  The tales in this volume were told me by the following persons:— Nos. 1, 5, 18, 21. Maurice Lynch, Mount Eagle, West of Dingle, Kerry. Nos. 2, 11, 24. John Malone, Rahonain, West of Dingle. Nos. 3, 15. Shea, Kil Vicadowny, West of Dingle. No. 4. Thomas Brady, Teelin, County Donegal. No. 6. Maurice Fitzgerald, Emilich Slat, West of Dingle. Nos. 7, 9, 12, 17. John O’Brien, Connemara. No. 8. James Byrne, Glen Columkil, County Donegal. Nos. 10, 14. Colman Gorm, Connemara. No. 13. Michael Curran, Gortahork, County Donegal. No. 16. Michael O’Conor, six miles north of Newcastle West, County Limerick. Nos. 19, 20. Michael Sullivan, Dingle. No. 22. Dyeermud Duvane, Milltown, County Kerry. No. 23. Daniel Sheehy, Dunquin, Kerry, a man over a hundred years old. Elin Gow, the Swordsmith from Erin, and the Cow Glas Gainach.Glas Gainach. In this name of the celebrated cow glas means gray; gainach is a corruption of gaunach, written gamhnach, which means a cow whose calf is a In Donegal, gavlen is used instead of gaunach; and the best story-teller informed me that gavlen means a cow that has not had a calf for five years. He gave the terms for cows that have not had calves for one, two, three, four, and five years. These terms I wrote down; but unfortunately they are not accessible at present. The first in the series is gaunach, the last gavlen; the intervening ones I cannot recall. King Under the Wave is a personage met with frequently in Gaelic; his name is descriptive enough, and his character more or less clear in other tales. Cluainte is a place in the parish of Bally Ferriter, the westernmost district in Ireland. The site of Elin Gow’s house and forge was pointed out by the man who told the story, also the stone pillars between which the cow used to stand and scratch her two sides at once when coming home from pasture in the evening. The pillars are thirteen feet and a half apart, so that Glas Gainach had a bulky body. Glas Gainach went away finally through the bay called Ferriter’s Cove. In Gaelic, this bay is Caoil Cuan (Caol’s harbor), so called because the body of Caol, foster-son of Fin MacCool, was washed in there after the Battle of Ventry. (See last paragraph of the Battle of Ventry.) Saudan Og and the Daughter of the King of Spain, &c.Saudan Og means young Sultan. This is a curious naturalization of the son of the Sultan in Ireland, a very Conal Gulban was the great grandfather of Columbkil, founder of Iona and apostle of Scotland; hence, he lived a good many years before any King of the Turks could be in any place. In a certain tale of three brothers which I have heard, the narrator made “two halves” of Mark Antony, the three heroes being Mark, Antony, and Lepidus. Laian, written Laighean in Gaelic, means Leinster; the King of Laian is King of Leinster. The Black Thief.There are many variants of this tale, both in the north and south of Ireland. It seems to have been a great favorite, and is mentioned often, though few know it well. There are versions connected with Killarney and the O’Donohue. The adventures in the present tale are very striking. It would be difficult indeed to have narrower escapes than those of the Black Thief. The racing of the cats through all underground Erin is paralleled in Indian tales, especially those of the Modocs, in which immense journeys are made underground. The King’s Son from Erin, the Sprisawn, and the Dark King.Lochlinn is used to mean Denmark, though there is no connection whatever between the names. Lochlinn is doubtless one of the old names in Gaelic tales, and referred to some kind of water region. Instead of putting In the stealing of Manus, we have a case similar to that of Tobit in the Apocrypha. I know of no parallel to the scene in the three chambers with the chains and the cross-beams. It is terribly grim and merciless. There was no chance for the weak in those chambers. The work of the serpent in drying the lake by lashing it, and sending the water in showers over the country, is equalled in an Indian tale by ducks which rise from a lake suddenly, and in such incredible numbers that they take all the water away, carry off the lake with them. Amadan Mor.The boyhood of the Amadan Mor has some resemblance to that of the Russian hero, IlyÁ MÚromets, who sat so many years in the ashes without power to rise. The fear of stopping in unknown places finds expression frequently in Indian tales, and arises from the fact that the visitor does not know what spirits inhabit them, and therefore does not know how to avoid offending those spirits. Eilin Og seems to have a similar idea in the dark glen. Cud, Cad, and Micad.Urhu is called Nurhu sometimes, and appears to be the same as the old English Norroway, Norway. Hadone is said to be Sicily. Cahal, Son of King Conor.In this tale we have a number of elemental heroes, such as Striker and Wet Mantle. Against Striker, the great blower, no one can do anything at sea. This is the kind of hero who can walk on the water, or at least who never sinks in it much beyond his ankles. This Striker appears in another story as a giant out in the ocean, which he is beating with a club. In Wet Mantle, whose virtue is in his cloak, which is rain itself, we have an excellent friend for a rain-maker. Coldfeet.This is a good hero, an excellent herdsman and cattle-thief. What a splendid cowboy he would be in the Indian Territory or Wyoming. He has a good strain of simplicity and heroism in him. The bottle of water that is never drained, is like the basket of trout’s blood (also water) in the Indian tale of Walokit and Tumukit. Lawn Dyarrig, Son of the King of Erin, and the Knight of Terrible Valley.The serpent that sleeps seven years can be matched by monsters in American tales. The hearts of these creatures are sliced away by heroes who go down their Balor and Glas Gavlen.This was a great tale in the old time; but it is badly broken up now. If we could discover who Balor and his daughter were really, we might, perhaps, be able to understand why his grandson was fated to kill him. The theft of Glas Gavlen is the first act in a series which ends with the death of Balor. No doubt the whole story is as natural as that of Wimaloimis, the grisly-bear cloud-woman (Introduction) who tries to eat her own sons, lightning and thunder, and is killed by them afterward. Art, the King’s Son.This is a striking tale, the head following the body of the gruagach into the earth is peculiar. The pursuit of Art by Balor is as vigorous as it could be. Shall we say that the blade of the screeching sword is lightning, and the screech itself thunder? In Balor’s account of how his wife maltreated him, we have the incident of the infant saved by the faithful animal. Balor, however, when a wolf, saved himself by prompt action from the fate of Llewelyn’s dog and that of the ichneumen in the Sanscrit tale. There is no more interesting fact than this in myth Shawn Mac Breogan.In Gaelic, we meet more frequently the cloak of darkness, a cloak of effacement. In this tale we have a cloak or mantle of power, one that makes the wearer the finest person in the world. This is like the mantle of the prophet, which, if it falls on a successor to the office, gives him power equal to that of his predecessor. Of a similar character is the garment of the Wet Mantle Hero, in Cahal, son of King Conor, whose power is in his mantle, which is rain itself. In a certain Indian tale, two skins are described,—one the skin of a black rain cloud, the other the skin of a gray snow cloud; whenever rain is wanted, the black skin is shaken out in the air, when snow is desired, the gray one is shaken. This shaking is done by two deities in the sky (stones at present), who thus produce rain and snow ad libitum. The mantles of power were skins originally. When people had forgotten the special virtue of the skins, and mantles were of cloth or skin indifferently, or later on of cloth exclusively, the virtue connected with mantles by tradition remained to them without reference to material. In Hungarian tales the food of the steed, very often a mare, is glowing coals. There are Hungarian tales in which little if any doubt is left that the steed is lightning. The skin of the white mare is like the skin of Klakherrit or Pitis in the Indian tale. When the young woman puts on the skin, she becomes the white mare; when she takes it off, she is herself again. The Cotter’s Son and the Half Slim Champion.Instead of a king’s son, the more usual substitute for an earlier hero, we have in this tale a cotter’s son. The scene of shaking ashes from his person by a mourner who has sat by the fire for a long time, finds a parallel in Indian stories. The Gaelic heroes, however, manage to get vastly more ashes onto themselves than the Indians. The son of the King of Lochlin in this case shakes off seven tons. In one Irish tale that I know, the hero goes out into the field after mourning long at the hearth, and shakes from his person an amount of ashes that covers seven acres in front of him, seven acres behind him, seven acres on his right hand, and seven acres on his left. The old King of Lochlin, who has the same kind of story to tell as Balor, is a tremendously stubborn old fellow; there is a savage cruelty in the torture which his son inflicts on him that is without parallel, even in myth tales. The old man goes through the roasting with a strength which no stoic or martyr could equal. When he yields at last, he does so serenely, and tells a tale which solves the conundrum completely. Fin MacCool, the three Giants, and the Small Men.The theft of the children of the King of the Big Men has an interesting parallel in an Indian tale from California, a part of which is as follows:— There was a man named Kuril (which means rib). He didn’t seem to know much; but he could walk right through rocks, in at one side and out at the other. He walked across gullies, through thickets, and over precipices, as easily as on a smooth road. One evening people saw him coming from the west toward the village. When he had come near, the sun went down, and Kuril disappeared right before their eyes. They saw this several times afterwards. He came always just before sunset, never came quite to the village. The children used to play in the evening; and he would stop and look at them, and at sunset he would be gone, turned into something. One evening a very poor man saw Kuril pass his thumbnail along the top of his head, and split himself, the left half of him became a woman, and the right half remained a man. That night the new pair appeared to the poor man who had seen the splitting, they said that each of them was to be called Kukupiwit now (crooked breast), and talked with him. After that the poor man had great luck, killed many deer; what he wanted, he had. The male Kukupiwit came home late every evening. His other half watched the village children playing; if one stepped aside, or left the others, she thrust it into a basket, and ran home. People looked for their children, but never found them. She would listen, climb a house where she heard a child The mother woke now; the boy was gone. She roused her husband; they looked everywhere, found no trace of their son. Next night all in the village were watching. In one house a baby cried, and soon the men who were there heard creeping on the house. One man took the baby, held it high over the fire, and said, “Take this baby!” Kukupiwit reached down; the man lowered the child a little. She reached farther; that moment five or six men caught her arm, and tried to pull her down; but all who were in the house could not do that. One man chopped her arm right off with a flint knife, and threw it out; she fell to the ground where her arm was, she picked it up, and ran home. The Hard Gilla.This tale has a special interest, in that it gives the cause of the Battle of Ventry, described in the next tale. The cause, like that of the Trojan war, was a woman. The daughter of the High King of the World goes to Fin at first, and is then stolen away by him afterwards. THE END. |
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