Is dona do éiriġ ḋaṁ anois, ar an Ceiṫearnaċ óir atá an t-óganaċ aig dul ag pógaḋ mo ṁná agus an cú aig creim an ġearrḟiaḋ. Do ṫarraing an Ceiṫearnaċ an dréimire anuas, agus do fuair an t-ógánaċ fairre(?) an mnaoi agus an cu aig creim an ġearrḟiaḋ aṁuil a duḃairt, i.e., after that the kerne took out a bag from under his arm-pit and he brought out a ball of silk from the bag, and he threw it up into the expanse(?) of the firmament, and it became a ladder; and again he took out a hare and let it up the ladder. Again he took out a red-eared hound and let it up after the hare. Again he took out a timid frisking dog, and he let her up after the hare and the hound, and said, “I am afraid,” said he, “the hound and the dog will eat the hare, and I think I ought to send some relief to the hare.” Then he took out of the bag a handsome youth in excellent apparel, and he let him up after the hare and the hound and the dog. He took out of the bag a lovely girl in beautiful attire, and he let her up after the hare, the hound, the youth, and the dog.
“It’s badly it happened to me now,” says the kerne, “for the youth is going kissing my woman, and the dog gnawing the hare.” The kerne drew down the ladder again and he found the youth “going along with the woman, and the dog gnawing the hare,” as he said.
The English “Jack and the Beanstalk” is about the best-known ladder story.
[Page 141.] This story was not invented to explain the existence of the twelve tribes of Galway, as the absence of any allusion to them in all the parallel versions proves; but the application of it to them is evidently the brilliant afterthought of some Galwegian shanachie.
The Court of Crinnawn.
[Page 142.] The court of Crinnawn is an old ruin on the river Lung, which divides the counties of Roscommon and Mayo, about a couple of miles from the town of Ballaghadereen. I believe, despite the story, that it was built by one of the Dillon family, and not so long ago either. There is an Irish prophecy extant in these parts about the various great houses in Roscommon. Clonalis, the seat of the O’Connor Donn—or Don, as they perversely insist on spelling it; Dungar, the seat of the De Freynes; Loughlinn, of the Dillons, etc.; and amongst other verses, there is one which prophecies that “no roof shall rise on Crinnawn,” which the people say was fulfilled, the place having never been inhabited or even roofed. In the face of this, how the story of Crinnawn, son of Belore, sprang into being is to me quite incomprehensible, and I confess I have been unable to discover any trace of this particular story on the Roscommon side of the river, nor do I know from what source the shanachie, Mr. Lynch Blake, from whom I got it, become possessed of it. Balor of the evil eye, who figures in the tale of “The Children of Tuireann,” was not Irish at all, but a “Fomorian.” The pattern, accompanied with such funest results for Mary Kerrigan, is a festival held in honour of the patron saint. These patterns were common in many places half a century ago, and were great scenes of revelry and amusement, and often, too, of hard fighting. But these have been of late years stamped out, like everything else distinctively Irish and lively.
[This story is a curious mixture of common peasant belief about haunted raths and houses, with mythical matter probably derived from books. Balor appears in the well-known tale of MacKineely, taken down by O’Donovan, in 1855, from Shane O’Dugan of Tory Island (Annals. I. 18, and cf. Rhys, Hibbert Lect., p. 314), but I doubt whether in either case the appearance of the name testifies to a genuine folk-belief in this mythological personage, one of the principal representatives of the powers of darkness in the Irish god-saga.—A.N.]
Neil O’Carree.
[Page 148.] The abrupt beginning of this story is no less curious than the short, jerky sentences in which it is continued. Mr. Larminie, who took down this story phonetically, and word for word, from a native of Glencolumkille, in Donegal, informed me that all the other stories of the same narrator were characterized by the same extraordinary style. I certainly have met nothing like it among any of my shanachies. The crumskeen and galskeen which Neil orders the smith to make for him, are instruments of which I never met or heard mention elsewhere. According to their etymology they appear to mean “stooping-knife” and “bright-knife,” and were, probably, at one time, well-known names of Irish surgical instruments, of which no trace exists, unless it be in some of the mouldering and dust-covered medical MSS. from which Irish practitioners at one time drew their knowledge. The name of the hero, if written phonetically, would be more like Nee-al O Corrwy than Neil O Carree, but it is always difficult to convey Gaelic sounds in English letters. When Neil takes up the head out of the skillet (a good old Shaksperian word, by-the-by, old French, escuellette, in use all over Ireland, and adopted into Gaelic), it falls in a gliggar or gluggar. This Gaelic word is onomatopeic, and largely in vogue with the English-speaking population. Anything rattling or gurgling, like water in an india-rubber ball, makes a gligger; hence, an egg that is no longer fresh is called a glugger, because it makes a noise when shaken. I came upon this word the other day, raised proudly aloft from its provincial obscurity, in O’Donovan Rossa’s paper, the United Irishman, every copy of which is headed with this weighty spruch, indicative of his political faith:
“As soon will a goose sitting upon a glugger hatch goslings, as an Irishman, sitting in an English Parliament, will hatch an Irish Parliament.”