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I have come across other allusions in Irish unpublished literature, prayers, etc., to the South being the side of the good angels and the North the side of the bad ones.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.