Irish Folk and Fairy Tales

by Gordon Jarvie

  The sea was lying calm and smooth, just heaving and glittering in the sun, and she thought she heard a faint sweet singing, inviting her to come down. All her old ideas and feelings came flooding over her mind, Dick and her children were at the instant forgotten, and placing the cohuleen driuth on her head, she plunged in.

  Dick came home in the evening and, missing his wife, he asked Kathleen, his little girl, what had become of her mother, but she could not tell him. He then inquired of the neighbours, and he learned that she was seen going towards the strand with a strange-looking thing liked a cocked hat in her hand. He returned to his cabin to search for the cohuleen driuth. It was gone, and the truth now flashed upon him.

  Year after year did Dick Fitzgerald wait, expecting the return of his wife, but he never saw her more. Dick never married again, always thinking that the Merrow would sooner or later return to him, and nothing could ever persuade him but that her father the king kept her below the sea by main force. ‘For,’ said Dick, ‘she surely would not of herself give up her husband and her children.’

  While she was with him, she was so good a wife in every respect, that to this day she is spoken of in the tradition of the country as the pattern for one, under the name of ‘The Lady of Gollerus’.

  ‘Eonín’ by Mary Patton

  Eonín was a little boy who lived in Aran on the Big Island. His home was a little out of Kilronan on the shore facing the Galway coast, and was quite a comfortable one, for Eonín’s father owned a boat and was well known and well thought of in the three islands. Eonín was not old enough to go to the fishing with his father as yet, for he had only just begun to go to school, but he loved the sea and was never so happy as when it was fine and his father would take him out in the boat if he was only going out for a short time.

  Sorcha, his mother, did not love the sea, and would never set foot in the boat, but stayed at home minding Una, the baby, and keeping the house ready for Séan, her husband, when he came in tired and wet after a night’s fishing. She dreaded the storms that blew in from the Atlantic so suddenly, and would sit up half the night if Séan was out on the water.

  ‘’Tis no use to be taking on so, woman dear,’ said the old grandmother, who sat in the warm corner by the fire. ‘We all must get death some time, and we may be taken on land as well as on sea. We are all just in God’s hands.’

  ‘It is as God wills it indeed,’ said Sorcha, only in her heart she cried, ‘Let him be spared to me this long while, Mother of God!’ And she looked at Eonín and wondered how she would bring up the boy without the man to help her.

  They were talking like this one evening, waiting for Séan to come home, while Eonín was learning his lesson for the morrow by the fireside, and he began to wonder if he would hear his father coming up the road and giving a shout to let them know he was there, or would they carry him up in a sail like Seamus Rua. He was so relieved when he heard the usual call that he threw down his book and ran out of the house to meet him. It was bright moonlight and there was very little wind to make a noise at sea, but when Eonín was lifted up to his father’s shoulder above the level of the loose stone wall he was sure he heard something besides the rattle of the pebbles as they were drawn back by the receding waves. It sounded like someone singing far out in the bay, and as Eonín was very fond of singing, he sat quite still and listened till he was carried into the house and set down.

  ‘There is music out on the sea,’ he called out to his mother. ‘Will you not come out and listen to it? It is lovely.’

  ‘God stand between us and harm!’ cried his mother, and she ran to the door and shut it tight to keep out the sound, for every Aran woman knows that if her son hears the mermaids singing he will be drowned in the end.

  ‘The boats are coming in, and it is some of the men singing that he hears,’ said Séan, laughing at her. ‘You think too much of those sayings, Sorcha. We are learning better than that nowadays.’ And he took Una out of her cradle to have a look at her, and danced her up and down till she screamed with delight.

  ‘It is what I am always telling her,’ said the grandmother from her corner; ‘but indeed you are a good head to the house, Séan, and have never grudged me the best of tea and sugar or the bit of tobacco.’ And she lit her pipe and smoked by the fire while Sorcha set the food out on the table.

  It was early in the autumn when Sorcha came back from Kilronan saying that the old Protestant clergyman living in the Rectory there was ill, and not likely to recover. He lived all alone, for his wife was dead and his daughter married abroad, and though he had very few of his own congregation he was well known and well liked by all the islanders, for he never interfered with anybody and gave a good price for the fish. So Sorcha was really sorry when she heard the news.

  ‘And the housekeeper tells me,’ she said, ‘that she doesn’t know what she will do at all. The steamer will not be back for more than a week, and she has no way of sending to Galway to let them know. If the poor gentleman dies there will be no one to bury him.’

  ‘There is a clergyman, at Inverin on the mainland,’ said Séan. ‘I will go over and fetch him back,’ and he glanced up at the sky as he spoke. Sorcha glanced too, for she knew the weather signs as well as he did, if not better. There was not much wind, but the clouds were very high and spread in narrow streamers, and there was a noise in the air that meant the sea was coming in a heavy swell through the sound.

  ‘There will be no boats from Aran putting out for the fishing tonight,’ she said.

  ‘Think if it was myself lying there with no one of my own near me,’ said Séan. ‘It is but nine miles to Cashla; I will be back before the storm breaks.’

  So he went down to the quay and hoisted sail for the mainland, while Sorcha went back into the house after she watched the boat out of sight on the first long tack eastward.

  The gale sprang up sooner than she expected, a real Aran squall, short in duration perhaps but violent enough while it lasted. Eonín coming back from school was nearly blown off his legs as he met the wind coming over the hill. He was astonished not to see his father when he got home.

  ‘Is he gone out in the boat?’ he asked his mother.

  ‘He is so!’ she said. ‘God send him home safe to us!’

  She would say no more, but got Eonín his dinner and then sat down with some sewing for Una, to keep herself from thinking. It was too wild to go out, and Eonín tried to start a game of his own in a corner, but it was the longest evening he had ever known. His mother sewed silently, his granny sat talking to herself by the fire, and Una asleep in her cradle was the only comfortable one of the lot. He was not one bit sorry when his mother put down her work and said it was time for him to go to bed.

  His bed was in a little room just off the living-room, and he could not tell how long he might have slept when he was wakened by a sound in the kitchen, and sitting up in bed he saw there was a light still there. He slipped from out the bed-clothes noiselessly, and creeping to the door opened it cautiously and peeped through. The turf fire was burning brightly and beside it his grandmother was still sitting. On the table was spread his father’s usual supper, and in the window was a lighted candle and his mother sitting beside it with a look on her face he had never seen before.

  ‘A great many of the Costellos got their death on the sea,’ said the grandmother. ‘My own man always said to me, ‘And isn’t it better than lying on a bed ailing for weeks and all the money going out of the house to the doctor?’ But his mother made no answer except to burst into a fit of weeping. Then Eonín crept back and sat on the edge of his bed thinking a moment, for he knew that now as the only man in the house it was for him to be up and doing something.

  Presently he reached for his clothes in the dark and pulled them on.

  Séan’s house was better built and more comfortable than most of the fishermen’s houses in Aran, and the window in Eonín’s bedroom could really open and shut. The wind was not on that side of the house, and moving carefully he slid up t
he lower sash and climbed out without the women hearing him. He closed the window behind him and stood in the little cabbage-plot.

  The wind had commenced to slacken somewhat, and stars shone out here and there through the racing clouds. It was light enough to see his way to the stone wall which bounded the garden, and once over that he stood in the lane which reached to the shore. His skin shoes made no noise on the stones and no one knew that he had left the house or made any attempt to stop him as he ran towards a line of rocks which stretched out black among the surging waves.

  Every Aran boy knows about mermaids, and some of them will tell you they have seen them. Eonín had never seen a mermaid, but he was a very little boy and his idea now was to scramble out to the farthest point of the rocks and see if he could find one. If he caught hold of her and held her tight she would have to tell him where his father was and promise to bring him home safe. So he slid and groped his way over the wet stones and slippery seaweed till he reached the farthest rock.

  There was no mermaid to be seen looking up out of the water as he had half expected, and he did not know if they would hear him if he called out to them. He knelt down on the rock and tried to look through the heavy mass of weed. As he did so a huge wave swept over the rock entirely submerging it, and carrying Eonín fighting and struggling for breath back with it into the very depths of the sea.

  How far he was falling he could not tell, but after the first horrible choking sensation was over he seemed to be sinking quite easily through the water till he came with a bump on something that heaved and writhed and twisted around him with a queer hissing sound. Eonín rolled off it and found himself lying on a broad ledge of rock with a huge conger eel coiled on it staring at him.

  ‘Now who have I here?’ said the conger, when he had recovered a little from the shock.

  ‘God and Mary save you,’ said Eonín, ‘and it’s little manners you have not to give me the greeting.’

  ‘Where would I get manners,’ said the conger, ‘living in this backward place? The People of the Sea do not care much for my society, and if it were not for the Fox Sharks and the Sword-fish I would have no one to associate with. But who are you, and where do you come from?’

  ‘I am Eonín, the son of big Séan Costello,’ said Eonín, ‘and I live on the Strand road a little way from Kilronan.’

  ‘I know big Séan the fisherman,’ said the conger. ‘Indeed he is well known in all the seas of Aran. When I was a little fellow only a foot and a half long he caught me in his net and threw me back into the water. ‘Grow a bit more,’ he said, ‘before I catch you again.’ A meaner man would have used me for bait. I have always had a great wish for Séan ever since then and I am pleased to see his son, and you may tell him that I am ten feet long, and can bite through a man’s hand. I am not like the little yellow congers of the sand. I think he would be a proud man if he could catch me now.’

  ‘I may never tell my father anything about you,’ Eonín sobbed. ‘He has never reached home tonight, and it was trying to find where he is that I came to be here.’

  ‘Tell me all about it,’ said the conger, coiling himself up again to listen.

  So Eonín told him how he had gone out to find a mermaid, and how a big wave had swept the rock and sucked him under.

  ‘I have no great opinion of the mermaids,’ said the conger when Eonín had told him the whole story. ‘They are too interfering and too fond of coming between an honest fish and his food. Telling the hake where I am lying indeed! A conger has to get on in the world as well as another. I would be living on jellyfish if they had their own way.

  ‘I can show you where the mermaids live, but more than that I cannot promise, for the truth is we are not friends at all. They think too much of themselves with their songs and their golden combs for their hair. It’s very little cause they have for pride to my mind,’ he went on. ‘Have they tails like mine or teeth like mine? Is there one of them could crunch a lobster as I can? However, since you want to see them I will take you down, for they live lower down than I do, and I would be glad to do a service to the son of big Séan the fisherman.’

  So he flattened the great fin that ran from his head to his tail and told Eonín to put his arms around his neck and stretch himself along his back, and when he was settled firmly the conger shot head first off the rock and dived downwards with a beautiful swift motion.

  They landed at last on a bed of the most beautiful white sand Eonín had ever seen. There were beautiful seaweeds of various colours growing here and there, and all kinds of shining shells. Around the sands great rocks towered up, and in the rocks were caves from one of which came a sound of very sweet singing.

  ‘If you go straight in there,’ said the conger, pointing with his side fin at this cave, ‘you will find them at their antics. And put a bold face on you, and ask for what you want, and do not give in to them, or let them put upon you. I am sorry I cannot go in with you, but I would not give them the satisfaction of finding me here. So now goodbye, and I wish you luck.’

  He shot off up through the water, and Eonín was left alone. He felt a little scared, especially after what the conger had said about the mermaids, but the singing inside the cave was so sweet it drew him towards it, and at last he took courage to enter.

  He found himself in a great hall formed out of the rock. It was not dark as he had thought a cave would be, but lit with the pale green light that seemed to represent daylight under the water. The floor was of shining sand and the roof seemed made of masses of floating seaweed through which the fish came darting.

  But Eonín could look at nothing but the mermaids. There were a great many of them, and some of them were floating and swimming about pretending to chase the fish, while the rest were gathered in a group singing the song that had attracted him in. They stopped as he stood at the entrance, and turned and looked at him, and he thought they could not be as unkind as the conger had made out, for they had very sweet faces though their long hair was of a strange greenish golden colour and they had long tails like a fish, covered with silver scales. They gathered round Eonín, smiling and holding out their hands, and then he saw that there was one who seemed taller than the others seated on a rock at the end of the hall. She was leaning her head on her hand as if thinking, and when she raised it he saw she was more beautiful and that she wore a band of shining stones around her head. She looked up and beckoned with her hand.

  ‘You are very welcome, Eonín, son of big Séan the fisherman,’ said the mermaid of the rock. ‘Now, what have you come seeking?’

  ‘The big conger said that my father might be with you,’ said Eonín, when he had recovered from his astonishment at finding they knew who he was. ‘But I do not think you would harm him,’ he added.

  ‘I will take you to see him,’ said the mermaid, ‘but you must tell me first, are you a brave boy?’

  ‘I am a very brave boy,’ said Eonín. ‘I go down through the Fairies’ Gap to the well in the dusk of the evening if my mother wants water for the house, and there are bigger boys than I am in Aran who will not do that.’

  ‘That is well,’ said the mermaid; ‘and now you may come with me.’

  She took him in her arms and swam swiftly with him across the cave and out into the space beyond till they came to another ridge of rocks thickly covered with brown weed. She set Eonín on the top of this and told him to look over. There was another stretch of sand at the foot of the ridge, and there Eonín saw his father lying as if asleep. His head was resting on one arm and his body rocked slightly with the motion of the water.

  ‘Can I not go and wake him?’ asked Eonín. ‘He would be terribly vexed to be lying there asleep and my mother wanting him at home.’

  ‘No,’ said the mermaid, ‘you may not wake him.’

  ‘Will you not let him go back, and we all of us wanting him so bad? My mother will lose her life if you will not let him go.’

  ‘There is a rule of life under the sea as well as on the land,’ said the merma
id, ‘and I may not let him go for the asking. But if you will stay with us and take his place, we may let him go back.’

  A terrible dread came over Eonín at the thought of staying down at the bottom of the sea and never going home to his mother and Una again, and all he could say for the moment was, ‘Is that the way it is?’ ‘That is the way, and no other way,’ said the mermaid.

  ‘Then I will stay,’ said Eonín with a great sob, ‘for I am not big enough to take out the boat, and there will be no head to the house if my father does not go home. But I will be terribly lonesome away from them all.’ The tears came into his eyes and he would have burst out crying only he remembered he had said he was brave.

  ‘See,’ said the mermaid, ‘your father is no longer there.’ And when he looked there was nothing but the sand to be seen. Then she placed her hand over his heart and it was so cold that he felt the chill right through his body, and she kissed him on the forehead till his life on land faded out of his mind, and he forgot his home and his people and was as gay and happy as if he had never thought of missing them.

  The days passed by, though you could only tell night from day by the green light becoming darker and lighter. There was no sun or moon or stars to be seen, and indeed Eonín had forgotten all about them. Soon he could swim and float quite well, but if the mermaids wished to take him any distance they put him astride a huge codfish so that he might keep up with them easily. He soon found that they were not always playing or singing but had quite a lot to do, tidying up the rock-pools after a storm, looking after the fishes and seeing that the smaller ones were not oppressed by the bigger.

  When the mermaids went to tidy the rock-pools they always took Eonín with them, and he would help them to clear away the torn seaweed and see that the anemones and sea-urchins were fast on their rocks, and play with the little red rock-fish. But sometimes they had something to do of which they never spoke to him.