Irish Stories and Folklore

by Stephen Brennan

  “I shall not name an award, O Avarta; neither shall I accept an eric from thee. But the wages I promised thee when we made our covenant at Knockainy, that I will give thee. For I am thankful for the welcome thou hast given us here; and I wish that there should be peace and friendship between us for ever.”

  But Conan, on his part, was not so easily satisfied; and he said to Finn:

  “Little hast thou endured, O Finn, in this matter; and thou mayst well waive thy award. But hadst thou, like us, suffered from the sharp bones and the rough carcass of the Gilla Dacker’s monstrous horse in a long journey from Erin to the Land of Promise, across wide seas, through tangled woods, and over rough-headed rocks, thou wouldst then, methinks, name an award.”

  At this, Avarta and the others who had seen Conan and his companions carried off on the back of the big horse could scarce keep from laughing; and Avarta said to Conan:

  “Name thy award, and I will fulfill it every jot; for I have heard of thee, Conan, and I dread to bring the gibes and taunts of thy foul tongue on myself and my people.”

  “Well, then,” said Conan, “my award is this: that you choose fifteen of the best and noblest men in the Land of Promise, among whom are to be your own best beloved friends; and that you cause them to mount on the back of the big horse, and that you yourself take hold of his tail. In this manner you shall fare to Erin, back again by the self-same track the horse took when he brought us hither—through the same surging seas, through the same thick thorny woods, and over the same islands and rough rocks and dark glens. And this, Avarta, is my award,” said Conan.

  Now, Finn and his people were rejoiced exceedingly when they heard Conan’s award—that he asked from Avarta nothing more than like for like. For they feared much that he might claim treasure of gold and silver, and thus bring reproach on the Feni.

  Avarta promised that everything required by Conan should be done, binding himself in solemn pledges. Then the heroes took their leave; and having launched their ship on the broad, green sea, they sailed back by the same course to Erin. And they marched to their camping-place at Knockainy, where they rested in their tents.

  Avarta then chose his men. And he placed them on the horse’s back, and he himself caught hold of the tail; and it is not told how they fared till they made harbor and landing-place at Cloghan Kincat. They delayed not, but straightway journeyed over the self-same track as before till they reached Knockainy.

  Finn and his people saw them afar off coming towards the hill with great speed; the Gilla Dacker, quite as large and as ugly as ever, running before the horse; for he had let go the tail at Cloghan Kincat. And the Feni could not help laughing heartily when they saw the plight of the fifteen chiefs on the great horse’s back; and they said with one voice that Conan had made a good award that time.

  When the horse reached the spot from which he had at first set out the men began to dismount. Then the Gilla Dacker, suddenly stepping forward, held up his arm and pointed earnestly over the heads of the Feni towards the field where the horses were standing; so that the heroes were startled, and turned round every man to look. But nothing was to be seen except the horses grazing quietly inside the fence.

  Finn and the others now turned round again with intent to speak to the Gilla Dacker and bring him and his people into the tents; but much did they marvel to find them all gone. The Gilla Dacker and his great horse and fifteen nobles of the Land of Promise had disappeared in an instant; and neither Finn himself nor any of his chiefs ever saw them afterwards.

  THE KEENING WOMAN

  BY PATRICK PEARSE

  ‘Coilin,’ says my father to me one morning after the breakfast, and I putting my books together to be stirring to school—‘Coilin,’ says he, ‘I have a task for you to-day. Sean will tell the master it was myself kept you at home to-day, or it’s the way he’ll be thinking you’re miching, like you were last week. Let you not forget now, Sean.’

  ‘I will not, father,’ says Sean, and a lip on him. He wasn’t too thankful it to be said that it’s not for him my father had the task. This son was well satisfied, for my lessons were always a trouble to me, and the master promised me a beating the day before unless I’d have them at the tip of my mouth the next day.

  ‘What you’ll do, Coilin,’ says my father when Sean was gone off, ‘is to bring the ass and the little car with you to Screeb, and draw home a load of sedge. Michileen Maire is cutting it for me. We’ll be starting, with God’s help, to put the new roof on the house after tomorrow, if the weather stands.’

  ‘Michileen took the ass and car with him this morning,’ says I.

  ‘You’ll have to leg it, then, a mhic O,’ says my father. ‘As soon as Michileen has an ass-load cut, fetch it home with you on the car, and let Michileen tear till he’s black. We might draw the other share tomorrow.’

  It wasn’t long till I was knocking steps out of the road. I gave my back to Kilbrickan and my face to Turlagh. I left Turlagh behind me, and I made for Gortmore. I stood a spell looking at an oared boat that was on Loch Ellery, and another spell playing with some Inver boys that were late going to Gortmore school. I left them at the school gate, and I reached Glencana. I stood, for the third time watching a big eagle that was sunning himself on Carrigacapple. East with me, then, till I was in Derrybanniv, and the hour and a half wasn’t spent when I cleared Glashaduff bridge.

  There was a house that time a couple of hundred yards east from the bridge, near the road, on your right-hand side and you drawing towards Screeb. It was often before that I saw an old woman standing in the door of that house, but I had no acquaintance on her, nor did she ever put talk or topic on me. A tall, thin woman she was, her head as white as the snow, and two dark eyes, as they would be two burning sods, flaming in her head. She was a woman that would scare me if I met her in a lonely place in the night. Times she would be knitting or carding, and she crooning low to herself; but the thing she would be mostly doing when I travelled, would be standing in the door, and looking from her up and down the road, exactly as she’d be waiting for someone that would be away from her, and she expecting him home.

  She was standing there that morning as usual, her hand to her eyes, and she staring up the road. When she saw me going past, she nodded her head to me. I went over to her.

  ‘Do you see a person at all coming up the road?’ says she.

  ‘I don’t,’ says I.

  ‘I thought I saw someone. It can’t be that I’m astray. See, isn’t that a young man making up on us?’ says she.

  ‘Devil a one do I see,’ says I. ‘There’s not a person at all between the spot we’re on and the turning of the road.’

  ‘I was astray, then,’ says she. ‘My sight isn’t as good as it was. I thought I saw him coming. I don’t know what’s keeping him.’

  ‘Who’s away from you?’ says myself.

  ‘My son that’s away from me,’ says she.

  ‘Is he long away?’

  ‘This morning he went to Uachtar Ard.’

  ‘But, sure, he couldn’t be here for a while,’ says I. ‘You’d think he’d barely be in Uachtar Ard by now, and he doing his best, unless it was by the morning train he went from the Burnt House.’

  ‘What’s this I’m saying?’ says she. ‘It’s not to-day he went, but yesterday,—or the day ere yesterday, maybe… I’m losing my wits.’

  ‘If it’s on the train he’s coming,’ says I, ‘he’ll not be here for a couple of hours yet.’

  ‘On the train?’ says she. ‘What train?’

  ‘The train that does be at the Burnt House at noon.’

  ‘He didn’t say a word about a train,’ says she. ‘There was no train coming as far as the Burnt House yesterday.’

  ‘Isn’t there a train coming to the Burnt House these years?’ says I, wondering greatly. She didn’t give me any answer, however. She was staring up the road again. There came a sort of dread on me of her, and I was about gathering off.

  ‘If you see him on the road,’ say
s she ‘tell him to make hurry.’

  ‘I’ve no acquaintance on him,’ says I.

  ‘You’d know him easy. He’s the playboy of the people. A young, active lad, and he well set-up. He has a white head on him, like is on yourself, and grey eyes … like his father had. Bawneens he’s wearing.’

  ‘If I see him,’ says I, ‘I’ll tell him you’re waiting for him.’

  ‘Do, son,’ says she.

  With that I stirred on with me east, and left her standing in the door.

  She was there still, and I coming home a couple of hours after that, and the load of sedge on the car.

  ‘He didn’t come yet?’ says I to her.

  ‘No, a mhuirnín. You didn’t see him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? What can have happened him?’

  There were signs of rain on the day.

  ‘Come in till the shower’s over,’ says she. ‘It’s seldom I do have company.’

  I left the ass and the little car on the road, and I went into the house.

  ‘Sit and drink a cup of milk,’ says she.

  I sat on the bench in the corner, and she gave me a drink of milk and a morsel of bread. I was looking all round the house, and I eating and drinking. There was a chair beside the fire, and a white shirt and a suit of clothes laid on it.

  ‘I have these ready against he will come,’ says she. ‘I washed the bawneens yesterday after his departing,—no, the day ere yesterday—I don’t know right which day I washed them; but, anyhow, they’ll be clean and dry before him when he does come… What’s your own name?’ says she, suddenly, after a spell of silence.

  I told her.

  ‘Muise, my love you are!’ says she. ‘The very name that was—that is—on my own son. Whose are you?’

  I told her.

  ‘And do you say you’re a son of Sean Feichin’s?’ says she. ‘Your father was in the public-house in Uachtar Ard that night….’ She stopped suddenly with that, and there came some change on her. She put her hand to her head. You’d think that it’s madness was struck on her. She sat before the fire then, and she stayed for a while dreaming into the heart of the fire. It was short till she began moving herself to and fro over the fire, and crooning or keening in a low voice. I didn’t understand the words right, or it would be better for me to say that it’s not on the words I was thinking but on the music. It seemed to me that there was the loneliness of the hills in the dead time of night, or the loneliness of the grave when nothing stirs in it but worms, in that music. Here are the words as I heard them from my father after that—

  Sorrow on death, it is it that blackened my heart,

  That carried off my love and that left me ruined,

  Without friend, without companion under the roof of my house

  But this sorrow in my middle, and I lamenting.

  Going the mountain one evening,

  The birds spoke to me sorrowfully,

  The melodious snipe and the voiceful curlew,

  Telling me that my treasure was dead.

  I called on you, and your voice I did not hear,

  I called again, and an answer I did not get.

  I kissed your mouth, and O God, wasn’t it cold!

  Och, it’s cold your bed is in the lonely graveyard.

  And O sod-green grave, where my child is,

  O narrow, little grave, since you are his bed,

  My blessing on you, and the thousand blessings

  On the green sods that are over my pet.

  Sorrow on death, its blessing is not possible—

  It lays fresh and withered together;

  And, O pleasant little son, it is it is my affliction,

  Your sweet body to be making clay!

  When she had that finished, she kept on moving herself to and fro, and lamenting in a low voice. It was a lonesome place to be, in that backward house, and you to have no company but yon solitary old woman, mourning to herself by the fireside. There came a dread and a creeping on me, and I rose to my feet.

  ‘It’s time for me to be going home,’ says I. ‘The evening’s clearing.’

  ‘Come here,’ says she to me.

  I went hither to her. She laid her two hands softly on my head, and she kissed my forehead.

  ‘The protection of God to you, little son,’ says she. ‘May He let the harm of the year over you, and may He increase the good fortune and happiness of the year to you and to your family.’

  With that she freed me from her. I left the house, and pushed on home with me.

  ‘Where were you, Coilin, when the shower caught you?’ says my mother to me that night. ‘It didn’t do you any hurt.’

  ‘I waited in the house of yon old woman on the east side of Glashaduff bridge,’ says I. ‘She was talking to me about her son. He’s in Uachtar Ard these two days, and she doesn’t know why he hasn’t come home ere this.’

  My father looked over at my mother.

  ‘The Keening Woman,’ says he.

  ‘Who is she?’ says I.

  ‘The Keening Woman,’ says my father. ‘Muirne of the Keens.’

  ‘Why was that name given to her?’ says I.

  ‘For the keens she does be making,’ answered my father. ‘She’s the most famous keening-woman in Connemara or in the Joyce Country. She’s always sent for when anyone dies. She keened my father, and there’s a chance but she’ll keen myself. But, may God comfort her, it’s her own dead she does be keening always, it’s all the same what corpse is in the house.’

  ‘And what’s her son doing in Uachtar Ard?’ says I.

  ‘Her son died twenty years since, Coilin,’ says my mother.

  ‘He didn’t die at all,’ says my father, and a very black look on him. ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘Who murdered him?’

  It’s seldom I saw my father angry, but it’s awful his anger was when it would rise up in him. He took a start out of me when he spoke again, he was that angry.

  ‘Who murdered your own grandfather? Who drew the red blood out of my grandmother’s shoulders with a lash? Who would do it but the English? My curse on—’

  My mother rose, and she put her hand on his mouth.

  ‘Don’t give your curse to anyone, Sean,’ says she. My mother was that kindhearted, she wouldn’t like to throw the bad word at the devil himself. I believe she’d have pity in her heart for Cain and for Judas, and for Diarmaid of the Galls.

  ‘It’s time for us to be saying the Rosary,’ says she. ‘Your father will tell you about Coilin Muirne some other night.’

  ‘Father,’ says I, and we going on our knees, ‘we should say a prayer for Coilin’s soul this night.’

  ‘We’ll do that, son,’ says my father kindly.

  Sitting up one night, in the winter that was on us, my father told us the story of Muirne from start to finish. It’s well I mind him in the firelight, a broad-shouldered man, a little stooped, his share of hair going grey, lines in his forehead, a sad look in his eyes. He was mending an old sail that night, and I was on my knees beside him in the name of helping him. My mother and my sisters were spinning frieze. Seaneen was stretched on his face on the floor, and he in grips of a book. ’Twas small the heed he gave to the same book, for it’s the pastime he had, to be tickling the soles of my feet and taking an odd pinch out of my calves; but as my father stirred out in the story Sean gave over his trickery, and it is short till he was listening as interested as anyone. It would be hard not to listen to my father when he’d tell a story like that by the hearthside. He was a sweet storyteller. It’s often I’d think there was music in his voice; a low, deep music like that in the bass of the organ in Tuam Cathedral.

  Twenty years are gone, Coilin (says my father), since the night myself and Coilin Muirne (may God give him grace) and three or four others of the neighbours were in Neachtan’s public-house in Uachtar Ard. There was a fair in the town the same day, and we were drinking a glass before taking the road home on ourselves. There were four or five men in it from C
arrowroe and from the Joyce Country, and six or seven of the people of the town. There came a stranger in, a thin, black man that nobody knew. He called for a glass.

  ‘Did ye hear, people,’ says he to us, and he drinking with us, ‘that the lord is to come home tonight?’

  ‘What business has the devil here?’ says someone.

  ‘Bad work he’s up to, as usual,’ says the black man. ‘He has settled to put seven families out of their holdings.’

  ‘Who’s to be put out?’ says one of us.

  ‘Old Thomas O’Drinan from the Glen,—I’m told the poor fellow’s dying, but it’s on the roadside he’ll die, if God hasn’t him already; a man of the O’Conaire’s that lives in a cabin on this side of Loch Shindilla; Manning from Snamh Bo; two in Annaghmaan; a woman at the head of the Island; and Anthony O’Greelis from Lower Camus.’

  ‘Anthony’s wife is heavy in child,’ says Cuimin O’Niadh.

  ‘That won’t save her, the creature,’ says the black man. ‘She’s not the first woman out of this country that bore her child in a ditch-side of the road.’

  There wasn’t a word out of anyone of us.

  ‘What sort of men are ye?’ says the black man,—‘ye are not men, at all. I was born and raised in a countryside, and, my word to you, the men of that place wouldn’t let the whole English army together throw out seven families on the road without them knowing the reason why. Are ye afraid of the man that’s coming here tonight?’

  ‘It’s easy to talk,’ said Cuimin, ‘but what way can we stop the bodach?’

  ‘Murder him this night,’ says a voice behind me. Everybody started. I myself turned round. It was Coilin Muirne that spoke. His two eyes were blazing in his head, a flame in his cheeks, and his head thrown high.

  ‘A man that spoke that, whatever his name and surname,’ says the stranger. He went hither and gripped Coilin’s hand.

  ‘Drink a glass with me,’ says he.

  Coilin drank the glass. The others wouldn’t speak.