West Irish Folk-Tales and Romances. Anonymous

cycle has been handed down in remembrance almost solely by the bardic literature. The popular memory retains but few traces of it. Its essentially aristocratic character is shown by the fact that the people have all but forgotten it if they ever knew it. But the Fenian cycle has not been forgotten. Prevailing everywhere, still cherished by the conquered peoples, it held its ground in Scotland and Ireland alike, forcing its way in the latter country even into the written literature, and so securing a twofold lease of existence. That it did not deserve this wider popularity is evident enough. Interesting though it be, it is not equal in interest to the heroic cycle. The tales of the latter, though fewer in number, less bulky in amount, have upon them the impress of the larger constructive sweep of the Aryan imagination. Their characters are nobler; the events are more significant. They form a much more closely compacted epic whole. The Fenian tales, in some respects more picturesque, are less organised. It would be difficult to construct out of them a coherent epic plot; and what is, perhaps, not the least in significance, they have far more numerous, more extended, more intimate connections with the folk-tale.

      The Fenian cycle, in a word, is non-Aryan folk-literature partially subjected to Aryan treatment. It occupies accordingly a middle position. Above the rank of the folk-tale it has been elevated; but to the dignity of the heroic legend it has not attained.

      The tales included in the present volume form part of a large collection, which I began to make as far back as the year 1884. All have been taken down in the same way—that is to say, word for word from the dictation of the peasant narrators, all by myself, with the exception of two taken down by Mr. Lecky in precisely similar fashion; difficult and doubtful parts being gone over again and again. Sometimes the narrators can explain difficulties. Sometimes other natives of the place can help you. But after every resource of this kind has been exhausted, a certain number of doubtful words and phrases remain, with regard to which—well, one can only do one’s best.

The districts from which the tales were obtained are three in number, each represented by two narrators. Renvyle, the most southern of the three, is situated in Connemara. It is a narrow peninsula, forming the extreme north-western point of the county of Galway, jutting out opposite Mayo. Terence Davis is a labourer pure and simple, a man of about forty-five years of age, and blind of one eye. Some of his tales he got from his mother. Michael Faherty was, when I first made his acquaintance, a lad of about seventeen. He was recommended, as the best pupil in the National School, to Mr. Lecky, who, finding him intelligent, selected him as the best person from whom, on account of his youth, the very latest development of the language could be learnt. He lived with his uncle, who had, or has still, a small holding on the Blake property, and who was also a pilot and repairer of boats. Both his tales were taken down by Mr. Lecky. Next in order, going northward, comes Achill Island, distant some twenty-five miles from Renvyle by sea, more than sixty miles by land.[1] Two narrators from that locality are also represented in the book. One of them, Pat. M’Grale, is a man of middle age, a cottier with a small holding, and besides, a Jack-of-all-trades, something of a boatman and fisherman, “a botch of a tailor,” to use his own words, and ready for any odd job. He can read Irish, but had very little literature on which to exercise his accomplishment. He knows some long poems by heart, and is possessed of various odds and ends of learning, accurate and not. John M’Ginty, a man of Donegal descent and name, has also some land; but his holding is so small that he is to a great extent a labourer for others, and was engaged on relief works when I first came to know him. He, also, is a middle-aged man. He knows many Ossianic poems by heart, which, he told me, his father taught him, verse by verse.

      Glencolumkill is the extreme south-west corner of Donegal, remote, like Achill and Renvyle. It is chiefly represented by the tales of Pat. Minahan, from whom I obtained more stories than from any other one man. He said he was eighty years of age; but he was in full possession of all his faculties. He also had a holding on which he still worked industriously. He had no children; but his nephew, who lived with him, made up for all deficiencies of that nature. His style, with its short, abrupt sentences, is always remarkable, and at its best I think excellent. Jack Gillespie, known as Jack-Anne—the latter his mother’s name—to distinguish him from other Jack Gillespies, was a man of sixty or over, also a cottier.

      The tales were written down in places sufficiently varied;—from the Renvyle library to the neat little farmhouse parlour at Malinmore, where I spent so many a winter’s evening, solitary but for the occasional visits of some one or other of my story-tellers;—from little smoky cabins, with inquisitive hens hopping on the table, to the unroofed freedom of rock or brae, under summer skies, by those thrice-lovely shores of Renvyle; by the scarcely less beautiful, though far more rugged, crags and cliffs of Achill; by “the wild sea-banks” of what has been described as the “grandest coast in Europe”—that of Glencolumkill.

      The beauty of Scotch scenery has been discovered by one critic to be reflected in the picturesqueness of the Scotch tales. I am not without hope that a like influence has contributed something of a like quality to those now submitted to the reader.

      William Larminie.

[1] The Sound, very narrow, is now bridged over.

      

THE GLOSS GAVLEN.

       Table of Contents

      Narrator, John McGinty, Valley, Achill Island, co. Mayo.

      The Gobaun Seer and his son went eastward to the eastern world to Balar Beimann to make for him a palace. “Shorten the road, my son,” said the father. The son ran out before him on the road, and the father returned home on that day. The second day they went travelling, and the father told his son to shorten the road. He ran out in front of his father the second day, and the father returned home.

      “What’s the cause of your returning home like that?” said the wife of the young Gobaun.

      “My father asks me to shorten the road. I run out on the road before him, and he returns.”

      “Do you begin to-morrow at a story he has never heard, and I’ll go bail he will not return. And do you never be in any place that the women are not on your side.”

      They went travelling the third day, and the young Gobaun began at a story his father never heard, and he returned no more till they came to the eastern world. Then they made the palace for Balar Beimann, and he did not wish to let them go back, for fear they should make for another man a palace as good as his.

      “Take away the scaffolding” (said he); for he wanted to let them die on the top of the building. Balar Beimann had a girl, who went by under the building in the morning.

      “Young Gobaun,” said she, “go on thy wisdom. I think it is easier to throw seven stones down than to put one up as far as you.”

      “That’s true for you,” said young Gobaun.

      They began to let down the work. When Balar Beimann heard that they were throwing down the works, he ordered back the scaffolding till they were down on the ground.

      “Now,” said the old Gobaun Seer, “there is a crookedness in your work, and if I had three tools I left after me at home, I would straighten the work, and there would not be any work in the world to compare with it. The names of the tools are—Crooked against Crooked, Corner against Corner, and Engine against deceit;[2] and there is not a man to get them but your own son. You will find,” said he, “a woman with one hand, and a child with one