Notes and References.
I have scarcely anything to add to the general account of the collection of Celtic Fairy Tales which I gave in the predecessor to this volume, pages 237-42. Since the appearance of that volume in 1891, the publication of such tales has gone on apace. Mr. Curtin has published in the New York Sun no less than fifty more Irish fairy tales, one of which he has been good enough to place at my disposal for the present volume. Mr. Larminie has published with Mr. E. Stock a volume of West Irish Fairy Tales, of which I have also the privilege of presenting a specimen. A slight volume of Welsh Fairy Tales, published by Mr. Nutt, and a few fairy anecdotes contained in the Prize Essay on Welsh Folk-lore by the Rev. Mr. Evans, sum up Cambria's contribution to our subject during the past three years. The fifth volume of the Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, just about to appear at the moment of writing, is the sole addition to Celtic Fairy Tales from the country of J. F. Campbell. Taken altogether, something like a hundred previously unpublished tales from Celtdom have been rendered accessible to the world since I last wrote, a by no means insignificant outcome in three years. It is at any rate clear, that the only considerable addition to our folk-lore knowledge in these isles must come from the Gaelic area. The time of harvest can be but short; may the workers be many, willing, and capable.
XXVII. THE FATE OF THE CHILDREN OF LIR.
Sources.—Abridged from the text and translation published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language in 1883. This merely follows the text and version given by Professor O'Curry in Atlantis, iv. He used three Dublin MSS., none of them, however, of earlier date than the eighteenth century. Dr. Joyce gives a free paraphrase in his Old Celtic Romances.
Parallels.—For "Jealous Stepmother," see the bibliographical references in the list of incidents at the end of my paper on the "Science of Folk-tales" in the Transactions of the Folk-lore Congress, sub voce. Add Miss Roalfe Cox in Folk-lore Journal, vii. app. 37; also the same list sub voce "Swan Maiden Transformation." In modern Irish literature Griffin has included the tale in his Tales of the Jury-room, and Tom Moore's "Song of Fiounala" beginning "Silent, O Moyle" is founded upon it.
Remarks.—The "Fate of the Children of Lir" is always referred to along with "The Story of Deirdre" (cf. the Celtic Fairy Tales, ix.), and the "Children of Tuireann" as one of the Three Sorrowful Tales of Erin. But there is no evidence of equal antiquity to the other two stories, of which one is as old as the eleventh century. From the interspersed verse O'Curry concluded, however, that the story was at least of considerable antiquity, and the references to the unknown Saint Mochaomhog confirm his impression. The Hill of the White Field is near Newton Hannton, in the county of Armagh. The Lake of the Red Eye is Lough Derg, in the Shannon above Killaloe.
Fingula is Fair Shoulder. The tradition that swans are inviolable is still extant in Ireland. A man named Connor Griffin killed eleven swans: he had previously been a prosperous man, and shortly afterwards his son was drowned in the Shannon, his goods were lost, and his wife died (Children of Lir, Dublin edit., note, p. 87). In County Mayo it is believed that the souls of pure virgins are after death enshrined in the forms of swans; if anybody injures them, it is thought he will die within a year (Walter's Natural History of the Birds of Ireland, pp. 94-5). Mr. Gomme concludes from this that the swan was at one time a British totem (Arch. Rev., iii. 226-7).