SOME IRISH LEGENDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3398, 30 April 1919, Page 53

SOME IRISH LEGENDS.

By Jessie Macka*.

(Concluded.) The Shefro we have alluded to as the aristocrats of Faerie in Irish belief; but there are quite as many legends about the humbler Cluricaune, who is' content to make his solitary dwelling with some human host, usually a most unwilling one, or to work at some lowly calling, though in full possession of uncounted fairy treasure. To the first class belonged the ■Cluricaune Naggeneen, who took up his residence in the commodious -cellar of MacCarthy, of Ballinacarthy, and obliged that gentleman to go to the inconvenience of bring up -his own wine nightly, as no butler could bear the fearful dance of pipes and barrels set in motion by the mischievous little elf, who nevertheless accorded to his human master, or landlord, as one might say, a whimsical kind of respect. To the second class belongs the leprachaun, or fairy shoemaker of the North of Ireland, who, if seized, or even held by the eye of a human captor, has to deliver up a fairy treasure, but who disappears like lightning if any ruse to divert attention from himself succeeds T. Crofton Croker, in these cheerful records of fairy mischief, does not touch upon the tragic side of the leprachaun in Leinster, where the creature sometimes becomes an incubus upon one who has sinned a mortal sin. Mr Croker does, however, offer some speculations, doubtless rather musty after 80 years, on the derivation of the name. Cluricaune, Lepechaun, Euricaune, and other Irish variants, he believes likely to have come from an Erse word meaning a pigmy. There is a doubtful alternative in two words meaning "rush man"—i.e., some one who rides on a rush, as the elf sometimes did, or ode as tall as a rush. But it is not difficult to identify the kindred, at least, of these busy, tiny guardians of fairy treasure—namely, the little Earthmen or Trolls of Teutonic, story, whose squat figures house spirits irritable and treacherous. The fairy shoemaker is not unrelated, one gathers, to the fairy smith or English fame, the last appearance of whom is so skilfully introduced in "Kenilwortli," where the trusty Way land Smith has his own reasons for exploiting the popular belief, and turning a perfectly honest penny by shoeing the horses tied at a certain spot for the current fee, which is placed on a.broad stone, so that the supposed fairy farrier was never seen. The Leprachaun shoemaker, we may add, dealt in that ancient make of footgear where metal bulked as much as leather, conveying more "than a hint of the modern theory that the universal dread of iron among fairies is really a memory of the Stone Age races, beginning to fall back before the conquering races who had mastered metal work... That far-found fancy that a sneeze must always be blessed or evil may follow is whimsically told in "Master and Man," where Billy Macdaniel, accepting a fairy drink to assuage his chronic thirst, is bound to serve an ill-favoured ; richlydressed little man for the -proverbial seven years and a day. Nightly he pulls two rushes out of a bog: his master says to them, "Borram, Borram, Borram!" ("Grow great, great, great!") Two fine rush horses are thus requisitioned, on which they mount and ride, "kicking the clouds before them like snowballs," till they make some likely mansion, which they enter through the keyhole in order to plunder the cellar. All goes merrily till one night Billy is bidden to bring three rushes. The reason is given thus:

"Billy," said the little man, "I will be a thousand years old to-morrow." "God bless us, sir," said Billy, "will yon?" "Don't say these words again, Billy," said the little man, "or vou will be my ruin for ever. Now, Billy, as I will

be a thousand years in the world tomorrow, I think it is full time for mo to get married." "I think so, too, without any kind of doubt at all," said Billy, "that is, if you ever mean to marry. '

The three Irish hippo griffs, accordingly, are halted outside a house lit up for the marriage of pretty Bridget Rooney, "a tall and comely girl, come of decent people," who is to be carried off on her wedding night. The fairy bridegroom and Billy, seated astride the rafters, hear Bridget sneeze, but the company is too busy with pig's head and greens to bless her in the orthodox manner. Again a gentle sneeze is disregarded, and yet a third time the fated sound is heard. Billy, bursting with pity for the poor bride, unwittingly cries, " God bless you ]' The disappointed elf vanishes, giving Billy one terrific kick in discharge, which lands him sprawling on the table, to tell his tale, and.see Bridget at once wedded to her proper man for safety. It is a far cry from Irish folktale to the Talmud, yet there the Jewish belief is set forth that our first parents learned how sudden death might follow the dangerous happening of a sneeze unless the bystanders blessed the threatened one.

Drollery finds no placej*however, in the creepy legend of the Banshee, and the respite accorded to the hero, snatched away to judgment from a life of dissipation. The horror round the whiteshrouded woman who keens his second death, when -the time of- probation is past, is real and unsoftened. One instinctively turns to the White Lady who, according to a still lingering German belief, appears before the death of Hohenzollern princes. The Banshee is fully acclimatised in Scottish legend, as readers of Scott will remember. Scarcely less terrible are Crofton Croker's tales of the Phooka, a malignant appearance sometimes of a hideous, redeyed old woman and sometimes of a black goat. The Phooka is a peasant's idea of the Evil One. The name is identified with the English Puck, a tricksy apparition of less horrific associations'. Modern scholarship, one hears, connects both words with " bog " or "bogie," the Slavonic word for " God." Here, indeed, speculation is barred for most. Slavonic myth, wholy unknown in Croker's day, is curiously sealed away from the Western public, suggesting that there is no such wealth of poetry there as that which the other Aryan' races have been drawing upon for long centuries. Pure poetry and sadness invest the stories of the water fairies. The merrow or mermaid heads the procession of these sad and lovely beings. The merrow is the Irish counterpart of all the seamaidens, who, losing their caps or mantles, become contented wives on land. But all over Europe the same story is told of the husband's carelessness in storing these gea-trappings, which are always discovered by the wife, whose longing for the sea at once returns, so that they must leave the earthly house for ever. The story of Fior Usga, the Irish princess, whose father makes her keeper of a spring of pure water in his courtyard, has curious affinities with the German Undine and the Breton princess who brings the sea-flood over the Kingdom of Ys. The symbolism of the Irish story is less obvious, and the setting plainer- and more {>rirnitive. The king grows selfish, and ocks away the good water from his people. Fior Usga is commanded to fetch water for some honoured guest, and goes unwillingly to perform the menial service. The weight of the golden vessel in her hand causes her to fall into the well, which rises in jets till it not only covers the palace but forms the Lough of Cork, under which Usga and the enchanted company stil hold revel, waiting for someone to recover the golden vessel, when the spell will cease. Space forbids further examples, but enough has been given to show the oneness of Irish legend with other bodies of folk-lore throughout Europe and the world.