SOME IRISH LEGENDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3397, 23 April 1919, Page 53

SOME IRISH LEGENDS.

By Jessie Mackay.

Whether for their value in comparative folk lore, their poetic beauty, or their arch, debonair, human quality, the peasant tales of Ireland are second to none. They enshrine the Celtic genius for all time, and enrich that strangely cosmopolitan store of common folk-literature with countless indispensable touches and agreements. An old book lies before me—T. Orofton Croker's "Fairy Legends," published in 1834, and abridged from a more diffuse edition of 10 years previous. We have thus, from the hand of a gifted son of Erin, the very dialect that gives life and colour to the stories current among the peasants of the south when George IV was King—stories shut up there from the time of Ireland's own Celtic prime, amid these isolated sons and daughters of the ancient Western people, and instinct with the gay and buoyant spirit that no outer misery could quell. Crofton Croker's fenius was a laughing sprite, and it is not ere we look for the sounding tales of the Feinne or the melting tragedy of Deirdre and Fionnula. But neither the

artist nor the scholar will pass these stories by in any study of folk-literature on account of their naive drollery, which redeems even horror from the tension of imagination more polished. True, the author is not above a gentle raillery on the subject of his countrymen's faith in the supernatural, as when he tells the tale of Musharoon Jack, who earned himself a name of lasting derision by calling his boon companions to see a company of white fairies in the forest, and finding that the vision was but a crop of mushrooms (musharoons in local dialect). And the author, moreover, admits a number of horrifying narratives, the general climax of which is the awakening of the hero after a night's wassail with- ghosts or goblins, in close conjunction with a very terrestrial bottle, and with no satisfactory credentials from his late place of durance or entertainment. The full colloquial flavour of this situation is found in

" Daniel O'Rourke's Journey to the Moon," in" which the hero, overtaken in the usual manner, is picked out of a bog by a talkative eagle, who " flies " him to the moon.

" Dan,'" said the eagle, "I'm tired with this long fly. I had no notion 'twas so far. 'And, my lord, sir," said I, "who in the world axed you to fly so far —was it I? Did I not beg and pray and beseech you to stop half an hour ago?" "There's no use talking, Dan," says he. "I'm tired bad enough, so you must get off and sit down on the moon until I rest myself." " Is it sit down on the moon?" said I-j " is it upon that little round thing, _then? Why, then, sure, I'd fall off in ""a minute and be kilt and split and smashed all to bits. You are a vile deceiver, so you are!" The obdurate bird compels his late rider to mount astride the handle of a reaping hook sticking out of the moon. When he had me there .safely landed, he turned about on me, and said, " Good morning to you, Daniel O'Rourke," said he, • "I think I've nicked you fairly now. You robbed my nest last year " ('twas true enough for him, but now he found it out hard to say), " and in return you are freely welcome to cool your heels dangling upon the moon like a cockthrow." The man. in the moon, after giving broad hints that company there is unwelcome, cuts the handle of the reaping hook, with the ironical farewell, " Good morning to you, Dan. I thank you for your visit, and fair weather after you, Daniel." Dan then meets with a friend in the shape of a wild gander from his own bog In Ballyasheenough. " Dan," said he, "I'll save you. Put ..out your hand and catch me by the lejj, and I'll fly you home." "Sweet is your hand in a pitcher of honey, my jewel," says I, though all the time I thought in myself that I don't much trust you. True, enough, the gander shortly mentioned that he was going home by way of Arabia, and the only way for a Bpeedier return to Ireland was to drop Dan - on a passing ship—an ill-missed mark, as it proved: Down to the very bottom I went, and gave myself up forever, when a whale walked right up to me, scratching himself after his night's sleep, and looked me full in the face, and never the word did he say, but, lifting up his tail, he splashed me all over again with the cold salt water, till there wasn't a dry stitch on me; and I heard a voice I knew saying, " Get up, you drunken brute, off of that," and with that I woke up, and there was Judy my wife, with a tubful of water, which she was splashing all over me. It scarcely boots, perhaps, to inquire whether this bog fantasy has any kinship with the modern Scandinavian idyll of Selma Lagerlof, whose boy hero, Nils, is made to learn at once the beauty of kindness and the geography of Sweden in his journey on the back of " Goosey-gander." * Denmark simply abounds in similar folk tales regarding the stork. But we are on wider ground when we begin with the fairy element proper in a series of legends relating to the Shefro, who may be .supposed to be the aristocracy of fairies, dwelling socially in populous mansions of their own. These little people are not unwilling to bestow valuable gifts on mankind, provided they are received discreetly and gratefully. Such a gift was that bestowed upon Mick Purcell as he went to sell his last cow at the fair, the donor giving a bottle in exchange for the cow, with a promise that Mick would be a rich man. Sure enough, arrived at home, Mick found the fairy-farmer's word hold good, when tiwq tiny elves sprang out of the bottle and

laid the cabin table with the choicest of banquets on gold and silver dishes. Mick'a family, however, grew wasteful, and the secret was wormed out by the landlord, who tempted Mick to sell the bottle for a big estate, where reckless good living finally brought them down to one cow only. Again Mick went to market, and succeeded in getting .another bottle. This, however, housed two illlooking goblins with cudgels, who nearly made an end of the wastrel family. How Mick's good wit compelled an exchange with the landlord and a lasting return of riches need not be narrated. Suffice it to say that Mick Purcell's bottle is a humble Aryan cousin of the Greek Cornucopeia or horn of plenty, and a cosmopolitan connection of the Sampo, that mystical vessel of the Turanian myth which runs, through the Kalevala, oi national epic of the Finns. One cannot help recalling also the Norse legend of Froai's Quern of Plenty, which ground gold instead of meal. (To be Concluded.)