Celtic Fairy Tales

Parallels.–Prof. Zimmer’s paper contains three other accounts of the terra repromissionis in the Irish sagas, one of them being the similar adventure of Cormac the nephew of Co

Remarks.–Co

As regards the present form of it, Prof. Zimmer (l.c. 261-2) places it in the seventh century. It has clearly been touched up by a Christian hand who introduced the reference to the day of judgment and to the waning power of the Druids. But nothing turns upon this interpolation, so that it is likely that even the present form of the legend is pre-Christian-i.e. for Ireland, pre-Patrician, before the fifth century.

The tale of Co

Et vos barbaricos ritus, moremque sinistrum,

Sacrorum, Druidae, positis repetistis ab armis,

Solis nosse Deos et coeli numera vobis

Aut solis nescire datum; nemora alta remotis

Incolitis lucis. Vobis auctoribus umbrae,

Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi,

Pallida regna petunt: regit idem spiritus artus

Orbe alio: longae, canitis si cognita, vitae

Mors media est.

The passage certainly seems to me to imply a different conception from the ordinary classical views of the life after death, the dark and dismal plains of Erebus peopled with ghosts; and the passage I have italicised would chime in well with the conception of a continuance of youth (idem spiritus) in Tir-nan-Og (orbe alio).

One of the most pathetic, beautiful, and typical scenes in Irish legend is the return of Ossian from Tir-nan-Og, and his interview with St. Patrick. The old faith and the new, the old order of things and that which replaced it, meet in two of the most characteristic products of the Irish imagination (for the Patrick of legend is as much a legendary figure as Oisin himself). Ossian had gone away to Tir-nan-Og with the fairy Niamh under very much the same circumstances as Condla Ruad; time flies in the land of eternal youth, and when Ossian returns, after a year as he thinks, more than three centuries had passed, and St. Patrick had just succeeded in introducing the new faith. The contrast of Past and Present has never been more vividly or beautifully represented.

II. GULEESH.

Source.–From Dr. Douglas Hyde’s Beside the Fire, 104-28, where it is a translation from the same author’s Leabhar Sgeulaighteachta. Dr Hyde got it from one Shamus O’Hart, a gamekeeper of Frenchpark. One is curious to know how far the very beautiful landscapes in the story are due to Dr. Hyde, who confesses to have only taken notes. I have omitted a journey to Rome, paralleled, as Mr. Nutt has pointed out, by the similar one of Michael Scott (Waifs and Strays, i. 46), and not bearing on the main lines of the story. I have also dropped a part of Guleesh’s name: in the original he is “Guleesh na guss dhu,” Guleesh of the black feet, because he never washed them; nothing turns on this in the present form of the story, but one ca

Parallels.–Dr. Hyde refers to two short stories, “Midnight Ride” (to Rome) and “Stolen Bride,” in Lady Wilde’s Ancient Legends. But the closest parallel is given by Miss Maclintock’s Donegal tale of “Jamie Freel and the Young Lady,” reprinted in Mr. Yeats’ Irish Folk and Fairy Tales, 52-9. In the Hibernian Tales, “Ma

III. FIELD OF BOLIAUNS.

Source.–T. Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland, ed. Wright, pp. 135-9. In the original the gnome is a Cluricaune, but as a friend of Mr. Batten’s has recently heard the tale told of a Lepracaun, I have adopted the better known title.

Remarks.–Lepracaun is from the Irish leith bhrogan, the one-shoemaker (cf. brogue), according to Dr. Hyde. He is generally seen (and to this day, too) working at a single shoe, cf. Croker’s story “Little Shoe,” l.c. pp. 142-4. According to a writer in the Revue Celtique, i. 256, the true etymology is luchor pan, “little man.” Dr. Joyce also gives the same etymology in Irish Names and Places, i. 183, where he mentions several places named after them.