A story illustrating the same belief is told by John Sweeney, an inspector of National Schools, who wrote about forty years ago a series of letters describing Donegal and its inhabitants.[82] In his account of Arranmore he says: "Until lately the islanders could not be induced to attack a seal, they being strongly under the impression that these animals were human beings metamorphosed by the power of their own witchcraft. In confirmation of this notion, they used to repeat the story of one Rodgers of their island, who, being alone in his skiff fishing, was overtaken by a storm, and driven on the shore of the Scotch Highlands. Having landed, he approached a house which was close to the beach, and on entering it was accosted by name. Expressing his surprise at finding himself known in a strange country, and by one whom he had never seen, the old man who addressed him bared his head, and, pointing to a scar on his skull, reminded Rodgers of an encounter he had with a seal in one of the caves of Arranmore. 'I was,' he said, 'that seal, and this is the mark of the wound you inflicted on me. I do not blame you, however, for you were not aware of what you were doing.'"
I fear I have lingered too long over these old-world stories. To me they point to a far-distant past, when Ulster was covered with forests, in which the red deer and perhaps the Irish elk roamed, and inhabited by rude tribes, some of them of dwarfish stature, others tall; but these giants were apparently even less civilized than their smaller neighbours. Wars were frequent; the giant could hurl the unwieldy mass of stone, and the dwarfish man could send his arrow tipped with flint. Even more common was the stealthy raid, when women and children were carried off to the gloomy souterrain. How long did these rude tribes survive? It would be difficult to say; possibly until after the days of St. Patrick and St. Columkill.
I will not, however, indulge in a fancy sketch. The pressing need is not to interpret but to collect these old tales. The antiquary of the future, with fuller knowledge at his command, may be better able to decipher them; but if they are allowed to perish, one link with the past will be irretrievably lost.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] Read before the Archæological Section of the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, February 8, 1911.
[73] In "Celtic Folklore," vol. i., p. 210 et seq., Sir John Rhys relates a similar story. Here the woman is brought to a place which appears to her to be the finest she has ever seen. When the child is born the father gives her ointment to anoint its eyes, but entreats her not to touch her own with it. Inadvertently she rubs her finger across her eye, and now she sees that the wife is her former maidservant Eilian, and that she lies on a bundle of rushes and withered leaves in a cave. Not long afterwards the woman sees the husband in the market at Carnarvon, and asks for Eilian. He is angry, and, inquiring with which eye she sees him, puts it out with a bulrush.
From Palestine we have another variant of this story. The Rev. J. E. Hanauer, in "Folklore of the Holy Land," pp. 210 et seq., tells of a woman at El Welejeh who had spoken unkindly to a frog. The next night, on waking, she found herself in a cave surrounded by strange, angry-looking people; one of these "Jân" reproached her bitterly, saying that the frog was his wife, and threatening her with dire consequences unless a son were born. She assisted at the birth of the child, who was fortunately a boy, and was given a mukhaleh or kohl vessel, and was bidden to rub some of this kohl on the infant's eyes. When she had done this, she rubbed some on one of her own eyes, but before she had time to put any on the other the vessel was angrily taken from her. She was rewarded with onion-leaves, which in the morning turned to gold. Some time afterwards this woman was shopping at El Kuds, when she saw the Jennizeh pilfering from shop to shop. She spoke to her and kissed the baby, but the other answered fiercely, and, poking her finger into the woman's eye, put it out.
[74] In "Guleesh na Guss Dhu," Dr. Douglas Hyde gives us a similar tale from Co. Mayo. See "Beside the Fire," pp. 104-128.
[75] In "Folk Tales from Breffny," by B. Hunt, there is a story (pp. 99-103), "The Cutting of the Tree," which tells of how the fairies, when baffled in their endeavour to carry off the mistress of the house, left in the kitchen a wooden image "cut into the living likeness of the woman of the house."
[76] See ante, p. 60.