Irish Folk Tales (51 page)

“Did ye hear any news while ye were in the town?”

There was no end to her questions.

“Hold your tongue,” I said, “and give me the tea.”

I drank the tea and had a bite to eat and began to feel better. Still she kept on asking me questions.

“Glory me! Fancy going in all that way and hearing nothing at all,” she said, when I had no news for her. “You might as well have stayed at home for all the good that you get out of a fair.”

I got up from the table and sat by the fire and lit my pipe, but still she plagued me and pestered me with her questions. Had I seen this one? Was I speaking with that one? Was there any news of the other one?

I suppose that the tea and the fire and the tobacco softened me. News
and gossip are almost life to a woman, and she bore the hardness of our life as well, and I had brought her nothing home. Then I remembered the cat.

“The only thing that happened to me today,” I said, “that has not happened on all fair days, was that when I was passing the graveyard of Inchigeela a cat stuck his head out of the railings.”

“Wisha! there is nothing strange in that,” she took me up.

“As I passed it called up to me, ‘Tell Balgeary that Balgury is dead.’ ”

At that, the cat, sitting before the fire, whipped round on me. “The Devil fire you!” said he, “why didn’t you tell me before? I’ll be late for the funeral.” And with that and no more, he leapt over the half-door, and was gone like the wind, and from that day to this we have seen no sign of him.

T
OM MOORE AND THE SEAL WOMAN

In the village of Kilshanig, two miles northeast of Castlegregory, there lived at one time a fine, brave young man named Tom Moore, a good dancer and singer. ’Tis often he was heard singing among the cliffs and in the fields of a night.

Tom’s father and mother died and he was alone in the house and in need of a wife. One morning early, when he was at work near the strand, he saw the finest woman ever seen in that part of the kingdom, sitting on a rock, fast asleep. The tide was gone from the rocks then, and Tom was curious to know who was she or what brought her, so he walked toward the rock.

“Wake up!” cried Tom to the woman. “If the tide comes ’twill drown you.”

She raised her head and only laughed. Tom left her there, but as he was going he turned every minute to look at the woman. When he came back he caught the spade, but couldn’t work. He had to look at the beautiful woman on the rock. At last the tide swept over the rock. He threw the spade down and away to the strand with him, but she slipped into the sea and he saw no more of her that time.

Tom spent the day cursing himself for not taking the woman from the rock when it was God that sent her to him. He couldn’t work out the day. He went home.

Tom could not sleep a wink all that night. He was up early next morning and went to the rock. The woman was there. He called to her.

No answer. He went up to the rock. “You may as well come home with me now,” said Tom. Not a word from the woman. Tom took the hood from her head and said: “I’ll have this!”

The moment he did that she cried: “Give back my hood, Tom Moore!”

“Indeed I will not, for ’twas God sent you to me, and now that you have speech I’m well satisfied.” And taking her by the arm he led her to the house. The woman cooked breakfast, and they sat down together to eat it.

“Now,” said Tom, “in the name of God you and I’ll go to the priest and get married, for the neighbors around here are very watchful. They’d be talking.” So after breakfast they went to the priest, and Tom asked him to marry them.

“Where did you get the wife?” asked the priest.

Tom told the whole story. When the priest saw Tom was so anxious to marry he charged five pounds, and Tom paid the money. He took the wife home with him, and she was good a woman as ever went into a man’s house. She lived with Tom seven years, and had three sons and two daughters.

One day Tom was plowing, and some part of the plow rigging broke. He thought there were bolts on the loft at home, so he climbed up to get them. He threw down bags and ropes while he was looking for the bolts, and what should he throw down but the hood which he took from the wife seven years before. She saw it the moment it fell, picked it up, and hid it. At that time people heard a great seal roaring out in the sea.

“Ah,” said Tom’s wife, “that’s my brother looking for me.”

Some men who were hunting killed three seals that day. All the women of the village ran down to the strand to look at the seals, and Tom’s wife with others. She began to moan, and going up to the dead seals she spoke some words to each and then cried out: “Oh, the murder!”

When they saw her crying the men said: “We’ll have nothing more to do with these seals.” So they dug a great hole, and the three seals were put into it and covered. But some thought in the night: “ ’Tis a great shame to bury those seals, after all the trouble in taking them.” Those men went with shovels and dug up the earth, but found no trace of the seals.

All this time the big seal in the sea was roaring. Next day when Tom was at work his wife swept the house, put everything in order, washed the children and combed their hair. Then, taking them one by one, she kissed each. She went next to the rock, and, putting the hood on her head, gave a plunge. That moment the big seal rose and roared so that people ten miles away could hear him.

Tom’s wife went away with the seal swimming in the sea. All the five children that she left had webs between their fingers and toes, halfway to the tips.

The descendants of Tom Moore and the seal woman are living near Castlegregory to this day, and the webs are not gone yet from between their fingers and toes, though decreasing with each generation.

T
HE SWINE OF THE GODS

A few years ago a friend of mine told me of something that happened to him when he was a young man and out drilling with some Connacht Fenians. They were but a car-full, and drove along a hillside until they came to a quiet place. They left the car and went further up the hill with their rifles, and drilled for a while. As they were coming down again they saw a very thin, long-legged pig of the old Irish sort, and the pig began to follow them. One of them cried out as a joke that it was a fairy pig, and they all began to run to keep up the joke. The pig ran too, and presently, how nobody knew, this mock terror became real terror, and they ran as for their lives. When they got to the car they made the horse gallop as fast as possible, but the pig still followed. Then one of them put up his rifle to fire, but when he looked along the barrel he could see nothing. Presently they turned a corner and came to a village. They told the people of the village what had happened, and the people of the village took pitchforks and spades and the like, and went along the road with them to drive the pig away. When they turned the corner they could not find anything.

A
PIG ON THE ROAD FROM GORT

There was a man coming along the road from Gort to Garryland one night, and he had a drop taken, and before him on the road he saw a pig walking. And having a drop in, he gave a shout and made a kick at it and bid it get out of that.

And from the time he got home, his arm had swelled from the shoulder to be as big as a bag, and he couldn’t use his hand with the pain in it. And his wife brought him after a few days to a woman that used to do cures at Rahasane.

And on the road all she could do would hardly keep him from lying down to sleep on the grass. And when they got to the woman, she knew all that happened, and says she: “It’s well for you that your wife didn’t let you fall asleep on the grass, for if you had done that but for an instant, you’d be a gone man.”

T
HE CROOKENED BACK