Irish Folk Tales (43 page)

“Inishkeen’s on fire.”

The boyo got up

   and hopped out of the cradle

      and away

         and he never was seen after.

He was frightened, you see, when he heard about the fire in Inishkeen. That’s where they lived, you see.

I often heard me husband telling it.

The man says, “Inishkeen’s on fire.”

So he disappeared.

I often heard him telling me that.

T
HE BLOOD OF ADAM

There was a priest in this parish long ago, and the old people used to tell us a lot of stories about him. He was a fine singer, they said, and he could play the fiddle finely and he was very fond of music. He was a noted horseman, too, although it was a horse that killed him in the end—it was how he was out one night on a sick call, and it was late and very dark when he was coming home, and the horse stumbled and threw him, and they found him in the morning and his neck broken. It was behind on the Gort a’ Ghleanna road it happened, just at the bridge halfways down the hill.

Well, what I’m telling you happened a good while before that, on another night when he was out riding late, when he was back on the lower road, near the county bounds.

It was a bright moonlight night and he was walking the horse along when he heard this sweet music coming from the bank of the river, and he stopped to listen to it. After a while he put the horse at the ditch of the road and cleared it into the field and down to the river.

And there was this very big crowd of small people, men and women about as big as a twelve-years-old child, and they all gathered around listening to a lot of them that were playing every kind of a musical instrument.

And the priest was sitting on his horse, enjoying the music, when some of them saw him. “ ’Tis a priest,” they said and the music stopped.

And they all gathered around the horse. And one of them, the head man of them, maybe, spoke up. “Such a question, Father, and will you answer it?” says he.

“I will, and welcome, if I have the answer,” says the priest.

“What we want to know is this, will we go to Heaven?” says the little man.

“I do not know,” says the priest, “but I can tell you this much: if you have any drop of Adam’s blood in your veins, you have as good a chance of Heaven as any man, but if you have not, then you have no right to Heaven.”

“Ochón Ó!”
says the little man. And they all went off along the riverbank, all crying and wailing so that it would break your heart to listen to them.

W
E HAD ONE OF THEM IN THE HOUSE FOR A WHILE

MR. KELLEHER
I often saw them when I had my eyesight. One time they came about me, shouting and laughing and there were spouts of water all around me. And I thought that I was coming home, but I was not on the right path and couldn’t find it and went wandering about, but at last one of them said, “Good evening, Kelleher,” and they went away, and then in a moment I saw where I was by the stile. They were very small, like little boys and girls, and had red caps.

I always saw them like that, but they were bigger at the butt of the river; they go along the course of the rivers. Another time they came about me playing music and I didn’t know where I was going, and at last one of them said the same way, “Good evening, Kelleher,” and I knew that I was
at the gate of the College; it is the sweetest music and the best that can be heard, like melodeons and fifes and whistles and every sort.

MRS. KELLEHER
I often heard that music too, I hear them playing drums.

MR. KELLEHER
We had one of them in the house for a while, it was when I was living up at Ticnock, and it was just after I married that woman there that was a nice slip of a girl at that time. It was in the winter and there was snow on the ground, and I saw one of them outside, and I brought him in and put him on the dresser, and he stopped in the house for a while, for about a week.

MRS. KELLEHER
It was more than that, it was two or three weeks.

MR. KELLEHER
Ah! maybe it was—I’m not sure. He was about fifteen inches high. He was very friendly. It is likely he slept on the dresser at night. When the boys at the public house were full of porter, they used to come to the house to look at him, and they would laugh to see him but I never let them hurt him. They said I would be made up, that he would bring me some riches, but I never got them. We had a cage here, I wish I had put him in it, I might have kept him till I was made up.

MRS. KELLEHER
It was a cage we had for a thrush. We thought of putting him into it, but he would not have been able to stand in it.

MR. KELLEHER
I’m sorry I didn’t keep him—I thought sometimes to bring him into Dublin to sell him.

MRS. KELLEHER
You wouldn’t have got him there.

MR. KELLEHER
One day I saw another of the kind not far from the house, but more like a girl and the clothes grayer than his clothes, that were red. And that evening when I was sitting beside the fire with the Missus I told her about it, and the little lad that was sitting on the dresser called out, “That’s Geoffrey-a-wee that’s coming for me,” and he jumped down and went out of the door and I never saw him again. I thought it was a girl I saw, but Geoffrey wouldn’t be the name of a girl, would it?

He had never spoken before that time. Somehow I think that he liked me better than the Missus. I used to feed him with bread and milk.

MRS. KELLEHER
I was afraid of him—I was afraid to go near him, I thought he might scratch my eyes out—I used to leave bread and milk for him but I would go away while he was eating it.

MR. KELLEHER
I used to feed him with a spoon, I would put the spoon to his mouth.

MRS. KELLEHER
He was fresh-looking at the first, but after a while he got an old look, a sort of wrinkled look.

MR. KELLEHER
He was fresh-looking enough, he had a hardy look.

MRS. KELLEHER
He was wearing a red cap and a little red cloth skirt.

MR. KELLEHER
Just for the world like a Highlander.

MRS. KELLEHER
He had a little short coat above that; it was checked and trousers under the skirt and long stockings all red. And as to his shoes, they were tanned, and you could hardly see the soles of them, the sole of his foot was like a baby’s.

MR. KELLEHER
The time I lost my sight, it was a Thursday evening, and I was walking through the fields. I went to bed that night, and when I rose up in the morning, the sight was gone. The boys said it was likely I had walked on one of their paths. Those small little paths you see through the fields are made by
them
.

They are very often in the quarries; they have great fun up there, and about Peacock Well. The Peacock Well was blessed by a saint, and another well near, that cures the headache.

I saw one time a big gray bird about the cowhouse, and I went to a comrade-boy and asked him to come and to help me to catch it, but when we came back it was gone. It was very strange-looking and I thought that it had a head like a man.

F
AIRY PROPERTY

Well, I can tell you what was told to me by a parish priest, and it happened to a man he knew, so it must be true. It was not far from Doonlaun near Shrule, and it was to a man of the name of Tom Monahan that it happened.

Tom was one of the finest hurlers in the district, and one bright moonlight night he was on his way home, and he had to pass by a field that sloped down from a wood, in the face of the moon. What was his surprise to see two teams of men playing hurley. Well, he watched, and he watched, and after a while it came to him that they were the Good People. And they were playing wonderful, and he stood for a long while admiring their play, until in the latter end, with the dint of delight that he had in a great stroke, he let out a shout from him. Then they all knew he was there, and him a mortal.