Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry Part 44

"_Tir-na-n-og_," Mr. Douglas Hyde writes, "'The Country of the Young,'

is the place where the Irish peasant will tell you _geabhaedh tu an sonas aer pighin_, 'you will get happiness for a penny,' so cheap and common it will be. It is sometimes, but not often, called _Tir-na-hoige_; the 'Land of Youth.' Crofton Croker writes it, _Thierna-na-noge_, which is an unfortunate mistake of his, _Thierna_ meaning a lord, not a country. This unlucky blunder is, like many others of the same sort where Irish words are concerned, in danger of becoming stereotyped, as the name of Iona has been, from mere clerical carelessness."

THE GONCONER OR GANCANAGH [GEAN-CANACH].--Page 207.

O'Kearney, a Louthman, deeply versed in Irish lore, writes of the _gean-canach_ (love-talker) that he is "another diminutive being of the same tribe as the Lepracaun, but, unlike him, he personated love and idleness, and always appeared with a dudeen in his jaw in lonesome valleys, and it was his custom to make love to shepherdesses and milk-maids. It was considered very unlucky to meet him, and whoever was known to have ruined his fortune by devotion to the fair s.e.x was said to have met a _gean-canach_. The dudeen, or ancient Irish tobacco pipe, found in our raths, etc., is still popularly called a _gean-canach's_ pipe."

The word is not to be found in dictionaries, nor does this spirit appear to be well known, if known at all, in Connacht. The word is p.r.o.nounced _ganconagh_.

In the MS. marked R.I.A. 23/E. 13 in the Roy' Ir. Ac., there is a long poem describing such a fairy hurling-match as the one in the story, only the fairies described as the _s.h.i.+agh_, or host, wore plaids and bonnets, like Highlanders. After the hurling the fairies have a hunt, in which the poet takes part, and they swept with great rapidity through half Ireland. The poem ends with the line--

"_'S gur s.h.i.+ubhail me na cuig cuig cuige's gan fum acht buachallan buidhe_;"

"and I had travelled the five provinces with nothing under me but a yellow bohalawn (rag-weed)."--[_Note by Mr. Douglas Hyde._]

FATHER JOHN O'HART.--Page 220.

Father O'Rorke is the priest of the parishes of Ballysadare and Kilvarnet, and it is from his learnedly and faithfully and sympathetically written history of these parishes that I have taken the story of Father John, who had been priest of these parishes, dying in the year 1739. Coloony is a village in Kilvarnet.

Some sayings of Father John's have come down. Once when he was sorrowing greatly for the death of his brother, the people said to him, "Why do you sorrow so for your brother when you forbid us to keen?" "Nature," he answered, "forces me, but ye force nature." His memory and influence survives, in the fact that to the present day there has been no keening in Coloony.

He was a friend of the celebrated poet and musician, Carolan.

SHONEEN AND SLEIVEEN.--Page 220.

_Shoneen_ is the diminutive of _shone_ [Ir. _Seon_]. There are two Irish names for John--one is _Shone_, the other is _Shawn_ [Ir.

_Seaghan_]. Shone is the "grandest" of the two, and is applied to the gentry. Hence _Shoneen_ means "a little gentry John," and is applied to upstarts and "big" farmers, who ape the rank of gentleman.

_Sleiveen_, not to be found in the dictionaries, is a comical Irish word (at least in Connaught) for a rogue. It probably comes from _sliabh_, a mountain, meaning primarily a mountaineer, and in a secondary sense, on the principle that mountaineers are worse than anybody else, a rogue. I am indebted to Mr. Douglas Hyde for these details, as for many others.

DEMON CAT.--Page 229.

In Ireland one hears much of Demon Cats. The father of one of the present editors of the _Fortnightly_ had such a cat, say county Dublin peasantry. One day the priest dined with him, and objecting to see a cat fed before Christians, said something over it that made it go up the chimney in a flame of fire. "I will have the law on you for doing such a thing to my cat," said the father of the editor. "Would you like to see your cat?" said the priest. "I would," said he, and the priest brought it up, covered with chains, through the hearth-rug, straight out of h.e.l.l. The Irish devil does not object to these undignified shapes. The Irish devil is not a dignified person. He has no whiff of sulphureous majesty about him. A centaur of the ragam.u.f.fin, jeering and shaking his tatters, at once the b.u.t.t and terror of the saints!

A LEGEND OF KNOCKMANY.--Page 266.

Carleton says--"Of the grey stone mentioned in this legend, there is a very striking and melancholy anecdote to be told. Some twelve or thirteen years ago, a gentleman in the vicinity of the site of it was building a house, and, in defiance of the legend and curse connected with it, he resolved to break it up and use it. It was with some difficulty, however, that he could succeed in getting his labourers to have anything to do with its mutilation. Two men, however, undertook to blast it, but, somehow, the process of ignition being mismanaged, it exploded prematurely, and one of them was killed. This coincidence was held as a fulfilment of the curse mentioned in the legend. I have heard that it remains in that mutilated state to the present day, no other person being found who had the hardihood to touch it. This stone, before it was disfigured, exactly resembled that which the country people term a miscaun of b.u.t.ter, which is precisely the shape of a complete prism, a circ.u.mstance, no doubt, which, in the fertile imagination of the old Senachies, gave rise to the superst.i.tion annexed to it."

SOME AUTHORITIES ON IRISH FOLK-LORE.

Croker's _Legends of the South of Ireland_. Lady Wilde's _Ancient Legends of Ireland_. Sir William Wilde's _Irish Popular Superst.i.tions_. Mca.n.a.lly's _Irish Wonders_. _Irish Folk-Lore_, by Lageniensis. Lover's _Legends and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_.

Patrick Kennedy's _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts_, _Banks of the Boro_, _Legends of Mount Leinster_, and _Banks of the Duffrey_; Carlton's _Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_; and the chap-books, _Royal Fairy Tales_, _Hibernian Tales_, and _Tales of the Fairies_. Besides these there are many books on general subjects, containing stray folk-lore, such as Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall's _Ireland_; Lady Chatterton's _Rambles in the South of Ireland_; Gerald Griffin's _Tales of a Jury-room_; and the _Leadbeater Papers_. For banshee stories see Barrington's _Recollections_ and Miss Lefanu's _Memoirs of my Grandmother_. In O'Donovan's introduction to the _Four Masters_ are several tales. The princ.i.p.al magazine articles are in the _Dublin and London Magazine_ for 1825-1828 (Sir William Wilde calls this the best collection of Irish folk-lore in existence); and in the _Dublin University Magazine_ for 1839 and 1878, those in '78 being by Miss Maclintock. The _Folk-Lore Journal_ and the _Folk-Lore Record_ contain much Irish folk-lore, as also do the _Ossianic Society's_ publications and the proceedings of the _Kilkenny Archaeological Society_. Old Irish magazines, such as the _Penny Journal_, _Newry Magazine_, and _Duffy's Sixpenny Magazine_ and _Hibernian Magazine_, have much scattered through them. Among the peasantry are immense quant.i.ties of ungathered legends and beliefs.