Irish Folk and Fairy Tales

by Gordon Jarvie

  ‘When he had me there fairly landed, he turned about on me, and said, “Good morning to you, Daniel O’Rourke,” said he; “I think I’ve nicked you fairly now. You robbed my nest last year,” (’twas true enough for him, but how he found out is hard to say), “and in return you are freely welcome to cool your heels dangling upon the moon like an idiot.”

  ‘“Is that all, and is this the way you leave me, you brute, you,” says I. “You ugly unnatural baste, and is this the way you serve me at last? Bad luck to yourself, with your hook’d nose, and to all your breed, you blackguard.” ’Twas all to no manner of use; he spread out his great big wings, burst out a-laughing, and flew away like lightning. I bawled after him to stop; but I might have called and bawled forever, without his minding me. Away he went, and I never saw him from that day to this – sorrow fly away with him! You may be sure I was in a disconsolate condition, and kept roaring out for the bare grief, when all at once a door opened right in the middle of the moon, creaking on its hinges as if it had not been opened for a month before, I suppose they never thought of greasing ’em, and out there walks – who do you think but the man in the moon himself? I knew him by his bush.

  ‘“Good morrow to you, Daniel O’Rourke,” said he; “how do you do?” “Very well, thank your honour,” said I. “I hope your honour’s well.” “What brought you here, Dan?” said he. So I told him how I was a little overtaken in liquor at the master’s, and how I was cast on a dissolute island, and how I lost my way in the bog, and how the thief of an eagle promised to fly me out of it, and how, instead of that, he had fled me up to the moon.

  ‘“Dan,” said the man in the moon, taking a pinch of snuff when I was done, “you must not stay here.” “Indeed, sir,” says I, “’tis much against my will I’m here at all; but how am I to go back?” “That’s your business,” said he; “Dan, mine is to tell you that here you must not stay; so be off in less than no time.” “I’m doing no harm,” says I, “only holding on hard by the reaping-hook, lest I fall off.” “That’s what you must not do, Dan,” says he. “Pray, sir,” says I, “may I ask how many you are in family, that you would not give a poor traveller lodging: I’m sure ’tis not often you’re troubled with strangers coming to see you, for ’tis a long way.” “I’m by myself, Dan,” says he; “but you’d better let go the reaping-hook that was keeping you up.” “No way,” says I, “and the more you bids me, the more I won’t let go; – so I will.” “You had better, Dan,” says he again. “Why, then, my little fellow,” says I, taking the whole weight of him with my eye from head to foot, “there are two words to that bargain; and I’ll not budge, but you may if you like.” “We’ll see how that is to be,” says he; and back he went, giving the door such a great bang after him (for it was plain he was huffed) that I thought the moon and all would fall down with it.

  ‘Well, I was preparing myself to try strength with him, when back again he comes, with the kitchen cleaver in his hand, and, without saying a word, he gives two bangs to the handle of the reaping-hook that was keeping me up, and whap! it came in two. ‘Good morning to you, Dan,’ says the spiteful little old blackguard, when he saw me cleanly falling down with a bit of the handle in my hand; ‘I thank you for your visit, and fair weather after you, Daniel.’ I had not time to make any answer to him, for I was tumbling over and over, and rolling and rolling, at the rate of a foxhunt. ‘God help me!’ says I, ‘but this is a pretty pickle for a decent man to be seen in at this time of night: I am now sold fairly.’ The word was not out of my mouth when whiz! what should fly by close to my ear but a flock of wild geese, all the way from my own bog of Ballyasheenogh, else how should they know me? The ould gander, who was their general, turning about his head, cried out to me, ‘Is that you, Dan?’ ‘The same,’ said I, not a bit daunted now at what he said, for I was by this time used to all kinds of bedevilment, and, besides, I knew him of ould. ‘Good morrow to you,’ says he, ‘Daniel O’Rourke; how are you in health this morning?’ ‘Very well, sir,’ says I, ‘I thank you kindly,’ drawing my breath, for I was mightily in want of some. ‘I hope your honour’s the same,’ ‘I think ‘tis falling you are, Daniel,’ says he. ‘You may say that, sir,’ says I. ‘And where are you going all the way so fast?’ said the gander. So I told him how I had taken the drop, and how I came on the island, and how I lost my way in the bog, and how the thief of an eagle flew me up to the moon, and how the man in the moon turned me out. ‘Dan,’ said he, ‘I’ll save you: put out your hand and catch me by the leg, and I’ll fly you home.’ ‘Sweet is your hand in a pitcher of honey, my jewel,’ says I, though all the time I thought within myself that I don’t much trust you; but there was no help, so I caught the gander by the leg, and away I and the other geese flew after him as fast as hops.

  ‘We flew, and we flew, and we flew, until we came right over the wide ocean. I knew it well, for I saw Cape Clear to my right hand, sticking up out of the water. “Ah, my lord,” said I to the goose, for I thought it best to keep a civil tongue in my head anyway, “fly to land if you please.” “It is impossible, you see, Dan,” said he, “for a while, because you see we are going to Arabia.” “To Arabia!” said I; “that’s surely some place in foreign parts, far away. Oh! Mr Goose: why then, to be sure, I’m a man to be pitied among you.” “Whist, whist, you fool,” said he, “hold your tongue; I tell you Arabia is a very decent sort of place, as like West Carbery as one egg is like another, only there is a little more sand there.”

  ‘Just as we were talking, a ship hove in sight, scudding so beautiful before the wind. “Ah! then, sir,” said I, “will you drop me on the ship, if you please?” “We are not fair over it,” said he; “if I dropped you now you would go splash into the sea.” “I would not,” says I; “I know better than that, for it is just clean under us, so let me drop now at once.”

  ‘“If you must, you must,” said he; “there, take your own way;” and he opened his claw, and faith he was right – sure enough I came down plump into the very bottom of the salt sea! Down to the very bottom I went, and I gave myself up then forever, when a whale walked up to me, scratching himself after his night’s sleep, and he looked me full in the face, and never the word did he say, but lifting up his tail, he splashed me all over again with the cold salt water till there wasn’t a dry stitch upon my whole carcass! and I heard somebody saying – ’twas a voice I knew, too – “Get up you drunken brute, off o’ that”; and with that I woke up, and there was Judy with a tub full of water, which she was splashing all over me – for, rest her soul! though she was a good wife, she never could bear to see me in drink, and had a bitter hand of her own.

  ‘“Get up,” said she again: “and of all places in the parish would no place sarve your turn to lie down upon but under the ould walls of Carrigapooka? an uneasy resting I am sure you had of it.” And sure enough I had: for I was fairly bothered out of my senses with eagles, and men of the moons, and flying ganders, and whales, driving me through bogs, and up to the moon, and down to the bottom of the green ocean. If I was in drink ten times over, long would it be before I’d lie down in the same spot again, I know that.’

  PART THREE: THE MERROW AND THE WATER SPIRITS

  ‘The Lady of Gollerus’ by Thomas Crofton Croker

  On the shore of Smerwick harbour, one fine summer’s morning, just at day-break, stood Dick Fitzgerald ‘shoghing the dudeen’, which may be translated, smoking his pipe. The sun was gradually rising behind the lofty Brandon, the dark sea was getting green in the light, and the mists, clearing away out of the valleys, went rolling and curling like the smoke from the corner of Dick’s mouth.

  ‘‘Tis just the pattern of a pretty morning,’ said Dick, taking the pipe from between his lips, and looking towards the distant ocean, which lay as still and tranquil as a tomb of polished marble.

  ‘Well, to be sure,’ continued he, after a pause, ‘‘tis mighty lonesome to be talking to one’s self by way of company, and not to have another soul to answer one – nothing but the child
of one’s own voice, the echo! I know this, that if I had the luck, or maybe the misfortune,’ said Dick with a melancholy smile, ‘to have a wife, it would not be this way with me! – and what in the wide world is a man without a wife? He’s no more surely than a bottle without a drop of drink in it, or dancing without music, or the left leg of a scissors, or a fishing-line without a hook, or any other matter that is no ways complete. – Is it not so?’ said Dick Fitzgerald, casting his eyes towards a rock upon the strand, which, though it could not speak, stood up as firm and looked as bold as ever Kerry witness did.

  But what was his astonishment at beholding, just at the foot of that rock a beautiful young creature combing her hair, which was of a sea-green colour, and now the salt water shining on it, appeared, in the morning light, like melted butter upon cabbage.

  Dick guessed at once that she was a Merrow, although he had never seen one before, for he spied the cohuleen driuth, or little enchanted cap, which the sea people use for diving down into the ocean, lying upon the strand, near her; and he had heard, that if once he could possess himself of the cap, she would lose the power of going away into the water. So he seized it with all speed, and she, hearing the noise, turned her head about as quickly as any Christian.

  When the Merrow saw that her little diving-cap was gone, the salt tears – doubly salt, no doubt, from her – came trickling down her cheeks, and she began a low mournful cry with just the tender voice of a new-born infant. Dick, although he knew well enough what she was crying for, determined to keep the cohuleen driuth, let her cry never so much, to see what luck would come out of it. Yet he could not help pitying her, and when the dumb thing looked up in his face, and her cheeks all moist with tears, ‘twas enough to make any one feel for her, let alone Dick, who had ever and always, like most of his countrymen, a mighty tender heart of his own.

  ‘Don’t cry, my darling,’ said Dick Fitzgerald; but the Merrow, like any bold child, only cried the more for that.

  Dick sat himself down by her side, and took hold of her hand, by way of comforting her. ’Twas in no particular an ugly hand, only there was a small web between the fingers, as there is in a duck’s foot, but ’twas as thin and as white as the skin between egg and shell.

  ‘What’s your name, my darling?’ says Dick, thinking to make her conversant with him, but he got no answer, and he was certain sure now, either that she could not speak, or did not understand him. He therefore squeezed her hand in his, as the only way he had of talking to her. It’s the universal language; and there’s not a woman in the world, be she fish or lady, that does not understand it.

  The Merrow did not seem much displeased at this mode of conversation and, making an end of her whining all at once, ‘Man,’ says she, looking up in Dick Fitzgerald’s face, ‘Man, will you eat me?’

  ‘By all the red petticoats and check aprons between Dingle and Tralee,’ cried Dick, jumping up in amazement, ‘I’d as soon eat myself, my jewel! Is it I eat you, my pet? – Now ’twas some ugly ill-looking thief of a fish put that notion into your own pretty head, with the nice green hair down upon it, that is so cleanly combed out this morning!’

  ‘Man,’ said the Merrow, ‘what will you do with me, if you won’t eat me?’

  Dick’s thoughts were running on a wife. He saw, at the first glimpse, that she was handsome; but since she spoke, and spoke too like any real woman, he was fairly in love with her. ’Twas the neat way she called him ‘man’, that settled the matter entirely.

  ‘Fish,’ says Dick, trying to speak to her after her own short fashion; ‘fish,’ says he, ‘here’s my word, fresh and fasting, for you this blessed morning, that I’ll make you Mistress Fitzgerald before all the world, and that’s what I’ll do.’

  ‘Never say the word twice,’ says she; ‘I’m ready and willing to be yours, Mister Fitzgerald; but stop, if you please, ’til I twist up my hair.’

  It was some time before she had settled it entirely to her liking, for she guessed, I suppose, that she was going among strangers, where she would be looked at. When that was done, the Merrow put the comb in her pocket, and then bent down her head and whispered some words to the water that was close to the foot of the rock.

  Dick saw the murmur of the words upon the top of the sea, going out towards the wide ocean, just like a breath of wind rippling along, and says he in the greatest wonder, ‘Is it speaking you are, my darling, to the salt water?’

  ‘It’s nothing else,’ says she, quite carelessly, ‘I’m just sending word home to my father, not to be waiting breakfast for me; just to keep him from being uneasy in his mind.’

  ‘And who’s your father, my duck?’ says Dick.

  ‘What!’ said the Merrow, ‘did you never hear of my father? He’s the king of the waves, to be sure!’

  ‘And yourself, then, is a real king’s daughter?’ said Dick, opening his two eyes to take a full and true survey of his wife that was to be. ‘Oh, I’m nothing else but a made man with you, and a king your father – to be sure he has all the money that’s down in the bottom of the sea!’

  ‘Money,’ repeated the Merrow, ‘what’s money?’

  ‘’Tis no bad thing to have when one wants it,’ replied Dick, ‘and maybe now the fishes have the understanding to bring up whatever you bid them?’

  ‘Oh! yes,’ said the Merrow, ‘they bring me what I want.’

  ‘To speak the truth, then,’ said Dick, ‘’tis a straw bed I have at home before you, and that I’m thinking, is no ways fitting for a king’s daughter. So, if ’twould not be displeasing to you, just to mention a nice feather-bed, with a pair of new blankets – but what am I talking about? Maybe you have not such things as beds down under the water?’

  ‘By all means,’ said she, ‘Mr Fitzgerald – plenty of beds at your service. I’ve fourteen oyster-beds of my own, not to mention one just planting for the rearing of young ones.’

  ‘You have?’ says Dick, scratching his head and looking a little puzzled. ‘’Tis a feather-bed I was speaking of – but clearly, yours is the very cut of a decent plan, to have bed and supper so handy to each other, that a person when they’d have the one, need never ask for the other.’

  However, bed or no bed, money or no money, Dick Fitzgerald determined to marry the Merrow, and the Merrow had given her consent. Away they went, therefore, across the strand, from Gollerus to Ballinrunnig, where Father Fitzgibbon happened to be that morning.

  ‘There are two words to this bargain, Dick Fitzgerald,’ said his Reverence, looking mighty glum. ‘And is it a fishy woman you’d marry? – the Lord preserve us! – send the scaly creature home to her own people, that’s my advice to you, wherever she came from.’

  Dick had the cohuleen driuth in his hand, and was about to give it back to the Merrow, who looked covetously at it, but he thought for a moment, and then, says he, ‘Please your Reverence, she’s a king’s daughter.’

  ‘If she was the daughter of fifty kings,’ said Father Fitzgibbon, ‘I tell you, you can’t marry her, she being a fish.’

  ‘Please your Reverence,’ said Dick again in an undertone, ‘she is as mild and as beautiful as the moon.’

  ‘If she was as mild and as beautiful as the sun, moon and stars, all put together, I tell you, Dick Fitzgerald,’ said the Priest, stamping his right foot, ‘you can’t marry her, she being a fish!’

  ‘But she has all the gold that’s down in the sea only for the asking, and I’m a made man if I marry her; and,’ said Dick, looking up slyly, ‘I can make it worth anyone’s while to do the job.’

  ‘Oh! that alters the case entirely,’ replied the Priest. ‘Why there’s some reason now in what you say: why didn’t you tell me this before? Marry her by all means if she was ten times a fish. Money, you know, is not to be refused in these bad times, and I may as well have the use of it as another, that maybe would not take half the pains in counselling you as I have done.’

  So Father Fitzgibbon married Dick Fitzgerald to the Merrow, and like any loving couple, they ret
urned to Gollerus well pleased with each other. Everything prospered with Dick – he was at the sunny side of the world. The Merrow made the best of wives, and they lived together in the greatest contentment.

  It was wonderful to see, considering where she had been brought up, how she would busy herself about the house, and how well she nursed the children; for at the end of three years there were as many young Fitzgeralds – two boys and a girl.

  In short, Dick was a happy man, and so he might have continued to the end of his days, if he had only the sense to take proper care of what he had got; many another man, however, besides Dick, has not had wit enough to do that.

  One day when Dick was obliged to go to Tralee, he left his wife minding the children at home after him and thinking she had plenty to do without disturbing his fishing tackle.

  Dick was no sooner gone than Mrs Fitzgerald set about cleaning up the house and, chancing to pull down a fishing-net, what should she find behind it in a hole in the wall but her own cohuleen driuth.

  She took it out and looked at it, and then she thought of her father the king, and her mother the queen, and her brothers and sisters, and she felt a longing to go back to them. She sat down on a little stool and thought over the happy days she had spent under the sea; then she looked at her children, and thought on the love and affection of poor Dick, and how it would break his heart to lose her. ‘But,’ says she, ‘he won’t lose me entirely, for I’ll come back to him again; and who can blame me for going to see my father and my mother, after being so long away from them.’

  She got up and went towards the door, but came back again to look once more at the child that was sleeping in the cradle. She kissed it gently, and as she kissed it, a tear trembled for an instant in her eye and then fell on its rosy cheek. She wiped away the tear, and turning to the eldest little girl, told her to take good care of her brothers, and to be a good child herself, until she came back. The Merrow then went down to the strand.