Irish Folk Tales

by Henry Glassie

  So he couldn’t get out—it seems they locked up and he had no way of getting out.

  So the only thing he could think of was to ring the bell. So he started to ring the bell in the Protestant church the same night as the night of the funeral. And, of course, the neighbors heard it and the minister heard it and they come and they took fear and they wouldn’t go in. The minister wouldn’t venture in, do you see, for the bell had been tingling and ringing, and neither would the men.

  So it gathered up before all was over that there was a right crowd of people gathered to know what had happened. So they decided anyway that they would go for the parish priest.

  The parish priest landed anyway, got up out of his bed and landed, and he had a—now, whether he had a car, now, or a side-car—but he had a big rug with him and whether he put it around his shoulders or what, they were that excited they never noticed.

  So the priest opened the church door and he went in. He walked in and seen his man and knowed him so well and he had a wee chat with him inside. The man told him the whole story: “I was at the wake,” says he, “last night and I got a lot of drink. I got more this morning,” he says, “and when I went into the church I fell asleep.”

  “Well,” says the priest, “just keep quiet and we’ll make a good thing out of this.”

  So he got this big hairy rug. “Now,” says the priest, “I want you to walk bent over like this and I’m putting this rug over your head, right over your head. Now, you do what I bid you and walk in the front and I’ll go behind you. And I’ll go out now and I’ll tell the boys that he’s here all right!” That was the Devil—but it was only a Catholic man.

  He went out and he says to the minister, “I’ll tell you what you’ll do. Go on every side, make a path in the middle, you men, now. Keep on each side,” he says, “I’m taking him out now—I’m putting him out.”

  In he goes and he warned him to be sure and bend down and walk very low, just bend and crawl along and the rug was right out over his head. And he got behind him and your man walked out of the church door and up the path.

  Well, he said that they fainted in all directions. Some of them fainted and some of them run. They run in all directions when they seen what was coming out of the church. They thought it was the Devil and instead of that it was a Catholic man the worse of drink!

  THE DOOM

  GALWAY

  LADY WILDE 1887

  There was a young man of Innismore, named James Lynan, noted through all the island for his beauty and strength. Never a one could beat him at hunting or wrestling, and he was, besides, the best dancer in the whole townland. But he was bold and reckless, and ever foremost in all the wild wicked doings of the young fellows of the place.

  One day he happened to be in chapel after one of these mad freaks, and the priest denounced him by name from the altar.

  “James Lynan,” he said, “remember my words. You will come to an ill end. The vengeance of God will fall on you for your wicked life. And by the power that is in me I denounce you as an evil liver and a limb of Satan, and accursed of all good men.”

  The young man turned pale, and fell on his knees before all the people, crying out bitterly, “Have mercy, have mercy; I repent, I repent,” and he wept like a woman.

  “Go now in peace,” said the priest, “and strive to lead a new life, and I’ll pray to God to save your soul.”

  From that day forth James Lynan changed his ways. He gave up drinking, and never a drop of spirits crossed his lips. And he began to attend to his farm and his business, in place of being at all the mad revels and dances and fairs and wakes in the island. Soon after he married a nice girl, a rich farmer’s daughter, from the mainland, and they had four fine children, and all things prospered with him.

  But the priest’s words never left his mind, and he would suddenly turn pale and a shivering would come over him when the memory of the curse came upon him. Still he prospered, and his life was a model of sobriety and order.

  One day he and his wife and their children were asked to the wedding of a friend about four miles off. And James Lynan rode to the place, the family going on their own car. At the wedding he was the life of the party as he always was. But never a drop of drink touched his lips. When evening came on, the family set out for the return home just as they had set out; the wife and children on the car, James Lynan riding his own horse. But when the wife arrived at home, she found her husband’s horse standing at the gate riderless and quite still. They thought he might have fallen in a faint, and went back to search, when he was found down in a hollow not five perches from his own gate, lying quite insensible and his features distorted frightfully, as if seized while looking on some horrible vision.

  They carried him in, but he never spoke. A doctor was sent for, who opened a vein, but no blood came. There he lay like a log, speechless as one dead. Amongst the crowd that gathered round was an old woman accounted very wise by the people.

  “Send for the fairy doctor,” she said. “He is struck.”

  So they sent off a boy on the fastest horse for the fairy man. He could not come himself, but he filled a bottle with a potion. Then he said:

  “Ride for your life. Give him some of this to drink and sprinkle his face and hands also with it. But take care as you pass the lone bush on the round hill near the hollow, for the fairies are there and will hinder you if they can, and strive to break the bottle.”

  Then the fairy man blew into the mouth and the eyes and the nostrils of the horse, and turned him round three times on the road and rubbed the dust off his hoofs.

  “Now go,” he said to the boy. “Go and never look behind you, no matter what you hear.”

  So the boy went like the wind, having placed the bottle safely in his pocket. And when he came to the lone bush the horse started and gave such a jump that the bottle nearly fell, but the boy caught it in time and held it safe and rode on. Then he heard a cluttering of feet behind him, as of men in pursuit. But he never turned or looked, for he knew it was the fairies who were after him. And shrill voices cried to him, “Ride fast, ride fast, for the spell is cast!” Still he never turned round, but rode on, and never let go his hold of the fairy draught till he stopped at his master’s door, and handed the potion to the poor sorrowing wife. And she gave of it to the sick man to drink, and sprinkled his face and hands, after which he fell into a deep sleep. But when he woke up, though he knew everyone around him, the power of speech was gone from him. And from that time to his death, which happened soon after, he never uttered word more.

  So the doom of the priest was fulfilled—evil was his youth and evil was his fate, and sorrow and death found him at last, for the doom of the priest is as the word of God.

  THE RIGHT CURE

  MALACHI HORAN DUBLIN

  GEORGE A. LITTLE 1943

  But let me tell you this: there is many a cure that comes from God. Sorra the saint that was ever in the country but left his cure behind him in a well. That was to put you in mind of the goodness and of the power of his Master. Look at Lacken Well! It has cured thousands. It is for the rheumatism, particularly when it catches the hip. You say the Rosary at the well and drink the water. Bring the water home, then, and drink it again and rub the hip. If there is a cure for you, you will be cured.

  Tobar Moling cures dry retching and stomach troubles. It cured me forever. And Saint Ann’s Well, here, on Killenarden, nigh to Martin’s cottage, they say is as good as Moling’s Well.

  Aye, and there is Our Lady’s Well at the De Selby quarry. It cures wounds. Lady de Selby built a shrine there. Troth, she did. It was in thanks to the Holy Mother for curing workmen hurted in the quarry. I will bring you there some time. The day the well is visited is the fifteenth of August.

  The worst of it is that there are fools who think they can buy a miraculous cure like they would a twist of tobacco. That’s not the way of it at all. A man must earn his cure. He must try everything that’s to his hand first. What is a man in the world for
but to work? Bread and salvation, them are the masters for which a man must labor. But when he has done his best and failed, then the saints will step in and, by the mercy of God, play the good neighbor. That’s fair play; is it not?

  I remember the chief knuckle of my hand getting a touch from a reaping-hook. Cut to the bone it was. It festered fast, and my arm swelled to the girth of my thigh. The pain near drove me frantic. I went down to Tallaght to the doctor that used be in it. He told me I would have to go to the hospital. But I told him how could I and I with oats down and the rain coming. But he just kept saying I would have to go. The man had no sense at all. The next day I went over to Blessington, and the man there told me the same thing. As if a man could turn his back on his crop and the rain coming!

  That night I was sitting here twisting in mortal agony, when a neighbor man came in to find out what way was I. When he seen how it was, he told me the cure was frog-spawn.

  “Well,” says I, “I may as well try it, for this pain will douse me anyway.” So I did it. That night I slept. The next day I was well enough to stook. But, boys, oh boys, by night it was worse than ever. Till the crack of day it never stopped bealing and throbbing till I thought it must burst. “I’m fairly knackered this time,” I thought. I did not know what way to turn or what to do, when I suddenly thought of Father Larkin, the Dominican, beyond in Tallaght. If ever there was a saint on this earth, that man was him. God be good to him forever! Amen, I say, and amen again.

  What-a-way I got to Tallaght I do not know; but Father Larkin came to me to the door and brought me in. I told him my trouble. He was not for doing anything. He told me it was not his business to attend on the sick. I must go to hospital, he said, like the doctors told me. But I held his sleeve and would not let him go. I got to my knees and pled with him not to turn me out in the trouble that was on me. I was near crying.

  “It lies with God,” says he. “We will ask Saint Dominic to put in a word for us.” He brought a statue of Saint Dominic and set it before me to put me in mind of him. Then I knelt, and he read over me a long office from out of his book. He advised me to go to confession then; and I did it. As I was going away he told me to pray hard and ask Saint Dominic to put in a word, and to take the old rags off my arm and throw them at the butt of a bush. I done all he told me, and the next day I was cured forever. Cured forever, may God be thanked, and thank him too. Aye, the Man up there is the right doctor. If you suffer enough and do your best, He has the pity and He has the cure.

  Aye, sir, there is a power in prayer. It gets into a thing and stays in a thing. It is like the tempering of a plow-shoe. The share looks the same after it’s treated as before, but the nature of it is changed.

  HELL AND HEAVEN

  AN OLD ARMY MAN GALWAY

  WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 1902

  I have seen Hell myself. I had a sight of it one time in a vision. It had a very high wall around it, all of metal, and an archway, and a straight walk into it, just like what ’ud be leading into a gentleman’s orchard, but the edges were not trimmed with box, but with red-hot metal. And inside the wall there were cross-walks, and I’m not sure what there was to the right, but to the left there were five great furnaces, and they full of souls kept there with great chains. So I turned short and went away, and in turning I looked again at the wall, and I could see no end to it.

  And another time I saw Purgatory. It seemed to be in a level place, and no walls around it, but it all one bright blaze, and the souls standing in it. And they suffer near as much as in Hell, only there are no devils with them there, and they have the hope of Heaven.

  And I heard a call to me from there, “Help me to come out o’ this!” And when I looked it was a man I used to know in the army, an Irishman, and from this county, and I believe him to be a descendant of King O’Connor of Athenry.

  So I stretched out my hand first, but then I called out, “I’d be burned in the flames before I could get within three yards of you.” So then he said, “Well, help me with your prayers,” and so I do.

  And Father Connellan says the same thing, to help the dead with your prayers, and he’s a very clever man to make a sermon, and has a great deal of cures made with the Holy Water he brought back from Lourdes.

  THE WOLF’S PROPHECY

  GALWAY

  LADY GREGORY 1907

  It chanced one day not long after the coming of the Gall from England into Ireland, there was a priest making his way through a wood of Meath. And there came a man fornenst him and bade him for the love of God to come with him to confess his wife that was lying sick near that place.

  So the priest turned with him and it was not long before he heard groaning and complaining as would be heard from a woman, but when he came where she was lying it was a wolf he saw before him on the ground. The priest was afeared when he saw that and he turned away; but the man and the wolf spoke with him and bade him not to be afeared but to turn and to confess her. Then the priest took heart and blessed him and sat down beside her.

  And the wolf spoke to him and made her confession to the priest and he anointed her. And when they had that done, the priest began to think in himself that she that had that mislikeness upon her and had grace to speak, might likely have grace and the gift of knowledge in other things; and he asked her about the strangers that were come into Ireland, and what way it would be with them.

  And it is what the wolf said: “It was through the sin of the people of this country Almighty God was displeased with them and sent that race to bring them into bondage, and so they must be until the Gall themselves will be encumbered with sin. And at that time the people of Ireland will have power to put on them the same wretchedness for their sins.”

  THE FOX AND THE RANGER, etching by Samuel Lover

  Samuel Lover, Legends and Stories of Ireland, 1834

  THE THREE QUESTIONS

  MICHAEL MURPHY ARMAGH

  MICHAEL J. MURPHY 1975

  It was this codger and he was hired as a herdsboy to a bishop. Things were bad in Ireland at the time: the enemy had come and conquered the country and took the land and was killing all before them, priest and people.

  So this evening the herdsboy come home and he seen the bishop walking up and down and looking very down-in-the-mouth.

  “My Lord Bishop,” says the herdsboy, “what ails you? You look very downhearted?”

  “I’m to die in the morning,” says the bishop.

  “How is that?” says the herdsboy.

  “I’m to lose me head,” says the bishop. “The chief that took over this country,” he says, “sent for me this morning and give me three questions to answer by the morra morning and if I’m not fit he’s to take the head off me.”

  “What’s the three questions, my lord?” says the herdsboy. “I might be fit to help.”

  “You could not,” says the bishop. “You might only lose your own head as well.”

  Anyway he got the bishop to tell him, and the herdsboy said that he would go in place of the bishop next morning and to leave all to him.

  “You’ll only lose your head, too,” says the bishop.

  Morning come and the herdsboy set off and meets this big fellow and stands before him.

  “Who are you?” says he.

  “I’m herdsboy to the Lord Bishop,” says he.

  “Why didn’t he come himself?” says he.

  “The Lord Bishop didn’t think it worth his while,” says he, “to come himself to answer three simple questions.”

  “Then if you’re not fit to answer them you’ll lose your head,” says this big fellow.

  “Fair enough,” says the herdsboy.

  “Here’s my first question then,” says the big fellow. “What’s the first thing I think of in the morning when I rise?”

  “What you’ll eat,” says the herdsboy.

  “That’s right,” says he. “Now here’s me second question: How many loads of sand are there round the shores of Ireland?”

  “One,” says the herdsboy,
“if you had a cart big enough to hold it.”

  “Right,” says the big fellow. “And now here’s my third and last question: How much am I worth?”

  “Twenty-nine pieces of silver,” says the herdsboy.

  “How do you make that out?”

  “Well, our Lord God Himself was sold for thirty pieces,” says the herdsboy, “and you can’t be as good as Him.”

  And he got him and the bishop off.

  THE FARMER’S ANSWERS

  A FARMER-LIKE MAN GALWAY

  LADY GREGORY 1902

  There was a poor man one time—Jack Murphy his name was; and rent day came, and he hadn’t enough to pay his rent. And he went to the landlord, and asked would he give him time. And the landlord asked when would he pay him; and he said he didn’t know that. And the landlord said: “Well, if you can answer three questions I’ll put to you, I’ll let you off the rent altogether. But if you don’t answer them, you will have to pay it at once, or to leave your farm. And the three questions are these: How much does the moon weigh? How many stars are there in the sky? What is it I am thinking?” And he said he would give him till the next day to think of the answers.

  And Jack was walking along, very downhearted; and he met with a friend of his, one Tim Daly; and he asked what was on him. And he told him how he must answer the landlord’s three questions on tomorrow, or to lose his farm. “And I see no use in going to him tomorrow,” says he, “for I’m sure I will not be able to answer his questions right.” “Let me go in your place,” says Tim Daly, “for the landlord will not know one of us from the other, and I’m a good hand at answering questions, and I’ll engage I’ll get you through.”

  So he agreed to that. And the next day Tim Daly went in to the landlord, and says he: “I’m come now to answer your three questions.”