Meeting the Other Crowd Read online

  Without doubt, the coming of rural electrification in the 1950s had a profound effect on Ireland. Places were now made bright at night that had never been so before, and according to popular account, fairy lore and all things traditional began to wither from this time on. Perhaps. But what is certain is that in the laying down of the vast network of poles to carry the electric wires, ground was dug up that had lain undisturbed from time immemorial. And in the process it was only natural that things should come to the surface that consorted ill with the bright new way of things. A clash of cultures? Most likely. And have the Good People lost the fight (if ever there was one), since we rarely hear of such incidents as the one recounted here nowadays? Hardly. Most elders would say that they have merely adapted themselves—or not even that; that it’s we who have changed as a result of all the modern “discoveries,” not they; that the consequence has merely been that we are less able than ever to see, hear, meet, or experience them.

  “I knew where there was a man an’ he had a house, an’ . . . he was often tipped out o’ the bed in the night. An’ he wouldn’t know in the hell what tipped him out. There’d be nothing! But he wasn’t wanted there, though. He was an intruder.”

  DRUMLINE, SEPTEMBER 19, 2001

  Fairies Violently Object to Their Path Being Blocked

  UP HERE, at the back of us a small bit, we witnessed the fairies ourselves, sure, when we were playing cards. A step’d come to the door every night when we’d be playing the cards. We’d take no notice. ’Twould go away.

  This night we were playing and the man o’ the house was out milking the cows, and he came in. We had the table pulled out and I took the lamp and I was going hanging it on the pier.

  So we played away—we’d be in no hurry home, up to twelve o’clock in the night. The old game we’d be playing, or forty-five, and a kitty the odd time—oh, a penny a game.

  But, anyway, we was playing away, and ’twas around twelve o’clock when this explosion happened: The glass o’ the lamp broke out over our heads on the table. So we all got a bit excited, I s’pose. But we didn’t take much notice. We knew there was fairies around the place. We were told it.

  He lit two candles and we finished our game and went away home.

  We were there the following night and when he came in from milking the cows he brought in this flashlamp. ’Twas a bicycle lamp, but the glass in ’em them times was an inch thick. They were the first o’ the battery lamps that came out for the bicycles. He brought it in and left it on the window, and around the same time as the globe busted, the explosion took place again, in the window. It shook the house from end to end and we discovered the glass o’ the flashlamp had broke; it split in two.

  Sure, we enjoyed that laugh going home, talking that the fairies was coming.

  Next night, anyhow, ’twas the grandest night that ever came out o’ the heavens. But when we went up the following night the bull shed was gone, clapped up against the end o’ the house and a car house where we used to be going in—and not one nail was ever drawn out of it. ’Twas taken off of its walls and brought by the wind, the sí-gaoith,14 out between a big, high cabin and an ash tree. So nine of us, and the two men o’ the house, we caught that shed and brought it back down. It took two hours of us to bring it back in between the shed where it came out and the ash tree. And we put it up on the walls and nailed it down. All in one piece! A nail never drew out of it. Corrugated iron, ten-foot sheets, and three spars o’ timber in it—and never drew a nail or broke a lath!

  ’Twas the fairies swept it up. The fairies brought it and clapped it up where we were going in to stop us from going into the house, to block the thoroughfare. Brought it out across the yard and clapped it up. There was nothing else you could make out of it, only that ’twas stopping us from going into the house.

  So, we played cards away and laughed coming home and said the fairies was in it for sure this time.

  I met an old man, a neighbor of ours, the next day, and I told him my story.

  “There wasn’t a breeze o’ wind heard in any part o’ the parish the same night,” he said. ’Twas the finest night that ever came, and the moon shining. “Let you leave there,” he said. “We played cards there before you and we had to leave it. The fairies are there. Get out o’ there.”

  So we went back there no more. That was the finish o’ that.

  Night gatherings such as card plays or dances often provided scope for pranksters to play tricks on the more gullible of those present, so stories from such settings need to be examined closely and with a little skepticism. The teller of this tale even seems to feel this way during the first two incidents, the breaking of the lamps. The fairies are mentioned, but only as something to be laughed about. But on the third occasion, when the fairy wind lands the shed in the way of the card players, on a dead-calm night (significantly, without disturbing a single nail in the process), the laughter is far less certain, and disappears entirely when an old neighbor confirms that the house in question has a long-standing otherworldly reputation—specifically that a fairy path runs beside it. Knowing that fact makes all manner of strange happenings explainable, for when the Good People are going about their business—usually in the form of the sí-gaoith—the powers of everyday nature are suspended for the duration and anything may happen.

  “I used see the fairies. As a matter o’ fact, I used see the fairies coming over the road. . . . An’ d’you know how I used to see ’em, do you? I’ll tell you. When you’d see all this sinneán gaothach, all this dust, rising, rising, rising an’ blowing hither the road, an’ blowing in—in the daytime.”

  LISCANNOR, JANUARY 12, 2001

  Man Gets Warning from the Fairy Wind

  I WAS TALKING to this man the other day and he said to me, “You’re the very man I wanted to see.”

  I said to him, “What’s your problem?”

  I had heard, though. A fellow had told me.

  He said, “What’s your version o’ the fairy wind?”

  The same man wouldn’t believe anything like that. And you wouldn’t frighten him with a shotgun. He had an iron nerve. He’d demolished a couple o’ forts, and when I gave out to him,15 he said, “Ah, bull! Yourself and your forts. What the hell about ’em. What are they? Mounds of earth.”

  That’s what he came up with always.

  But he had a fright got. That’s why he was coming to me. He was out walking a greyhound about five o’clock in the evening. Broad daylight! He was getting the greyhound ready for Clounanna (a large greyhound meet in County Limerick). And the breeze o’ wind came, the whirlwind. Out o’ nowhere. And just as he came to the ash tree on the side o’ the road, it stripped it. Cleaned it. All he had standing there in two seconds was the tree and the branches. It didn’t leave a leaf on it.

  I had heard and I had gone to see the tree. The man that told me said that the dog, if he was there since, wouldn’t pass it. He yowled and he yelled and he wouldn’t pass it.

  So, I said to him, “Are you going to Clounanna with that dog?”

  “I am,” he said.

  I said to him, “Will you do me a favor? And yourself a favor?”

  “What is it?” he said.

  I said, “Stay at home.”

  “What d’you mean?” he said.

  “That’s what I mean. Do what you’re told. Stay at home. Jeez,” I said, “if the whirlwind caught you in the car, where was you? Stay at home. Yourself and your Clounanna!”

  And he did. He got the message, because his nephew was cutting hedges and developing sites and doing a few jobs around the farm, and the one warning he gave him—this man who wasn’t afraid o’ the Devil out o’ hell if he met him—“Whatever you do,” he said, “leave the forts alone.”

  There’s two or three of ’em left yet in the farm. But he was just lucky. If he interfered with the wrong forts, he wouldn’t be around to be giving advice to anyone.

  It can sometimes amaze one to see how patient the Good People can be in the face of
human stupidity and destructiveness. Even when they are provoked beyond what we humans would call all reasonable bounds, they often surprise by choosing to warn the offender when swift vengeance might more reasonably be expected. That is part of their inscrutability. And here we see that the sí-gaoith is different than in the previous story—there is no hint of a path, merely a warning, and the dog recognizes what the man does not: the presence of the otherworldly.

  The man in question in this story learns a salutary lesson, and perhaps the reason his fate is not violent is that he is of more use to the Good People alive, as a convert to spread a more civilized message. Or is it merely, as the teller says, that he was lucky in the forts he chose to destroy?

  “They’re invisible, anyway, and, they’re as thick as the hairs

  on your head. I was told that by a most reliable authority.

  An’ they’re all around you. But you can’t see ’em.

  Thin air. But they’re there. An’ anyone that thinks

  they aren’t’d want to do a rethink.”

  DRUMLINE, OCTOBER 17, 1992

  Three Brief Stories of the Fairy Wind

  THERE’S A FARM NEAR HERE, and out at the back o’ the house there was a noble barn. I used to be always looking at this barn because ’twas built with stone—but there was no roof on it. Everything else was perfect, oh, a fine barn. And I said to the owner one day, “How is it you never put a roof on that barn?”

  He told me that when ’twas built and roofed the first time it took fire. ’Twas left for some time and ’twas roofed again. They finished it of an evening, and this whirlwind rose about an hour after it being finished, what’s called a fairy wind, the sí-gaoith, and swept across and lifted the roof clean off.

  They left it then, and they inquired, and they found out that ’twas supposed to have been built right in the middle of a path.

  I KNEW THIS HOUSE where there was a good tablecloth, that used generally be on the parlor table. ’Twas a very fine day and they took out the tablecloth and spread it out, just to get the sun, I s’pose. And the sí-gaoith came, and took the tablecloth and ’twas never seen again.

  The contention was that because they were having a certain amount of pride in this tablecloth, that’s why it was taken away altogether, that you should be very humble where Those People were concerned.

  I REMEMBER, myself and my mother was above in a field we have up there—ah, that’d be fifty or sixty years ago, I suppose. My father wasn’t at home at all at the time. We had loose hay in a field, you see. ’Twas after being shaken out and we had no way to gather it in, only forks and rakes. And we was gathering it in, and gathering it in, when didn’t this big, big, big gust o’ wind come out o’ nowhere. And didn’t it bring it above and in the gate for us. Blew it in! It did. My mother said ’twas the fairies. I s’pose they see we had no help.

  The unpredictability of Those People, the fact that they might take exception to—and carry off—a luxury domestic item just because it was being displayed publicly makes us wonder were they class conscious, wishing to keep people “in their place.” It is not certain why the displaying of the cloth should be offensive to them in this case, but it obviously is.

  Far more understandable is the case of the fine stone barn that met with repeated misfortune, all for the lack of inquiring whether it might have been built on a fairy path—which, of course, it was.

  But we see the other, the more kindly, neighborly, side of the Good People here also, a side that should never be forgotten. The speaker here showed me the field in question, and there is no possibility that any ordinary gust of wind could have moved the amount of hay it contained to the place he indicated. Either it was, as his mother said, the fairies, or else . . . what? There is one other possibility—that he is mistaken. But I know him too well. Even though eighty-nine, he is as clear-minded as someone half that age.

  “Some people were very afraid of it. You’d hear it coming. It’d be twisting bits o’ hay an’ paper, twisting around. You’d get out o’ the way when you’d see it. That was them passing.”

  MILTOWN, JUNE 27, 1999

  A Woman Gets Knocked with the Sí-Gaoith

  THERE’S A STORY about this man, he was out saving hay, himself and his wife and family. And ’twas broken kind o’ weather. They shook the hay this day but ’twasn’t fit to tram.16 The following day was a fine day, and they got a fine night, and ’twas grand for tramming. The same day, the fairy wind came at different times. The old people at that time, if they heard the fairy wind coming, they’d throw theirself down. For if it knocked you, they said you might never again rise.

  But this woman, she had a rake, an ordinary rake—’twas all handwork at the time—and she was clearing the ground, raking it clean with the timber rake. She was just out at the end o’ the line o’ hay and she was turning, when the fairy wind caught her and knocked her, herself and the rake. She wasn’t down two minutes when she was up again.

  But from that day out she didn’t feel right. They lived on, anyway. And at that time women milking cows used to sing for the cows. She was a great singer, but the husband noticed that she stopped that, stopped the singing. She wasn’t right ever after. She worked away, but twelve months was nearly up and she was getting weaker and weaker, and she wasn’t fit to do much work—’twas neighboring women that was coming in, washing the clothes and making bread, getting the scholars ready for school. He had tried everything—she went to blessed wells, she went to doctors and everywhere, and they could find nothing wrong with her. But still she was ailing away, ailing away.

  Twelve months was nearly up, anyway, and this day she was very bad, and whatever drove it into his head—he was outside working—he said he’d go to Biddy Early.

  He struck off in the morning for Biddy Early’s, and on into Inagh, and down Kilnamona and into Ennis, and out the Tulla road to Biddy. But he didn’t know the house. He knew the direction. He went on, anyway, and he met a man bringing in cows for milking in the morning.

  He asked the man, “Could you direct me to Biddy Early?”

  But the man gave no answer, only pointed the way. He spoke no word. You wouldn’t get absolution at that time if you showed Biddy Early’s house to anyone.

  He went on, anyway, farther, and who did he meet but the scholars going to school. ’Twas all walking, o’ course, at that time. There was seven or eight of ’em together, and he was giving ’em grand soft talk about who was teaching ’em, what class was they in, and all that. And all of a sudden he asked ’em, “Could any o’ you show me Biddy Early’s house?”

  And a young lad o’ six or seven years, he said, “ ’Tis over there about a half mile, a thatched house.”

  He had no sooner his mouth open than a girl, she was nine or ten years, she gave him a dart o’ the elbow, but he had the damage done; he had the man told.

  He carried on, anyway, on the young lad’s instructions, and he landed at this house. ’Twas in a bit from the road and this red-haired woman was rinsing the teapot to get the breakfast ready in the morning.

  “Is this Biddy Early’s?” he said.

  “Well, ’tis,” says she. “But you’re Biddy Late. Where are you the last twelve months? And you living with an old fairy woman since the day your wife got knocked with the sí-gaoith ?”

  By God, she frightened the life out o’ him, anyway.

  “Come in,” she said.

  She brought him in and she gave him a cup o’ good strong tea. Biddy’s house was never without whiskey and baker’s bread, for by all accounts she usedn’t get much money. ’Tis things like that she used to get.

  She gave him a glass o’ whiskey, anyway, and he drank the tea and he drank the whiskey, and she went in the room and consulted her bottle.

  “I have bad news for you,” she said. “When you’ll go home your wife is dead. There’ll be a corpse house there.”

  She frightened the life out o’ him. “Will you be able to do anything for me?”

  “By God,
I’ll do my best,” says she, “but I’ll guarantee nothing.”

  ’Twas a thatched house, and she went out the door. At that time they used to pick ash plants for walking sticks in the November darkness. That was the time to pick sticks, ash plants, handles for whips, or anything. They’d be right limber. ’Twas customary; they used to pick ’em in the November darkness, the dark o’ the moon.

  She took down the first ash plant, anyway, out o’ the thatch, and she bent it, but it didn’t pass the inspection. She took down the second. ’Twas a little better. She stuck it back up again. She took down the third and ’twas right limber.

  “When you go home, now,” she said, “there’ll be a wake in progress, or a kind of a corpse house, for ’twill be daylight, you see. And when you go home, open the two doors”—there used to be two doors in the old farmhouses, a back door and a front door—“and put a stone to each of ’em,” she said. “Go in the room where that corpse is laid out and belt enough at her with that ash plant, and you’ll see what’ll happen. But don’t touch the ground with that stick or yourself till you land in your own yard.”

  He struck out, but the horse was getting tired and he drove him fairly hard. He was all the time afraid that if he got a false step, and if he fell, the game’d be up.

  He landed in his own yard, anyway, and there was a couple o’ horse carts there and they had the wake brought. He had a brother married nearby, he had a couple of uncles, and they had the wake brought—porter and baker’s bread and jam and everything like that—and the woman was laid out.

  He landed in the yard, and o’ course they were shaking hands to him—“I’m sorry for your trouble”—but he was throwing ’em out of his way.

  Into the house he went, and there was a good few women inside. ’Twas the same story—he was throwing ’em out of his way. He done what Biddy Early told him—put a stone to the front door and a stone to the back. He went in the room and beat the life out o’ the corpse. And the fairy woman went out the back door and his own wife came in the front door. All was lost but for Biddy Early.