Meeting the Other Crowd Page 20

  Anyway, they asked for the mare. He said he’d get up and they told him, “There’s no need. Can we take her?”

  I don’t know if the saddle was in the stable, but they took away the mare, and he didn’t get up.

  Around daybreak, four o’clock, the voice came again, the very same voice. They told him they brought back the mare, but that she was wounded. They said he’d get a bottle in a hole in the stable, and to rub what was in it on her, and that she’d be all right in a short time.

  He questioned ’em, “What were you doing with her?”

  “Ah,” says the voice outside, “we had a big fight between Galway and Clare, and if not for your mare we’d never win it. With your mare, we won the day.”

  That was all right. The mare was cured and the old lad stuck the bottle in a hole in the stable. And he stayed . . . in awe of it, if you like to put it that way.

  But his son, or his grandson, went out to America, to a city or town called Danbury. And when he came home, he was knocking down this old house, and didn’t the bottle fall out o’ the wall.

  “Oh, great God,” he says, “that’s the bottle my father got from the fairies. By God, there’s an old bullock outside and he’s dying. I’ll try him with it.”

  So he brought out the bottle and, whatever stuff was in it, he poured it into the bullock, and the bullock got up and walked away. It got to be a great beast after.

  I knew the old lad that happened to. Admittedly, those fíorlárs are there, but they’re very rare.

  This short narration shows us (as does the Latoon bush story) that the Irish fairies are a belligerent, territorial race, often at war for the honor of their county or province.

  We also see once again that a fíor-lár is far more sensitive to things otherworldly than an ordinary horse.

  And, lest we forget, the Good People are more likely to succeed in their enterprises if they have help from our earthly world, even though in this case it is animal rather than human assistance.

  The bottle in question here is reminiscent of the bottles of herbal mixtures or spring water that the famous healing woman Biddy Early dispensed to the thousands who came to her seeking cures. The fact that she herself possessed a mysterious dark-colored bottle, from which her power was believed by many to come, probably influenced stories like this one, though the factual details described make it seem an actual part of a family history. If it is that, what a tragic waste on a sick bullock of, literally, the elixir of life—a cure for any of the worst diseases (cancer, for example) that the human condition is subject to.

  “There was a man one time an’ he was brought off with

  the fairies, hurling. . . . He won the match, anyway, an’ they

  gave him a hurley coming home of him. An’they told him

  wherever he’d hurl he’d win. An’ everyplace he hurled he won.

  But I suppose when he got old, too old for hurling, he told it.

  But as soon as he did, the hurley won no other match after, only

  lost everything after. If he kept his mouth shut he was all right.”

  BALLINRUAN, AUGUST 17, 1999

  Hurler’s Bravery Rewarded

  BEYOND AT DOON, now, where Whitehead lived—the house is knocked down now—there was a castle there before there was a Big House25 in it. And this fellow called McMahon, he was a herdsman there. At that time, when the sheep would be having lambs, the herdsman would often have to stay up all night watching ’em, to keep ’em from foxes and things like that.

  There was a big level field out in front o’ Doon House, and he was sitting down this moonlight night, watching his sheep. You could see for miles. The next thing, it went very late, and these two teams landed out on the field with hurleys.

  He was watching ’em, anyway. They lined up. And McMahon was a noted hurler. The captain o’ one o’ the teams looked around and he said, “We’re short one.”

  So he walked over and he said to McMahon, “Will you stand in? We’re short a player. And you’re a good hurler.”

  “I will,” he said, “but I have no hurley.”

  “That’s no problem,” says the captain. “I’ll get you a hurley.”

  He handed him a hurley and the ball was thrown in and the match started. There was fierce hurling and, begod, he was holding his own. But the lad he was on was tough. And at that time there’d be kind o’ wrestling in the hurling and they’d be testing each other’s strength.

  But, by God, the lad that he was on knocked him twice, and he knocked the lad twice. So the captain walked over to him, when a bit of a lull came, when the ball went wide, and he said, “If he knocks you a third time, you’re finished. Don’t let him knock you a third time.”

  “Begod,” says McMahon, “I’ll be prepared for him.”

  So the next ball that came in, he was prepared, and he knocked the lad a third time. He got the ball, and he went down through the field and he scored a goal.

  The very minute the goal was scored, the match ended. They all gathered around him, and he was chaired off o’ the field.

  The captain came over and congratulated him and he said, “We’re meeting here for three hundred years and you’re the first man that scored a goal. We needn’t come here, now, anymore. The match is decided.” And he said, “As a reward I’ll give you that hurley. And no matter where you go or what you do, if you have that hurley with you, no harm will befall you. You’re only a herdsman, isn’t that right?”

  “That’s all,” says McMahon.

  “Well, I won’t be meeting you anymore,” he said, “but if you want to get your fortune, go into Limerick next Monday and stand up at a certain corner at a certain time, and there’ll a man approach you. If he asks you to go to work for him, go with him. But take the hurley with you wherever you go.”

  He was only a poor man, and there wasn’t much wages out o’ being a herdsman. So, the following Monday, he struck the road for Limerick, stood up at a corner, and the clock struck three o’clock. He was looking around him till the next thing, he got a tap on the shoulder. He looked around. And this man—a well-dressed man—was standing behind him.

  “You’re like a man that’s looking for a job,” he said.

  “I am,” says your man.

  “I’m looking for a good man to come working for me,” he said. “I have a big farm out in County Limerick. Would you come and work for me?”

  Begod, they made the deal and they went out. The man had a big house and a fine farm. And after about a month McMahon was getting on great. Everything the man gave him to do, he did it, and the farmer made him the manager over his farm. But he still had the hurley. He never hardly went anywhere without it.

  Now, about a mile away from the house they were living in, there was another house, a bigger house again, and a newer house.

  So one day he said to the farmer, “How is it that you never lived in the new house? ’Tis a finer house altogether than the one you’re in.”

  “Well,” says the farmer, “there’s a story attached to that. There’s a story that if any man can spend three nights in it, he can live there for the rest of his life. But it has failed everyone that has tried to live in it for the three nights.”

  So McMahon said, “I’ll chance it.”

  “Well,” he said, “if you can live the three nights in it, the house’ll be yours, because ’tis no good to me standing the way it is.”

  So, McMahon went there, put on a roaring fire and sat down beside it. He had the hurley alongside him. Everything went grand and he was getting sleepy and the clock struck twelve. The next thing, the door was thrown open and this huge man tore in.

  Begod, McMahon got up and he grabbed the hurley and the two of ’em fought and wrestled around the floor until the cock crew. And when the cock crew the man disappeared.

  So they came in the morning and when they saw he had survived the night, they said, “Will you chance the next night in it?”

  He said, “I will.”

  Begod,
the same thing happened the next night. They wrestled and they fought around the place. But anytime he was being bested, the hurley was saving him the whole time. The cock crew, and the man disappeared again.

  The third night the same thing happened. And he bested the man after a hard battle.

  “Who are you?” says McMahon. “Or what are you? Or what did I do to you, that you’re attacking me?”

  Begod, the man stood up that minute.

  “Why didn’t you ask me that the first night? Or no one ever asked it to me,” he said. “If they did, everything would be all right. I’d have answered it. Do you recognize me at all?” he said.

  “No,” says McMahon.

  “I’m the man,” says he, “that was your opponent the night o’ the hurling match in Doon.”

  They sat down, anyway, and they got chatting. He was a fairy, or a spirit.

  After a while talking he said, “Come on,” and he took McMahon down a big long corridor and through a big long cellar.

  The way it turned out was that there was three rooms. ’Twas a secret part o’ the house. There was one room with a box o’ gold in it. There was another room with a box o’ silver, and there was another room with a box o’ copper.

  But whatever had happened, anyway, when the house was built, the money had been got wrong and the people that built the house were never paid. He instructed McMahon what to do, and who was to be paid, and how the money was to be spent.

  “And when ’tis all done,” he said, “the third box, o’ copper, is yours. Good-bye now,” he said. “I have been released from my task. I’m coming here for the last hundred years, and I have been released by you. You done me a great service. I’ll never trouble you again. Or anyone.”

  McMahon went up and met the farmer, and told him. The farmer did what he was instructed to do and moved into the big house himself and gave McMahon the smaller house. After a few years, he was such a good workman he married one o’ the man’s daughters and, as they say, lived happily ever after.

  Well, the man that told me that, he was Jimmy Ned Doyle beyond. He was a van man in the county council that time. They used to go around with the steamrollers. And Jimmy was up in west Clare, up far in west Clare, and a man used to come in the night, an old man. You know, they’d be living in the council van and people used to come in for a chat in the night, for company. And when the old man heard he was from Broadford he said, “Is there any place down there called Doon? With a lake and a Big House in it?”

  Jimmy said that there was. And that’s the story he told him, now. Wherever he picked it up, I don’t know. ’Twas a story that was never told around here, as far as I know. It came in from the outside.

  I have stood in this field in front of where Doon House once lorded it, the field in which the fairy hurling match took place—if it was a fairy contest, that is. Because here is one of those stories where the teller makes little distinction between fairies and spirits.

  There are several inconsistencies in the story, as any alert reader will notice, but these are not, perhaps, as important as those points that link it to the genuine tradition of Irish fairy lore, e.g., the special power of articles bestowed by the Good People, the fairies’ love of sport, their sense of fair play, and the recurrence of events in groups of three.

  Yet, the character who hurls against McMahon and later attacks him in the “haunted” house, what is he? Spirit, fairy, or walking dead? A combination of all three, it would seem. Inconsistent, yes, but unusual, no. That is the way the stories are, for better or worse.

  “They taught him a tune, an’ it made twenty tunes. The power o’ the fairy.”

  MULLAGH, FEBRUARY 5, 1988

  How the Sextons Got the Gift of Bonesetting

  THIS WAS TOLD to me as a true thing, and I have no doubt that it was. There was a family in West Clare; they were famous bonesetters—Sextons. You often heard tell of ’em.

  I knew one of ’em well and he told me that ’twas his great-grandfather that first got the gift of setting bones. And he told me how ’twas.

  His great-grandfather used to stay out a lot at night, and generally go into Miltown village and have a few drinks there and come home rather late. He was coming from it one night— ’twas a grand moonlight night—and he saw two sets o’ people hurling. He stood up to see ’em at the game and was enjoying it. And one o’ the hurlers got a blow of a hurley. Broke his leg.

  One o’ his companions said, “Who’s going to set the man’s leg?”

  Another of ’em spoke up an’ said, “Sexton will!”

  Out they came, told Sexton to come in and set the leg. He said he never did the like in his life. They said to come in and do it and no more about it. He went in and he set the bone as best he could, and tied it up with what things they gave him. And the very minute he had the last knot tied, the man sprang up, caught his hurley, and started up the field again hurling as good as ever.

  So, some few days after, someone broke his leg around, and Sexton thought about what he did that night and why shouldn’t he do it again? He went and set the bone, and from that time out the Sextons were setting bones.

  In an age when belief in the fairies was, for many, as vivid as religious faith, people with unusual natural gifts—of healing, memory, music, etc.—were presumed to have acquired those gifts from sources outside the everyday. (Biddy Early was a prime example.) Not surprisingly so, in a relatively static community, where relations and ancestors could be traced back for many generations. These gifts could only come from God, the Devil, or the fairies. The problem was to distinguish among them. But people’s attitude was very much “by their fruits shall you know them.”

  In the case of Tom Burke, another well-known bonesetter from west Clare, there was no doubt in the public mind: He was even elected to the Dáil (the Irish national parliament) in the 1940s.

  “The first sheaf of oats they’d bind used be given to the fairies in some places. It wouldn’t be collected up with the rest o’ the oats at all, only left there for ’em. That was to keep in with ’em.”

  MILTOWN, JUNE 27, 1999

  Man “in the Fairies” Moves Hay

  I HEARD TELL of a man around here one time that was supposed to be “in the fairies”—oh, that’d be a long time back. But I heard the old people talking about him.

  He was living just there up the side o’ the main road, a hundred yards up from where you turned in here. There’s no sign of anything there now, but I saw the print o’ the house there myself. I was in there fencing, and I was building a bit of a wall in part of it and I came on the whitewash.

  But this fellow lived there. His wife was there, too. He seemingly used to keep a pig and a small vegetable garden in it. He went over to a cousin o’ his that lived beyond the lake here, Cullane Lake, for a bundle o’ straw—a place called Ráth Lúb, near Craggaunowen. He brought a rope about twenty yards long with him. Met his cousin.

  “Where are you going with the long rope?” says the cousin.

  “Have you the straw?” says he.

  “I have, tons o’ straw,” says the cousin, “but if you fill that rope what’s going to bring it?”

  “Ask no questions,” he said. “Will you gimme the rope o’ straw?”

  “I will,” he says.

  They filled and filled and filled the rope. The rope was a hundred yards long now.

  And the lad was looking at him all the time, you know.

  “Fill away,” he says. “Fill away. Don’t worry.” So they filled away.

  “What’s going to bring it?” the lad said.

  “Don’t bother. It’ll be brought, don’t worry,” says he.

  So, they filled it, and ’twould take a good ass to bring it in a cart, not to mention a man bringing it on his back.

  “Tie it up, now,” says he.

  The man did.

  “Would you be able to lift it any couple of inches off the ground, now,” says he, “with me.”

  “I’ll try,” says the poo
r man.

  So they rose it a half foot off the ground only. Then, it came across the lake and it landed above at the garden, there above on the side o’ the road!

  ’Twas supposed by the old people when it came across the lake that he was in with the Good People. How else could it happen?

  They used to be gambling there, too. And one night this fellow had a lot o’ talk. You know, he was at him—“You’re in the fairies,” and all o’ that.

  “Listen,” he says, “you were coming down Moymore the other night last week”—Moymore is there as you go in the Ennis road—“and you had a tight call, my boy. Only for me you wouldn’t be here tonight. So shut your mouth.”

  I heard that told by the old people.

  That house is gone a hundred years, at least. Ah, ’twould be more. ’Twould be a hundred and fifty at least. For other people got it after, and they left it, and other people have got it since. One hundred and fifty years, anyway.

  The belief that some people were “in” the fairies was widespread in Ireland, and such people were regarded with suspicion and fear, for they could know the unknown, do the undoable. How these people came to make their compact with the fairy world is never—so far as I know—revealed. Though people might guess at it. But occasionally the end results become all too clear. And they are not, by and large (as in the case of witches and the Devil), positive for the human actors.

  “ ’Twas well known that you should have spring water an’ you should clean the hearth.”

  MILTOWN, JUNE 27, 1999

  Tom of the Fairies

  THIS MAN was a neighbor of ours in Kerry, near Ballyferriter, and he was known locally as Tomás na bPúcaí, Tom of the Fairies, and he was supposed to go every night all over the country with the fairies. They’d get a horse for him, an old plough or something like that; they’d touch it and turn it into a horse. They had the power to change things like that.