimming back to his friends the monster came up from the depths and ate him!

  You look tasty.

  It is said that if you were to kill the Dabhur Chur it would let out a blooding-curdling shriek as it died and its mate would come up from the bottom of the lough and kill you!

  Another story tells about the Irish saint St Collumba, who crossed the Sea of Moyle. (Do you remember, that’s where the Children of Lir had to hang out for 300 years?) One day he was wandering around the banks of Loch Ness when he stopped to watch a man who was swimming. Suddenly the monster appeared. The man was terrified and swam as fast as he could towards shore. The monster swam faster and faster. It was obvious it intended to have the man for dinner. The man thought he was a goner but St Columba used his spiritual powers to scare it and save the man’s life. The monster was so upset it climbed out of the water and raced across to Lough Ree, where it must have laid a lot of eggs that turned into the ancestors of Ireland’s Dabhur Chur.

  All those stories are supposed to have happened a long time ago, so I don’t think l believe them. But, and it’s a big BUT, on 9.30pm on 18 May 1960 three respectable clerics, Father Quigly, Father Murray and Father Burke, were fishing on Lough Ree off Holly Point on a warm summer evening. One of them pointed towards an unusual object near the shore and shouted, ‘Do you see what I see?’

  It was the monster! They were so sure they’d seen it they told the Inland Fisheries Trust about it. I’ve written a copy of their description of it below.

  There were two sections above the water; a forward section of uniform girth, stretching quite straight out of the water and inclined at the plane of the surface at about 30°, in length about 18-24 inches. The diameter of this long leading section we would estimate to be about 4 inches. At its extremity which we took to be a serpent-like head, it tapered rather abruptly to a point.

  Between the leading and the following sections of this creature, there intervened about two feet of water. The second section seemed to us to be a tight, roughly semi-circular loop. This portion could have been a hump or a large knob on the back of a large body under the surface that was being propelled by flippers. As to the dimensions of this section, if a loop we should say the girth of a large fifteen pound salmon; if however, a round hump … we should put its base at about 18 inches … We would estimate the overall length of the two visible sections, measured along the surface from tip of snout to end of hump, at about 6 feet.

  The movement along the water was steady. There was no apparent disturbance of the surface, so that propulsion seemed to come from a well-submerged portion of the creature. There was no undulation of its body above the water. It was cruising at a very leisurely speed, and was apparently unconcerned about our presence. We watched it moving along the surface for a period of two or three minutes in a north-easterly direction. It was going towards the shore; then it submerged gradually rather than dived, and disappeared.

  The monster has been spotted in other places, so it either moves around the country from lake to lake, or there are a whole lot of them living quietly at the bottom of deep lakes in Ireland.

  The Irish artist Sean Corcoran and his wife saw one in 2000 on Omey Island, a tiny tidal island off the coast of Connemara.

  All I can say is, I’m not going swimming at dusk in any of Ireland’s lakes in case the monster decides to surface and have me for supper!

  One day a farmer who lived in Timahoe was coming home from a fair
at Portlaoise. He was very pleased with himself because he’d got a good price for his pigs, so he’d be able to pay his rent. In the old days, if you couldn’t pay your rent you’d be evicted and your landowner might knock your house down.

  When the farmer reached the crossroads at Money, a black cat jumped on the back of the cart. It was so heavy it caused the cart’s shafts to tilt up in the air so the horse couldn’t pull it.

  The cat smiled and said, ‘I’d like to hitch a lift.’

  The farmer said, ‘I’m happy to give you a lift, but only if you come up here and sit beside me. Your weight is making the shafts of the cart stick up in the air so my poor horse can’t pull it.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said the cat as it moved up beside the farmer.

  The cat and the farmer sat chatting until they came to the next crossroads, when the cat jumped out of the cart and shouted, ‘Tell Prettyface the Booman is dead.’

  When the farmer got home he put the cart away, let the horse into a field and went into the kitchen, where his wife asked him how he’d got on.

  He said, ‘Fine. I got a good price for the pigs and a funny thing happened on the way home. I met a talking cat.’

  ‘Feel your head! Cats don’t talk.’

  ‘I told you, this one did.’

  ‘You’re either crazy, or you’ve been at the poiteen!’

  ‘I haven’t touched a drop. I’m stone-cold sober.’

  ‘Well! I still think you’re not the full shilling. From the point of view of interest, what did the cat say?’

  ‘It said to tell Prettyface the Booman’s dead!’

  Prettyface was sitting dozing by the fire. She immediately jumped up and shouted, ‘I must be gone or I’ll be late for the funeral!’ She rushed out the door and was never seen again.