THE POEM OF THE TOR.
PREFACE.
I have heard more than one poem in which occurs a dialogue between a living person and the soul of a dead man. I got the following from Mr. John Kearney, a schoolmaster, at Belmullet, Co. Mayo. The poem is well known round Belmullet, but I have a suspicion that this version of it is not complete. I have not been able, however, to secure a fuller one. It is locally known as the Dan or Poem of the Tor. This Tor is a rock in the sea some twelve miles from land. There is a lighthouse upon it now, but of course that was not so when the poem took shape, and no more lonesome place than it for a soul dreeing its weird could be conceived. The soul was put to do penance on this solitary rock. With the verse about the soul parting from the body under rain under wind, compare the fine North of England wake-dirge with the refrain—
Fire and sleet and candle light,
And Christ receive thy saule.
I have come across other allusions in Irish unpublished literature, prayers, etc., to the South being the side of the good angels and the North the side of the bad ones.
On the side of the north black walls of fire,
On the side of the south the people of Christ.
The "geilt" which the interlocutor supposes that the ghost may be, is a person who goes wild in madness, and such a one was supposed to have the power of levitation, and to be able to raise himself in the air and fly. See the extraordinary story of Suibhne Geilt, vol. xii. of the Irish Texts Society. See my "Religious Songs of Connacht," vol. i., p. 270.
THE STORY.
[THE MAN.]
O fellow yonder on the mountain
Who art being tortured at the Tor,
[I put] a question on thee in the name of Jesus,
Art thou a man of this world or a geilt?
[THE SOUL.]
Since the question is put in the name of Jesus,
Indeed I shall answer it for thee:
I am not a person of this world, nor a geilt,
But a poor soul who has left this world,
And who never went to God's heaven since.
[THE MAN.]
[I put] a question to thee again
Without doing thee harm:
How long since thou didst leave this world,
Or art thou there ever since?
[THE SOUL.]
Twenty years last Sunday
The soul parted with the [evil]-inclined body,
Under rain, under wind;
And if it were not for the blessing of the poor on the world,
I would be hundreds of years more there.
When I was upon the world
I was happy and airy,
And I desired to draw profit to myself,
But I am [now] in great tribulation, paying for that.
When I used to go to Sunday Mass
It was not mercy I used to ask for my soul,
But jesting and joking with young men,
And the body of my Christ before me.
When I would arrive home again
It was not of the voice of the priest I would be thinking,
But of the fine great possessions
I left behind me at home.
Good was my haggard and my large house;
And my brightness (?) to go out to the gathering,
Riding on a young steed,
Banquet and feast before me.
I set no store by my soul,
Until I saw the prowess of Death assembling:
On the side of the north, black walls of fire
On the side of the south the people of Christ
Gathering amongst the angels,
The Glorious Virgin hastening them.
"I do not know," says Peter,
"Does Christ recognize him?"
"I do not know," said Christ,
"Bitter alas! I do not recognize him."
Then spake the Glorious Virgin,
And lowered herself on her white knees,
"O my son, was it not for thee were prepared
The heaps of embers
To burn thy noble body?"
O Mother, helpful, glorious,
If it be thy will to take him to heaven,
I let him with thee,
And surely one thousand years at the Tor were better for you
Than one single hour in foul hell.