Meeting the Other Crowd Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Editor’s Preface

  Introduction

  PART ONE - “ The Queerest Thing I Ever Saw”

  The Vicious Fairies

  The Fallen Angels

  A Fairy Funeral

  Refereeing a Fairy Hurling Match

  A Queer Walk

  A Skeptic’s Story

  Man Carried to Play Football

  A Midnight Ride

  A Musician’s Story

  A Fairy Request Thwarted

  Man Borrows a Fairy Horse

  A Fairy Cow

  An Old Woman Changes Shape

  The Rats from the Ashes

  A Strange Pig

  Meeting the Black Dog

  The Eel

  The Fairy Frog

  PART TWO - “There Since the Start o’ the World”

  The Bush That Bled

  A Fairy Bush Moved

  Man Cuts Briars in a Fairy Fort

  Respecting the Ancient Forts

  A Sportsman Who Won’t Interfere

  Let Very Well Alone!

  Mysterious Sounds from Two Forts

  A Pregnant Woman Goes into a Fort

  The Man in the Coffin

  A House Built Between Forts

  The Fairy House

  Planting on a Fairy Path

  Electricity Poles Moved from Fairy Path

  Fairies Violently Object to Their Path Being Blocked

  Man Gets Warning from the Fairy Wind

  Three Brief Stories of the Fairy Wind

  A Woman Gets Knocked with the Sí-Gaoith

  Strange Gravity

  Man Prevented from Passing

  Latoon Dead Hunt

  A Fairy Mansion

  Meeting the Cóiste Bodhar, the Fairies’ Hearse

  A Personal Experience of the Banshee

  Banshee Comes for Dying Man

  Banshee Alerts Family

  Banshee Heard in Manhattan

  A Prankster

  The Barefield Banshee

  PART THREE - “ Their Own Way of Collecting”

  A Transaction with the Other Crowd

  The Fairies Repay a Favor

  Fairy Races Horse to Repay a Favor

  Mare Taken for Fairy Battle

  Hurler’s Bravery Rewarded

  How the Sextons Got the Gift of Bonesetting

  Man “in the Fairies” Moves Hay

  Tom of the Fairies

  Hurler with a Humpback

  Biddy Early “Strange” as a Child

  Biddy Early Helps, but a Price Paid

  A Clash of Power: Biddy Early Versus the Clergy

  Three Stories of Priests Who Can See the Other Crowd

  Holy Water Given As Protection

  Girl Carried by the Fairies

  The Girl Saved from the Good People

  Woman Carried Asks for Rescue

  A Tragic Loss of Nerve

  A Woman Dies . . . and Remarries

  Garret Barry and the Changeling

  Two Changeling Stories

  A Tailor Saves a Baby

  The Fairies Get Set on a Whole Family

  A Rash Intervention Condemns Woman

  Unbeliever Released from Fort . . . Barely!

  The Shanaglish Weaver

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  MORE PRAISE FOR MEETING THE OTHER CROWD

  “Eddie Lenihan’s book offers wonderful glimpses of a world we need to re-cover and reimagine.”

  —JOHN O’ DONOHUE, author of Anam Cara

  “Read these stories, not at your peril but to your delight, whether young or old.”

  —DAN R. BARBER, The Dallas Morning News

  “Lenihan presents his tales with gusto, respect, and conviction. His stories are bite-sized but memorable morsels. His voice fairly breathes authenticity arising from three decades of collection and cherishing legends and lore.”

  —JOSEPH P. MCMENAMIN, Richmond Times-Dispatch

  “Endearing.”

  —PIPER JONES CASTILLO, St. Petersburg Times

  “Intriguing . . . This fairy folklore is in danger of passing away, as are the storytellers, says Lenihan, who is determined to capture this ‘hidden Ireland’ before it’s gone.”

  —VIRGINIA ROHAN, The Record (Bergen County, NJ)

  “This is a book that will make you think twice the next time someone asks you if you believe in the wee folk.”

  —TRISHA PING, TheSun(Gainesville, FL)

  Most Tarcher/Penguin books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or book excerpts also can be created to fit specific needs. For details, write Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Special Markets, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin

  a member of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.penguin.com

  First trade paperback edition 2004

  Copyright © 2003 by Eddie Lenihan and Carolyn Eve Green

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not

  be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16733-5

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To all those tellers now gone

  WHOSE VOICES ARE NOT FORGOTTEN,

  and to those still with us

  WHOSE KNOWLEDGE IS MORE

  INDISPENSABLE THAN EVER

  Author’s Note

  The stories here have been gathered from oral sources. In capturing the words of Irish elders, we have tried as much as possible to preserve the tone, style, and syntax of the speaker. Where changes have been made, they are only to clarify the speaker’s intent or occasionally substitute an English term for an Irish one. While the locales are real, some people’s names have been omitted or changed to protect the privacy of the sources.

  Editor’s Preface

  BY CAROLYN EVE GREEN

  MEETING EDDIE LENIHAN cannot be entirely unlike encountering one of Them. Certainly our finding each other had a touch of magical coincidence. And, like an unaware citizen stumbling upon a fairy place, I carried with me that uncertainty, anxiety, and curiosity that keeps us transfixed even as our instincts of self-preservation tell us to flee to safer ground. Just as you may, in reading this remarkable collection of stories, come to understand a few of the basic codes of conduct for approaching Them, I came to realize that Eddie would not withstand any of my simpleminded American assumptions about the fascination of Irish fairy lore. Perhaps as the humans are to the fairies, so is a youthful American woman of media to an Irishman standing watchfully at the threshold of an old and new world.

  One fine summer morning, over our usual infusion of Chinese tea, my husband, Ken, and I were discussing our ongoing search for authentic storytellers and the purchase of a tree for our front entrance. The search for storytellers arose from our production of an audio series for children, Secrets of the World, which had been our full-time obsession for nearly two years. As for the tree, well, what kind of tree would both invite guests and protect boundaries, produce flowers in spring and display autumn color, and survive the Colorado climate? Ken, meanwhile, had opened the New York Times to an article titled “If You Believe in Fairies, Don’t Bulldoze Their Lair.” Beneath this appeared a picture of Eddie Lenihan standing in front of a rather modest looking hawthorn tree—soon to be the solution to both of our current conundrums.

  Inspired by the article and an unexpected plethora of
hawthorn trees at the nursery, we did purchase a hawthorn tree that very day. A few days later, while recording tales from the Black Sea with Laura Simms (a storyteller extraordinaire), we asked Laura if she knew of an Irishman named Eddie Lenihan.

  “Eddie! He would be wonderful for this series. I have his phone number right here,” she said, without a moment’s hesitation. “Let’s give him a call.” And so we did. He answered the telephone right off and a tentative meeting of minds began.

  In the months before his scheduled arrival for recording in Colorado, my anxiety grew. We exchanged a few letters in preparation for the recording project. I quickly saw that he had many worthy battles to fight and the mere hint of compromise, of reshaping the tales he had so meticulously collected over twenty-seven years to cater to American notions about what is suitable for children, turned his responses to ice. Hopefully it is now clear that I was never interested in compromise, but in providing enough cultural translation for that project so that the truths of the stories could reach the ears of American children and so that their value might not be overlooked by cautious or literal-minded parents. In many ways, we were both three steps ahead of each other. Only through Ken’s reassurances to me and his conviction in the great value of the project was I able to keep a steady course until Eddie’s arrival.

  The morning before he was scheduled to fly in, the phone rang. Ken answered to Eddie’s voice, agitated and cursing under his breath about a ten-hour flight delay out of Ireland—and who could blame him for being frustrated, this man who can’t possibly find enough hours in the year to complete the work he sets for himself? For my part, I had created a rather imposing, macho figure of this man, which Ken’s well-humored account of the morning phone call only heightened. I was near literally holding my breath until we should meet.

  The moment we met, beside the baggage claim carousel at Denver International Airport, my conviction in my own powers of projection dissolved. Here he stood, only a few inches taller than me, compact, intense, tentative and firm at once.

  If you have never been to this airport, it is worth going sometime just to witness the scale and strangeness of this massive tentlike structure that has been erected as a model for future hubs of air travel. With its white peaked rooftop, glass walls, multicultural murals with hidden symbols, gargoyles guarding automated doorways, and computerized voices announcing stops on the underground train that transports you from the gates to the terminal, DIA is designed to future shock. (It certainly overwhelmed me when I arrived in Colorado from our previous home in Nova Scotia a few years ago.) Picture a lone hawthorn bush with a venerable history of sheltering armies of fairies that somehow refuses to be felled in a field ransacked by developers and you might have some idea of what it was like to encounter Eddie Lenihan in the middle of DIA. He stood there, just like the tree he had recently protected from developers in his homeland, small and sturdy, holding back the tide of modernity, and utterly refusing to be intimidated.

  We three exchanged some words about the absurdity of the mechanized world and the mounting obstacles we all face in the name of convenience, establishing a baseline of camaraderie. He checked us both, head to toe, gave a strong handshake, and the work began.

  The Irish have learned to use many indirect names for the Good People, so as not to offend them by being too forward. Just so, I learned in the recording studio to approach Eddie with both delicacy and honesty—careful not to jar his intense concentration on the stories, but waiting for those in-between moments, whenever they might suddenly arise, where a question could be asked and its inevitably candid answer brought back into the fold.

  It was soon evident that the few tales he shared for children in those three days of recording were merely a hint of what resides in his treasury. Soon after he returned to Ireland, I phoned and asked him if he might be willing to collaborate on a project for adults that would allow us to unearth far more of his collection and bring it to a large audience. To my delight, he agreed, and this book is the result.

  One never knows how much is safe or appropriate to reveal in a writing that will go to press. And so it must be with each one of the storytellers whose accounts appear in this book. At what point is too much said? One must find the means of transmitting the essence of the story without violating what is, by nature of the encounter, secret and delicate. So it is with writing about Eddie. Suffice it to say that after three days in the studio together there was no doubt in my mind that he is more than a memorizer of great tales. He is a transmitter of that other world—fearless, respectful and, I daresay, choicelessly chosen to be so. We never had a recording session like that, before or since. Perhaps, if the time and circumstances are right, the details could be written elsewhere. Do not think for a moment, though, that Eddie himself will abide these words without argument. Deeply modest and devoted to his tradition, when I first asked Eddie whether or not he believed in the fairies he simply looked at me and said, “Well, all I can tell you is that I know of many things that cannot be explained.” That, again, appears to be part of the code of conduct. So, as you read these ordinary and outrageous tales, leave aside the mind that is merely interested in dissecting cultural anomalies and, by all means, do not rush headlong hoping to find some gimmick for accessing another dimension. Go wakefully, cautiously. Steady yourself, and the magic will happen by itself in the most subtle and ordinary way.

  Introduction

  ONE MIGHT SENSIBLY ASK, “Is another book on Irish fairies really necessary?” since there are many already in circulation. My answer would have to be that, firstly, there are not really as many as might seem, and secondly, that most of those in existence are merely rehashes ad nauseam of the same old ingredients. And also, as often as not, the tales are presented in an unorganized fashion and as entertainment, mainly for children.

  At first I, like many another, enjoyed these stories and the often grotesque idiosyncratic illustrations that accompanied them. But there came a time when I grew tired of the same old thing, particularly once I had, in the mid-1970s, begun to go out and talk to aged Irish people throughout the Irish countryside.

  What I found astonished me. For here, still alive, was a world I knew next to nothing about, a hidden Ireland, a land of mysterious taboos, dangers, otherworldly abductions, enchantments, and much more. I was immediately hooked, and ever since, I have been busy following up every lead, trying to discover ever more about this parallel Ireland which most Irish people acknowledge exists, but which few of them, except the very oldest or professional folklorists, know much about.

  The astonishing thing is that it does still exist, into the twenty-first century, in spite of attacks from all sides. The Catholic Church has not approved of belief in it since its own doctrine clashes with fairy belief on many important points. The state, mainly in the form of the National School system, until very recently has done its best to convince its charges that such “superstitious nonsense” was a throwback to an age of ignorance, that what was needed today was facts, numbers, enlightenment. And, more recently still, the IT revolution has made a sincere belief in such a world seem almost simpleminded.

  Yet an undeniable fact is that genuine fairy stories still exert a fascination over young and old alike when told. Not read. Told. In my travels all over Europe and the U.S.A., telling these tales that I have collected personally over the years, I have time and time again been amazed by the reaction of people who could have no connection to—hardly even knowledge of—the places I was referring to: Corbally fort, Rathclooney Lake, The Hand, Tulla old graveyard, places that in themselves were insignificant—except for one thing: They all have a story attached to them, a story that sets them apart always and forever from every other place in the much-storied Irish landscape.

  “Forever”? I, though no sociologist or anthropologist, could see, as I continued my collecting, that there was a looming problem. For as Ireland’s modernization gained pace from the 1980s on, and as the old people were listened to with less and less atten
tion and appreciation, this ancient lore began to wither. The death in 1983 of Jack “Donaleen” Leahy, my first great teacher/teller, at the age of ninety-three, shocked me into the realization that even the toughest fall at last. His death gave me the title for my third book, Even Iron Men Die, and he is still a landmark in my collecting career. I can never forget him, for he provided me with the sine qua non of folklore collecting: a sense of wonder, a doorway into a different world, a different way of seeing things. And it is this gift, if I may call it that, that has kept me collecting ever since, even when common sense and economics dictated that I spend my time and money on more profitable pursuits.

  Yet profit can sometimes be measured in terms other than the economic, and time is something that does not come our way twice, so I have made a very conscious choice: to follow old Irish stories to wherever they are to be found, particularly stories of the fairy world—and this for practical reasons. For I have found by experience that wherever fairy stories are to be discovered one will inevitably find more besides, whereas if there is no knowledge of the fairies one may be reasonably sure that there is little else of old lore of other kinds, either. It is one of those things the years of collecting have taught me, a sort of yardstick I use now almost automatically.

  But fairy stories, what are they? Fictions for children? Entertainment to pass long winters’ nights? Or something more?

  It can be said at once that they are mainly not for children. They are far too serious, too complicated for that.

  Certainly they were to pass long, dark nights when electricity was either not there or a novelty, and they did so admirably. And in the process they provided something else, too—a sense of continuity with an immemorial past, as well as giving due respect to those present who could contribute something venerable, exciting, interesting to the occasion.