Irish Folk and Fairy Tales

by Gordon Jarvie

  ‘Good-day, master,’ he said timidly, ‘I am seeking for work; maybe you’d be glad of someone to clean your pots and pans for you.’

  ‘That would I,’ said the poet, for he had been so engrossed with his fishing, he had never taken time to wash up his dishes properly after his meals, and everything in the tent was getting into a terrible state of disorder. ‘What’s your name?’ he went on, looking at the little fellow sharply out of his keen grey eyes.

  ‘My name is Demna,’ said the boy, for he dare not tell him that his true name was Finn, and that he was the orphan son of Cool, who had been killed in battle just before he was born, and that he was flying in disguise from his father’s enemies, who were looking for him in order to kill him.

  Now the old poet liked the look of the lad, for he had a noble face, and a soft and gentle tongue; so he took him into his service, and set him to mend the fire, and clean the pots and pans, while he went on with his fishing.

  Demna began to work at his new task with a light heart. He felt safe now, for he knew that, even if his enemies did chance to ride that way, they would not expect to find the son of Cool acting as servant to an old fisherman, so they would probably ride past without paying any heed to him.

  He had just finished tidying up the tent, and was thinking of beginning to wash his own hands and face, when he was startled by a loud shout.

  Thinking that some evil had befallen his master, he threw down his brush and ran as fast as he could to the bank of the stream.

  But instead of finding the poet in any trouble, he found him in a state of great delight, for the old man had at last hooked the Salmon of Knowledge, and having landed it safely, he had laid it down on the green bank, and was dancing and leaping round it, fairly beside himself with joy.

  When he saw Demna he stopped, and, pretending that he had only been warming himself, he picked up the Salmon and gave it to him, saying hurriedly –

  ‘Take that, boy, and cook it for me, and see to it that you don’t taste it while you are handling it, or I will dismiss you without further ado.’

  Astonished at the sharpness of his tone, Demna took the fish, promising to do as he was bid, and not taste it, and, being an honest lad, he stuck to his promise, although he was very hungry, and the fish smelt deliciously as it was being cooked.

  But he was not a very experienced cook, and he did not put enough water into the pot, and when he lifted the lid to see if it were ready, he saw that its skin had risen in a great big blister on one side.

  ‘This will never do,’ he thought to himself; ‘my master will think that I am no servant at all,’ and he put down his thumb, and drew it along the Salmon’s silvery scales, as he had seen other cooks do, to smooth out the blister.

  But the Salmon’s skin was wondrous hot, and he drew back his thumb with a cry of pain, and popped it into his mouth to stop the smarting.

  As he did so, it struck against one of his teeth, and from that moment that tooth possessed the Gift of Knowledge, for his thumb carried with it some of the gravy of the fish, and thus, by mistake as it were, he tasted it.

  ‘Ah, ha!’ he cried, licking his lips, ‘I am not such a bad cook after all, I’m sure my old master will be pleased with my efforts.’

  But when he had put the Salmon carefully on a dish, and garnished it daintily with wild parsley, and carried it to the Poet, the old man looked at him gravely.

  ‘Have you tasted of it, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Nay,’ said Demna proudly. ‘I gave you my word that I would not do that, and when I give my word I keep it. But I scalded my thumb while I was cooking it, and I popped my thumb into my mouth to cool the burning heat, and in this way I know how delicious the flavour is.’

  For an instant the old man fought with his terrible disappointment. He had caught the fish, but, behold, all unwittingly, his little serving-lad had tasted it before him, and gained the Prize of Knowledge.

  Then the battle was won, and he laid his hand gently on the boy’s head.

  ‘Why did you tell me a lie, my child?’ he said, ‘for I believe your name cannot be Demna, it must be Finn.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Demna, shrinking back in fear; then, feeling the old man’s arm round him, and looking up into the kind old face, he told him all his story.

  ‘I knew it must be so as soon as you told me that you’d licked your thumb, and tasted from thence the flavour of the Salmon,’ said the Poet. ‘I thought to have fulfilled the prophecy in myself, and for this end have I sat here and fished all these weary weeks; but the gods have ordered it otherwise, and it is fulfilled in you. And perchance it is better so, for you are young and I am old; and you are noble, while I am but lowly born, so you will be better able to use this Gift which you have received, for the good of the people of Erin.’

  So it was in this manner that Finn became a Diviner and a Soothsayer.

  ‘The Talking Head of Donn-bo’ by Eleanor Hull

  There is an old tale told in Erin of a lovable and bright and handsome youth named Donn-bo, who was the best singer of ‘Songs of Idleness’ and the best teller of ‘King Stories’ in the world. He could tell a tale of each king who reigned in Erin, from the ‘Tale of the Destruction of Dind Righ’, when Cova Coelbre was killed, down to the kings who reigned in his own time.

  On a night before a battle, the warriors said, ‘Sing tonight for us, Donn-bo.’ But Donn-bo answered, ‘No word at all will come on my lips tonight; therefore, for this night let the King-buffoon of Ireland amuse you. But tomorrow, at this hour, in whatever place they and I shall be, I will sing for the fighting men.’ For the warriors had said that unless Donn-bo would go with them to that battle, not one of them would go.

  The battle was past, and on the evening of the morrow at that same hour Donn-bo lay dead, his fair young body stretched across the body of the King of Ireland, for he had died in defending his chief. But his head had rolled away among a wisp of growing rushes by the waterside.

  At the feasting of the army on that night a warrior said, ‘Where is Donn-bo, that he may sing for us, as he promised us at this hour yesternight, and that he may tell us the “King Stories of Erin”?’

  A valiant champion of the men of Munster answered, ‘I will go over the battlefield and seek for him.’ He inquired among the living for Donn-bo, but he found him not, and then he searched hither and thither among the dead.

  At last he came where the body of the King of Erin lay, and a young, fair corpse beside it. In all the air about there was the sound of singing, low and very sweet; dead bards and poets reciting in faint whispers old tales and poems to dead chiefs.

  The wild, clear note of the battle-march, the dord fiansa, played by the drooping hands of slain warriors upon the points of broken spears, low like the echo of an echo, sounded in the clump of rushes nearby; and, above them all, a voice, faint and very still, that sang a song that was sweeter than the tunes of the whole world beside.

  The voice that sang was the voice of the head of Donn-bo. The warrior stooped to pick up the head.

  ‘Do not touch me,’ said the head, ‘for we are commanded by the King of the Plains of Heaven to make music tonight for our lord, the King of Erin, the shining one who lies dead beside us; and though all of us are lying dead likewise, no faintness or feebleness shall prevent us from obeying that command. Disturb me not.’

  ‘The hosts of Leinster are asking you to sing for them, as you did promise them last night,’ said the messenger.

  ‘When my singing here is done, I will go with you,’ said the head; ‘but only if Christ, the Son of God, in whose presence I now am, go with me, and if you take me to my body again.’ ‘That shall be done, indeed,’ said the messenger, and when it had ceased chanting for the King of Erin he carried away the head.

  When the messenger came again amongst the warriors they stopped their feasting and gathered round him. ‘Have you brought anything from the battlefield?’ they cried.

  ‘I have brought the head of Donn-bo,
’ said the man.

  ‘Set it upon a pillar that we may see and hear it,’ cried they all; and they said, ‘It is no luck for you to be like that, Donn-bo, and you the most beautiful minstrel and the best in Erin. Make music, for the love of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Entertain the Leinster men tonight as you entertained your master a while ago.’

  Then Donn-bo turned his face to the wall, that the darkness might be around him, and he raised his melody in the quiet night; and the sound of that song was so piteous and sad that the hosts sat weeping at the sound of it. Then was the head taken to his body, and the neck joined itself to the shoulders again, and Donn-bo was at rest.

  This is the story of the ‘Talking Head of Donn-bo’.

  ‘Murtough and the Witch Woman’ by Eleanor Hull

  In the days when Murtough Mac Erca was in the High Kingship of Ireland, the country was divided between the old beliefs of paganism and the new doctrines of the Christian teaching. Some held with the old creed and some with the new, and the thought of the people was troubled between them, for they knew not which way to follow and which to forsake. The faith of their forefathers clung close around them, holding them by many fine and tender threads of memory and custom and tradition; yet still the new faith was making its way, and every day it spread wider and wider through the land.

  The family of Murtough had joined itself to the Christian faith, and his three brothers were bishops and abbots of the Church, but Murtough himself remained a pagan, for he was a wild and lawless prince, and the peaceful teachings of the Christian doctrine, with its forgiveness of enemies, pleased him not at all. Fierce and cruel was his life, filled with dark deeds and bloody wars, and savage and tragic was his death, as we shall hear.

  Now Murtough was in the sunny summer palace of Cletty, which Cormac, son of Art, had built for a pleasure house on the brink of the slow-flowing Boyne, near the Fairy Fortress of Angus the Ever Young, the God of Youth and Beauty. A day of summer was that day, and the King came forth to hunt on the borders of the Fortress, with all his boon companions around him. But when the high-noon came the sun grew hot, and the King sat down to rest upon the fairy mound, and the hunt passed on beyond him, and he was left alone.

  There was a witch woman in that country whose name was ‘Sigh, Sough, Storm, Rough Wind, Winter Night, Cry, Wail and Groan’. Star-bright and beautiful was she in face and form, but inwardly she was as cruel as her names. And she hated Murtough because he had scattered and destroyed the Ancient Peoples of the Fairy Tribes of Erin, her country and her fatherland, and because in the battle which he fought at Cerb on the Boyne her father and her mother and her sister had been slain. For in those days women went to battle side by side with men.

  She knew, too, that with the coming of the new faith trouble would come upon the fairy folk, and their power and their great majesty would depart from them, and men would call them demons, and would drive them out with psalm-singing and with the saying of prayers, and with the sound of little tinkling bells. So trouble and anger worked upon the witch woman, and she waited the day to be revenged on Murtough, for he being yet a pagan, was still within her power to harm.

  So when Sheen (for Sheen or ‘Storm’ was the name men gave to her) saw the King seated on the fairy mound and all his comrades parted from him, she arose softly, and combed her hair with her comb of silver adorned with little ribs of gold, and she washed her hands in a silver basin wherein were four golden birds sitting on the rim of the bowl, and little bright gems of carbuncle set round about the rim. And she donned her fairy mantle of flowing green, and her cloak, wide and hooded, with silvery fringes, and a brooch of fairest gold. On her head were tresses yellow like to gold, plaited in four locks, with a golden drop at the end of each long tress. The hue of her hair was like the flower of the iris in summer or like red gold after the burnishing thereof. And she wore on her breasts and at her shoulders marvellous clasps of gold, finely worked with the tracery of the skilled craftsman, and a golden twisted torque around her throat. And when she was all splendidly adorned she went softly and sat down beside Murtough on the turfy hunting mound. And after a space Murtough perceived her sitting there, and the sun shining upon her, so that the glittering of the gold and of her golden hair and the bright shimmer of the green silk of her garments, was like the yellow iris-beds upon the lake on a sunny summer’s day. Wonder and terror seized on Murtough at her beauty, and he knew not if he loved her or if he hated her the most; for at one moment all his nature was filled with longing and with love of her, so that it seemed to him that he would give the whole of Ireland for the loan of one hour’s space of dalliance with her; but after that he felt a dread of her, because he knew his fate was in her hands, and that she had come to work him ill. But he welcomed her as if she were known to him and he asked her wherefore she was come. ‘I am come,’ she said, ‘because I am beloved of Murtough, son of Erc, King of Erin, and I come to seek him here.’ Then Murtough was glad, and he said, ‘Do you not know me, maiden?’ ‘I do,’ she answered, ‘for all secret and mysterious things are known to me and you and all the men of Erin are well known.’

  After he had conversed with her awhile, she appeared to him so fair that the King was ready to promise her anything in life she wished, so long as she would go with him to Cletty of the Boyne. ‘My wish,’ she said, ‘is that you take me to your house, and that you put out from it your wife and your children because they are of the new faith, and all the clerics that are in your house, and that neither your wife nor any cleric be permitted to enter the house while I am there.’

  ‘I will give you,’ said the King, ‘a hundred head of every herd of cattle that is within my kingdom, and a hundred drinking horns, and a hundred cups, and a hundred rings of gold, and a feast every other night in the summer palace of Cletty. But I pledge you my word, oh, maiden, it would be easier for me to give you half of Ireland than to do this thing that you ask.’ For Murtough feared that when those that were of the Christian faith were put out of his house, she would work her spells upon him, and no power would be left with him to resist those spells.

  ‘I will not take your gifts,’ said the damsel, ‘but only those things that I have asked; moreover, it is thus, that my name must never be uttered by you, nor must any man or woman learn it.’

  ‘What is your name,’ said Murtough, ‘that it may not come upon my lips to utter it?’

  In the end, ‘Sigh, Sough, Storm, Rough Wind, Winter Night, Cry, Wail, Groan, this is my name, but men call me Sheen, for “Storm” or Sheen is my chief name, and storms are with me where I come.’

  Nevertheless, Murtough was so fascinated by her that he brought her to his home, and drove out the clerics that were there, with his wife and children along with them, and drove out also the nobles of his own clan, the children of Niall, two great and gallant battalions. And Duivsech, his wife, went crying along the road with her children around her to seek Bishop Cairnech, the half-brother of her husband, and her own soul-friend, that she might obtain help and shelter from him.

  But Sheen went gladly and light-heartedly into the House of Cletty, and when she saw the lovely lightsome house and the goodly nobles of the clan of Niall, and the feasting and banqueting and the playing of the minstrels and all the joyous noise of that kingly dwelling, her heart was lifted within her, and ‘Fair as a fairy palace is this house of Cletty,’ said she.

  ‘Fair, indeed, it is,’ replied the King; ‘for neither the Kings of Leinster nor the Kings of mighty Ulster, nor the lords of the clans of Owen or of Niall, have such a house as this; nay, in Tara of the Kings itself, no house to equal this house of mine is found.’ And that night the King robed himself in all the splendour of his royal dignity, and on his right hand he seated Sheen, and a great banquet was made before them, and men said that never on earth was to be seen a woman more goodly of appearance than she. And the King was astonished at her, and he began to ask her questions, for it seemed to him that the power of a great goddess of the ancient time was in her; and he
asked her whence she came, and what manner was the power that he saw in her. He asked her, too, did she believe in the God of the clerics, or was she herself some goddess of the older world? For he feared her, feeling that his fate was in her hands.

  She laughed a careless and a cruel laugh, for she knew that the King was in her power, now that she was there alone with him, and the clerics and the Christian teachers gone. ‘Fear me not, O Murtough,’ she cried; ‘I am, like you, a daughter of the race of men of the ancient family of Adam and of Eve; fit and meet my comradeship with you; therefore, fear not nor regret. And as to that true God of yours, worker of miracles and helper of His people, no miracle in all the world is there that I, by my own unaided power, cannot work the like. I can create a sun and moon; the heavens I can sprinkle with radiant stars of night. I can call back to life men fiercely killed in conflict, slaughtering one another. I could make wine of the cold water of the Boyne, and sheep of lifeless stones, and swine of ferns. In the presence of the hosts I can make gold and silver, plenty and to spare; and hosts of famous fighting men I can produce from nothing. Now, tell me, can your God work the like?’

  ‘Work for us,’ says the King, ‘some of these great wonders.’ Then Sheen went forth out of the house, and she set herself to work spells on Murtough, so that he knew not whether he was in his right mind or no. She took of the water of the Boyne and made a magic wine from it, and she took ferns and spiked thistles and light puff-balls of the woods, and out of them she fashioned magic swine and sheep and goats, and with these she fed Murtough and the hosts. And when they had eaten, all their strength went from them, and the magic wine sent them into an uneasy sleep and restless slumbers. And out of stones and sods of earth she fashioned three battalions, and one of the battalions she placed at one side of the house, and the other at the further side beyond it, and one encircling the rest southward along the hollow windings of the glen. And thus were these battalions, one of them all made of men stark-naked and their colour blue, and the second with heads of goats with shaggy beards and horned; but the third, more terrible than they, for these were headless men, fighting like human beings, yet finished at the neck; and the sound of heavy shouting as of hosts and multitudes came from the first and the second battalion, but from the third no sound save only that they waved their arms and struck their weapons together, and smote the ground with their feet impatiently. And though terrible was the shout of the blue men and the bleating of the goats with human limbs, more horrible yet was the stamping and the rage of those headless men, finished at the neck.