Hero-Tales of Ireland

by Unknown

Next day they said, “Grandmother, we will stay with you to-morrow, and leave you the next day.” On the second morning, they said, “We are going, and you, our grandmother, must do the best you can without us.”

“To what place are you going, my grandsons?”

“We are going to our father, if we can.”

When the old woman heard this, she went into the house, and brought out a basket cup full of trout blood (water), and gave it to Walokit, “Rub this over your whole body; use it always; it will give you strength. No matter how much you use the blood, the basket will never be empty.”

They took farewell of the old woman, and went to the upper side of the sky, but did not go to their father. They live up there now, and go over the whole world, sometimes to find their father, sometimes for other purposes. When they move, we see one, and hear the other.

This tale has a few of the disagreeable features peculiar to some of the early myth-tales of all races,—tales which, if not forgotten, are misunderstood as the race advances, and then become tragedies of horror. Still, such tales are among the most precious for science, if analyzed thoroughly.

In another tale, told me by the same man who related this one, the sun, after his road had been marked out, finally, was warned against his own children, the grisly bears, who would beset his path through the sky, and do their best to devour him.

The grisly bear maiden, Wimaloimis, is a terrible criminal; she piles horror upon horror. She tries to eat up the hospitable trout woman who gives her lodging; she has twins from her own father; she tries to eat her own children; she brings them to commit matricide under cruel conditions. The house of Pelops and Lot’s daughters, combined, barely match her. If the tale of Wimaloimis had belonged to early Greece, and had survived till the time of the Attic tragedians, the real nature of the actors in it would have been lost, in all likelihood, and then it might have served as a striking example of sin and its punishment. Instead of discovering who the dramatis personæ were really, the people of that time would have made them all human. In our day, we try to discover the point of view of the old myth-maker, to learn what it really was that he dealt with. In case we succeed, we are able to see that many of the repulsive features of ancient myths were not only natural and explicable, but absolutely unavoidable. The cloud, a grisly bear, is a true daughter of the sun. The sun and the cloud are undoubtedly the parents of the twin brothers, Thunder and Lightning; there are no other parents possible for them. That the cloud, according to myth description, tried to devour her own children, and was destroyed at last, and torn to pieces by them, is quite true. When we know the real elements of the tale, we find it perfectly accurate and truthful. If the personages in it were represented as human, it would become at once, what many a tale like it is made to be, repulsive and horrible.

Among Gaelic tales there are few in which the heroes are of the earliest period, though there are many in which primitive elements are prominent, and some in which they predominate. In a time sufficiently remote, Gaelic tales were made up altogether of the adventures of non-human heroes similar to those in the tales of America,—that is, heroes in the character of beasts, birds, and other living creatures, as well as the phenomena and elements of nature.

Beasts and birds are frequent in Gaelic tales yet; but they never fill the chief rôle in any tale. At most they are friends of the hero, and help him; not infrequently he could not gain victory without them. If on the bad side, the rôle is more prominent, a monster, or terrible beast, may be the leading opponent, or be one in a series of powerful enemies.