Monaghan Folk Tales

by Lally, Steve;

  As he looked around, he saw lots and lots of crates and barrels full of beer. So he decided that while he was waiting for someone to come and open up the brewery and let him out, he would have a drink of beer, just a wee bottle … But sure, after that, he wanted another one and, as Francis McCarron once told me, having heard it himself from a man called Tom Reagan, ‘The problem with drink is one is not enough, two is too much and three is not half enough.’ Well, after a brave few beers, he was out like a light and slept till morning.

  So the following morning, when the brewers opened up, they found a drunken Irishman out for the count, lying on the floor, surrounded by empty beer bottles.

  Well, they had poor Johnny arrested for breaking and entering and theft and consumption of stolen property. Now, poor Johnny protested his innocence and tried to tell the story of how he had ended up there, but, as you can imagine, they were having none of it. They thought it was all just drunken gibberish and that he must have taken them for a pack of fools, which did not make things any better for Johnny at all. So he was taken to court, where he was sentenced to death, as theft was considered to be a terrible crime in those days.

  Back then, it was also customary to grant a person a last wish before they were put to death.

  Johnny’s last wish was that he be allowed to kiss his wife before he died. This wish was granted. He wrote a letter home to his wife and told her all about the terrible predicament he had found himself in and he made sure to tell her to bring the wee silver dish with her. Well, luckily for Johnny, the letter arrived safely and his wife read it and, thankfully for him, she had found the wee silver dish and had kept it. So she got the boat over to Scotland and arrived on the day of Johnny’s execution.

  And there was her poor husband on the back of a cart being pulled by a donkey to the terrible gallows.

  She went over to the cart and Johnny wrapped his arms around her and whispered in her ear, ‘Did you bring the wee dish?’

  ‘I did,’ she replied and she produced the dish from under her shawl.

  Johnny took it and uttered the words, ‘Dip the finger, not the thumb!’ Then he pressed his forefinger into the middle of the dish and said, ‘High away off to Ireland!’ And with that, he pressed his thumb into the centre of the dish and, with a mighty whooosh!, himself, his wife and even the donkey and cart were all whisked off into the sky, much to the consternation of his captors, and it was not long before he found himself outside his own wee house again.

  And Peter McKenna, the man who told this tale, said that it was true for when he was a young boy, he saw Johnny McKenna collecting turf with the same ass and cart that had come with him from Scotland.

  THE OLD MAN, THE OLD WOMAN AND THE LITTLE FAIRY MAN

  I wrote this tale after reading a condensed version of a similar story collected by the Irish Folklore Commission Schools Collection.

  There was once an old man named James O’Hagan of Drumscor, who lived in a little house on the bank of a river. It is said that the fairies used to run by his door every evening after sunset.

  The old man thought he would catch one of them to see what they looked like close up. He eventually caught one of them and tied it up on the ‘crane’ (people hung the pots from the crane in front of the fire), so he could show his neighbours when they came into the house. The little fairy man was wearing a green suit and the tiniest shiny black shoes you ever did see and a cheeky wee grin upon his face.

  A few nights later, the old man’s wife was out milking the cow and when she came back into the house with the bucket of fresh milk, she tripped over a stone in the middle of the floor and spilled the milk everywhere.

  It took her ages to clean the place and she even had to call on her four cats to give her a hand.

  The fairy looked on, giggling and grinning.

  The old woman was annoyed after tripping and falling and spilling the milk and she thought to herself that there was no good luck in the house since that chap had been tied up beside the pots.

  That same evening, her husband was working beside the fairy fort in the field out the back. She started to rummage through the utensils, as though she was looking for something urgently. She was lifting iron pots and pans and metal utensils and the little fairy man was beginning to get frightened. He thought she was going to kill him. It is historically believed that fairies don’t like iron or steel. It is said iron, in particular, can be used to repel, contain or harm ghosts, fairies and witches. So, the fairy man was trying to wriggle his way out of the rope that had been used to tie him to the crane.

  But the old woman had no intention of harming the fairy. She untied him and watched him run as fast as he could past the cats and out the door and back up towards the fairy fort. The other little fairies were delighted to see him and asked him how he got free. As the old man was working close by, he saw and heard all of this happening and so he listened a little more closely.

  The little fairy man told his friends how the old lady had tripped and fallen and then let him go free. The old man was annoyed, even angry at first, but then the little fairy man explained how the old woman had tripped over the same stone he had hidden the crock of gold under. The old man’s ears pricked up and a smile was appearing on his face. He sprinted back to the house, hollering and shouting for the old woman.

  When he got into the house, she was on her knees, cleaning the last of the milk she had spilt. She was quietly weeping, saying how sorry she was for letting the little fairy go.

  The old man said, ‘Don’t worry, my true love.’

  She was wondering why he was so happy. She saw a skip in his step that she hadn’t seen in many a day, not since they had met at the crossroads seventy years before. He ran back outside and came in a few minutes later with a crowbar and spade.

  The old lady had found herself back at that crossroads, with her floral dress and cheeks and lips red from dancing and kissing, but she was quickly awoken from her daydream.

  When he came in with the crowbar and spade, she took a few steps back. Who knows? Maybe the old woman thought he had gone mad and was going to kill her and then bury her out in the field – because he was acting way out of character. First, he called her his true love and then he was skipping like a young boy with a smile on his face, a smile she didn’t see all too often. Although some teeth were missing, her heart still skipped a few beats when she saw him happy and light-hearted.

  But he looked at her straight in the eye and said, ‘Step back, my love. I need to remove the stone in the middle of the floor.’

  After a bit of difficulty and some blood, sweat and tears, the old man raised the stone and there in the middle of their floor was a crock of gold, just like the little fairy had said.

  He was so pleased that the fairy folk hadn’t tricked him.

  The old man and the old woman sat on the floor, admiring the treasure, touching it and holding it and promising to be forever grateful.

  The man stood up and threw his arms around the old woman and they lived the rest of their days secure and happy. From that day on, anyone who visited their wee house beside the river did not see a fairy, as the farmer would once have wanted – instead, they heard the story of how the fairy had left them treasure. The newfound wealth the old man and old woman had come into meant that they had the best quality of tae and cake for miles around and so the visitors came in their twos and threes over and over again to hear the story of the kind-hearted little fairy.

  The old man never tried to catch a fairy ever again. Each morning, while he worked beside their fort, he would bid them good day and thank them for making life easier for him and his one true love.

  WITCH WAS SHE, A WOMAN OR A HARE?

  This tale was inspired by a story that was collected from Patrick Sherry, of Drumdart.

  There was an old woman called Dolly Gilliland who lived on a tiny farm in Killalough around about 1887. She lived in a little hut that the locals called ‘the Devil’s den’.

  Dolly was a character.
People said she was a witch. They thought she had special powers and felt she was someone to be feared.

  All that Dolly had on her land was a red hen, a donkey and two goats. Every week she would attended the farmers’ market in Crocker (known then as the farmer’s byre).

  Every Monday morning, she would go off to the market with two pounds of butter from what little livestock she had. This wasn’t much butter, but she made the trip every week nonetheless – it must have been worth her while.

  People would make fun of her. Dolly was an easy target. She stood out from the crowd.

  Each November, the huntsmen would be out in droves and they would taunt poor Dolly if they saw her. But on this particular day, they were more interested in catching hares and Dolly knew this, so she decided to get her own back. They saw a nice hare and were hell-bent on catching it, but the hare was swift and it was difficult to catch a hold of.

  So the men set two greyhounds on it. They were close to it three or four times, but they kept missing and this made them all the more determined to catch this particular hare. No one was going to get the better of those men. The two greyhounds couldn’t even get near the hare, so the men sent for a famous black greyhound that lived in Co. Tyrone.

  On a bright May morning, the famous black greyhound was set upon the hare. The hare went skipping through the spring flowers and he would rise five feet off the ground every time the black greyhound went near it. The hare moved fast. It approached Dolly’s hut and just as it was crossing the threshold of the half-door, the dog caught the hare and bit the poor animal, but it got inside just in time, before the black greyhound was able to finish the job.

  The men following behind heard the cry from the hare and ran towards the hut and found the dog outside with blood around its mouth.

  When the men looked over the half-door, the old woman was sitting by the fire and her leg was bleeding. The old woman said, ‘Yiz have a nice pup,’ and one man said back to her, ‘It’s nearly too nice for you.’

  Was Dolly a witch? Did she turn into a hare and make fun of the men? Or did they just take a dislike to Dolly? Maybe the greyhound bit Dolly and the men didn’t see, but it makes a better story to say that she had turned into a hare and then back into Dolly. Either way, it’s a great tale.

  THE FAIRY FIELD

  When I was interviewing people in Inniskeen, I met up with Patsy and Linda Boylan. They were kind enough to take myself and my partner Paula to see their fairy field and the fairy fort that stands upon it. And this is a wee story about it …

  Well, Patsy drove us right into the fairy field, which had an unusual and strange atmosphere about it. He told us that many people who went into the field by themselves at night could not get out of it at all. He spoke of one man who had spent the whole night trying to get out only to find that there were no openings and every hedge and ditch was too high or too deep to get out of. He couldn’t escape until the following morning.

  He also spoke of a friend called Willy Shields, now in his midseventies, who, when he was a young man, was coming home from a dance and decided to take a shortcut through Patsy’s field. He came into the field from a place called Tallans’ Corner, but poor Willy couldn’t get out again and found himself trapped inside the field till the following morning, by which time he was totally exhausted and bewildered.

  Patsy then told us that back in the late 1950s, there was a man called Peter Martin who had a wee plot on Patsy’s field where he grew spuds as he had no land of his own. Now there was another fellow called Paddy Malone who was a very hard worker and had offered to plough this wee plot of land for Peter Martin so he could plant his spuds.

  Paddy drove into the fairy field on his tractor at twelve midnight one night. Now, as it was dark and he was not sure where to plough, Patsy’s father got up out of bed to go and help him.

  Well, the two boys were absolutely amazed when they heard music coming from beneath the mound of the fairy fort in the field.

  Patsy’s father said that the music was incredible and that he had never heard the likes of it before or since.

  Now, they investigated to see if it was coming from a nearby house belonging to the Rodgers, but in those days there was nothing on the wireless after midnight, so it couldn’t have been a radio coming from a house.

  Patsy said that his father spoke of this many times up until he died. Patsy’s daughter Linda said that when she was a teenager that she and her friend heard the sound of fiddles being played from underneath the fairy fort. Patsy himself has not heard the music, but if you are ever taking a shortcut across the fields of Monaghan, keep your eyes and ears open, for the fairy folk may well be watching and listening themselves …