Sea Stories

[ladyanastasia]

Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland
by Lady Augusta Gregory 1920

It was on the coast I began to gather these stories, and l went after a while to the islands Inishmor, Inishmaan, Inisheer, and so I give the sea-stories first.

I was told by:

A Man on the Height near Dun Conor:

It's said there's everything in the sea the same as on the land, and we know there's horses in it. This boy here saw a horse one time out in the sea, a grey one, swimming about. And there were three men from the north island caught a horse in their nets one night when they were fishing for mackerel, but they let it go; it would have broke the boat to bits if they had brought it in, and anyhow they thought it was best to leave it. One year at Kinvara, the people were missing their oats that was eaten in the fields, and they watched one night and it was five or six of the sea-horses they saw eating the oats, but they could not take them, they made off to the sea.

And there was a man on the north island fishing on the rocks one time, and a mermaid came up before him, and was partly like a fish and the rest like a woman. But he called to her in the name of God to be off, and she went and left him.

There was a boy was sent over here one morning early by a friend of mine on the other side of the island, to bring over some cattle that were in a field he had here, and it was before daylight, and he came to the door crying, and said he heard thirty horses or more galloping over the roads there, where you'd think no horse could go.

Surely those things are on the sea as well as on the land. My father was out fishing one night off Tyrone and something came beside the boat, that had eyes shining like candles. And then a wave came in, and a storm rose of a moment, and whatever was in the wave, the weight of it had like to sink the boat. And then they saw that it was a woman in the sea that had the shining eyes. So my father went to the priest, and he bid him always to take a drop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in the boat with him, and nothing would harm him.



A Galway Bay Lobster-Seller:

They are on the sea as well as on the land, and their boats are often to be seen on the bay sailing boats and others. They look like our own, but when you come near them they are gone in an instant [1].

My mother one time thought she saw our own boat come in to the pier with my father and two other men in it, and she got the supper ready, but when she went down to the pier and called them there was nothing there, and the boat didn't come in till two hours after.

There were three or four men went out one day to fish, and it was a dead calm; but all of a sudden they heard a blast and they looked, and within about three mile of the boat they saw twelve men from the waist, the rest of them was under water. And they had sticks in their hands and were striking one another. And where they were, and the blast, it was rough, but smooth and calm on each side.

There's a sort of a light on the sea sometimes; some call it a "Jack O'Lantern" [2] and some say it is sent by them to mislead them.

There's many of them out in the sea, and often they pull the boats down. [3] It's about two years since four fishermen went out from Aran, two fathers and two sons, where they saw a big ship corning in and flying the flag for a pilot, and they thought she wanted to be brought in to Galway. And when they got near the ship, it faded away to nothing and the boat turned over and they were all four drowned.

There were two brothers of my own went to fish for the herrings, and what they brought up was like the print of a cat, and it turned with the inside of the skin outside, and no hair. So they pulled up the nets, and fished no more that day. There was one of them lying on the strand here, and some of the men of the village came down of a sudden and surprised him. And when he saw he was taken he began a great crying. But they only lifted him down to the sea and put him back into it. Just like a man they said he was. And a little way out there was another just like him, and when he saw that they treated the one on shore so kindly, he bowed his head as if to thank them.

Whatever's on the land, there's the same in the sea, and between the islands of Aran they can often see the horses galloping about at the bottom [4].

There was a sort of a big eel used to be in Tully churchyard, used to come and to root up the bodies, but I didn't hear of him of late--he may be done away with now.

There was one Curran told me one night he went down to the strand where he used to be watching for timber thrown up and the like. And on the strand, on the dry sands, he saw a boat, a grand one with sails spread and all, and it up farther than any tide had ever reached. And he saw a great many people round about it, and it was all lighted up with lights. And he got afraid and went away. And four hours after, after sunrise, he went there again to look at it, and there was no sign of it, or of any fire, or of any other thing. The Mara-warra (mermaid) was seen on the shore not long ago, combing out her hair. She had no fish's tail, but was like another woman.



John Corley:

There is no luck if you meet a mermaid and you out at sea, but storms will come, or some ill will happen.

There was a ship on the way to America, and a mermaid was seen following it, and the bad weather began to come. And the captain said, "It must be some man in the ship she's following, and if we knew which one it was, we'd put him out to her and save ourselves."

So they drew lots, and the lot fell on one man, and then the captain was sorry for him, and said he'd give him a chance till tomorrow. And the next day she was following them still, and they drew lots again, and the lot fell on the same man. But the captain said he'd give him a third chance, but the third day the lot fell on him again. And when they were going to throw him out he said, "Let me alone for a while." And he went to the end of the ship and he began to sing a song in Irish, and when he sang, the mermaid began to be quiet and to rock like as if she was asleep. So he went on singing till they came to America, and just as they got to the land the ship was thrown up into the air, and came down on the water again. There's a man told me that was surely true.

And there was a boy saw a mermaid down by Spiddal not long ago, but he saw her before she saw him, so she did him no harm. But if she'd seen him first, she'd have brought him away and drowned him.

Sometimes a light will come on the sea before the boats to guide them to the land. And my own brother told me one day he was out and a storm came on of a sudden, and the sail of the boat was let down as quick and as well as if two men were in it. Some neighbour or friend it must have been that did that for him. Those that go down to the sea after the tide going out, to cut the weed, often hear under the sand the sound of the milk being churned. There's some didn't believe that till they heard it themselves.



A Man from Roundstone:

One night I was out on the boat with another man, and we saw a big ship near us with about twenty lights. She was as close to us as that rock (about thirty yards), but we saw no one on board. And she was like some of the French ships that sometimes come to Galway. She went on near us for a while, and then she turned towards the shore and then we knew that she was not a right ship. And she went straight on to the land, and when she touched it, the lights went out and we saw her no more.

There was a comrade of mine was out one night, and a ship came after him, with lights, and she full of people. And as they drew near the land, he heard them shouting at him and he got afraid, and he went down and got a coal of fire and threw it at the ship, and in a minute it was gone.



A Schoolmaster:

A boy told me last night of two men that went with poteen to the Island of Aran. And when they were on the shore they saw a ship coming as if to land, and they said, "We'll have the bottle ready for those that are coming." But when the ship came close to the land, it vanished. And presently they got their boat ready and put to sea. And a sudden blast came and swept one of them off. And the other saw him come up again, and put out the oar across his breast for him to take hold of it. But he would not take it but said, "I'm all right again now," and sank down again and was never seen no more.



John Nagle:

For one there's on the land there's ten on the sea. When I lived at Ardfry there was never a night but there was a voice heard crying and roaring, by them that were out in the bay. A baker he was from Loughrea, used to give short weight and measure, and so he was put there for a punishment.

I saw a ship that was having a race with another go suddenly down into the sea, and no one could tell why. And afterwards one of the Government divers was sent down to look for her, and he told me he'd never as long as he'd live go down again, for there at the bottom he found her, and the captain and the saloon passengers, and all sitting at the table and eating their dinner, just as they did before.



A Little Girl:

One time a woman followed a boat from Galway twenty miles out, and when they saw that she was some bad thing, wanting some of them, they drowned her.



Mrs. Casey:

I was at home and I got some stories from a man I had suspected of having newses. And he told me that when he was a youngster he was at a height where there used to be a great many of them. And all of a sudden he saw them fly out to where a boat was coming from Duras with seaweed. And they went in two flights, and so fast that they swept the water away from each side the boat, and it was left on the sand, and this they did over and over, just to be humbugging the man in the boat, and he was kept there a long time. When they first rose up, they were like clouds of dust, but with all sorts of colours, and then he saw their faces turned, but they kept changing colour every minute [5]. Laughing and humbugging they seemed to be.

My uncle that used to go out fishing for mackerel told me that one night some sort of a monster came under the boat and it wasn't a fish, and it had them near upset

At an evening gathering in Inishmaan, by a Son of the House:

There was a man on this island was down on the beach one evening with his dog, and some black thing came up out of the sea, and the dog made for it and began to fight it. And the man began to run home and he called the dog, and it followed him, but every now and again it would stop and begin to fight again. And when he got to the house he called the dog in and shut the door, and whatever was outside began hitting against the door but it didn't get in. But the dog went in under the bed in the room, and before morning it was dead.



The Man of the House:

A horse I've seen myself on the sea and on the rocks--a brown one, just like another. And I threw a stone at it, and it was gone in a minute. We often heard there was fighting amongst these. And one morning before daybreak I went down to the strand with some others, and the whole of the strand, and it low tide, was covered with blood.



Colman Kane:

I knew a woman on this island and she and her daughter went down to the strand one morning to pick weed, and a wave came and took the daughter away. And a week after that, the mother saw her coming to the house, but she didn't speak to her.

There was a man coming from Galway here and he had no boatman. And on the way he saw a man that was behind him in the boat, that was putting up the sail and taking the management of everything, and he spoke no word. And he was with him all the way, but when the boat came to land, he was gone, and the man isn't sure, but he thinks it was his brother.

You see that sand below on the south side. When the men are out with the mackerel boats at early morning, they often see those sands covered with boys and girls.

There were some men out fishing in the bay one time, and a man came and held on to the boat, and wanted them to make room for him to get in, and after a time he left them. He was one of those. And there was another of them came up on the rocks one day, and called out to Martin Flaherty that was going out and asked what was his name.

There's said to be another island out there that's enchanted, and there are some that see it. And it's said that a fisherman landed on it one time, and he saw a little house, and he went in, and a very nice-looking young woman came out and said, "What will you say to me?" and he said, "You are a very nice lady." And a second came and asked him the same thing and a third, and he made the same answer. And after that they said, "You'd best run of your life," and so he did, and his curragh was floating along and he had but just time to get into it, and the island was gone. But if he had said "God bless you," the island would have been saved.



A Fisherman on Kilronan Pier:

I don't give in to these things myself, but they'd make you believe them in the middle island. Mangan, that I lodged with there, told me of seeing a ship when he was out with two other men, that followed them and vanished. And he said one of the men took to his bed from that time and died. And Doran told me about the horse he saw, that was in every way like a horse you'd see on land. And a man on the south island told me how he saw a calf one morning on the strand, and he thought it belonged to a neighbour, and was going to drive it up to his field, when its mother appeared on the sea, and it went off to her.

They are in the sea as well as on the land. That is well known by those that are out fishing by the coast. When the weather is calm, they can look down sometimes and see cattle and pigs and all such things as we have ourselves. And at nights their boats come out and they can be seen fishing, but they never last out after one o'clock.

The cock always crows on the first of March every year at one o'clock. And there was a man brought a cock out with him in his boat to try them. And the first time when it crowed they all vanished. That is how they were detected.

There are more of them in the sea than on the land, and they sometimes try to come over the side of the boat in the form of fishes, for they can take their choice shape.



Pat O'Hagan:

There was two fine young women--red-haired women--died in my village about six months ago. And I believe they're living yet. And there are some have seen them appear. All I ever saw myself was one day I was out fishing with two others, and we saw a canoe coming near us, and we were afraid it would come near enough to take away our fish. And as we looked it turned into a three-masted ship, and people in it. I could see them well, dark-coloured and dressed like sailors. But it went away and did us no harm.

One night I was going down to the curragh, and it was a night in harvest, and the stars shining, and I saw a ship fully rigged going towards the coast of Clare where no ship could go. And when I looked again, she was gone.

And one morning early, I and other men that were with me, and one of them a friend of the man here, saw a ship coming to the island, and he thought she wanted a pilot, and put out in the curragh. But when we got to where she was, there was no sign of her, but where she was the water was covered with black gulls, and I never saw a black gull before, thousands and crowds of them, and not one white bird among them. And one of the boys that was with me took a tarpin and threw it at one of the gulls and hit it on the head, and when he did, the curragh went down to the rowlocks in the water-up to that-and it's nothing but a miracle she ever came up again, but we got back to land. I never went to a ship again, for the people said it was on account of me helping in the Preventive Service it happened, and that if I'd hit at one of the gulls myself, there would have been a bad chance for us. But those were no right gulls, and the ship was no living ship.



The Old Man in the Kitchen:

It's in the middle island the most of them are, and I'll tell you a thing that I know of myself that happened not long ago. There was a young girl, and one evening she was missing, and they made search for her everywhere and they thought that she was drowned or that she had gone away with some man. And in the evening of the next day there was a boy out in a curragh, and as he passed by a rock that is out in the sea there was the girl on it, and he brought her off. And surely she could not go there by herself. I suppose she wasn't able to give much account of it, and now she's after going to America [6].

And in Aran there were three boys and their uncle went out to a ship they saw coming, to pilot her into the bay. But when they got to where she was, there was no ship, and a sea broke over the canoe, and they were drowned, all fine strong men. But a man they had with them that was no use or of no account, he came safe to land. And I know a man in this island saw curraghs and curraghs full of people about the island of a Sunday morning early, but I never saw them myself. And one Sunday morning in my time there were scores and scores lying their length by the sea on the sand below, and they saw a woman in the sea, up to her waist, and she racking her hair and settling herself and as clean and as nice as if she was on land. Scores of them saw that.

There's a house up there where the family have to leave a plate of potatoes ready every night, and all's gone in the morning [7].

They are said to have all things the same as ourselves under the sea, and one day a cow was seen swimming as if for the headland, but before she got to it she turned another way and went down. And one time I got a small muc-warra (porpoise) and I went to cut it up to get what was good of it, for it had about two inches of fat, and when I cut it open the heart and the liver and every bit of it were for all the world like a pig you would cut up on land.

There's a house in the village close by this that's haunted. My sister was sitting near it one day, and it empty and locked, and some other little girls, and they heard a noise in it, and at the same time the flags they were sitting on grew red-hot, that they had to leave them. And another time the woman of the house was sick, and a little girl that was sitting by the fire in the kitchen saw standing in the door the sister of the woman that was sick, and she a good while dead, and she put up her arm, as if to tell her not to notice her. And the poor woman of that house, she had no luck, nothing but miscarriages or dead babies. And one child lived to be nine months old, and there was less flesh on it at the end of the nine months than there was the day it was born. She has a little girl now that's near a year old, but her arm isn't the size of that, and she's crabbed and not like a child as she should be. Many a one that's long married without having a child goes to the fortune-teller in Galway, and those that think anything of themselves go to Roundstone.



A Man near Loughmore:

I know a woman was washed and laid out, and it went so far that two half-penny candles were burned over her. And then she sat up, came back again, and spoke to her husband, and told him how to divide his property, and to manage the children well. And her step-son began to question her, and he might have got a lot out of her but her own son stopped him and said to let her alone. And then she turned over on her side and died. She was not to say an old woman. It's not often the old are taken. What use would there be for them? But a woman to be taken young, you know there's demand for her. It's the people in the middle island know about these things. There were three boys from there lost in a curragh at the point near the lighthouse, and for long after their friends were tormented when they came there fishing, and they would see ships there when the people of this island that were out at the same time couldn't see them. There were three or four out in a curragh near the lighthouse, and a conger-eel came and upset it, and they were all saved but one, but he was brought down and for the whole day they could hear him crying and screeching under the sea. And they were not the only ones, but a fisherman that was there from Galway had to go away and leave it, because of the screeching.

There was a coast-guard's wife there was all but gone, but she was saved after. And there's a boy here now was for a long time that they'd give the world he was gone altogether, with the state he was in, and now he's as strong as any boy in the island; and if ever any one was away and came back again, it was him. Children used often to be taken, but there's a great many charms in use in these days that saves them. A big sewing-needle you'll see the woman looking for to put back again into the world before they die in the place of some young person. And even a beast of any consequence if anything happens to it, no one in the island would taste it; there might be something in it, some old woman or the like.

There were a few young men from here were kept in Galway for a day, and they went to a woman there that works the cards. And she told them of deaths that would come in certain families. And it wasn't a fortnight after that five boys were out there, just where you see the curragh now, and they were upset and every one drowned, and they were of the families that she had named on the cards.

My uncle told me that one night they were all up at that house up the road, making a match for his sister, and they stopped till near morning, and when they went out, they all had a drop taken. And he was going along home with two or three others and one of them, Michael Flaherty, said he saw people on the shore. And another of them said that there were not, and my uncle said, "If Flaherty said that and it not true, we have a right to bite the ear off him, and it would be no harm." And then they parted, and my uncle had to pass by the beach, and then he saw whole companies of people coming up from the sea, that he didn't know how he'd get through them, but they opened before him and let him pass.

There were men going to Galway with cattle one morning from the beach down there, and they saw a man up to his middle in the sea-all of them saw it.

There was a man was down early for lobsters on the shore at the middle island, and he saw a horse up to its middle in the sea, and bowing its head down as if to drink. And after he had watched it awhile it disappeared.

There was a woman walking over by the north shore-God have mercy on her-she's dead since-and she looked out and saw an island in the sea, and she was a long time looking at it. It's known to be there, and to be enchanted, but only few can see it.

There was a man had his horse drawing seaweed up there on the rocks, the way you see them drawing it every day, in a basket on the mare's back. And on this day every time he put the load on, the mare would let its leg slip and it would come down again, and he was vexed and he bad a stick in his hand and he gave the mare a heavy blow. And that night she had a foal that was dead, not come to its full growth, and it had spots over it, and every spot was of a different colour. And there was no sire on the island at that time, so whatever was the sire must have come up from the sea [8].



A Man Watching the Weed-gatherers:

There's no doubt at all about the sea-horses. There was a man out at the other side of the island, and he saw one standing on the rocks and he threw a stone at it and it went off in the sea. He said it was grand to see it swimming, and the mane and the tail floating on the top of the water.



A Woman from the Connemara Side:

I was told there was a mare that had a foal, and it had never had a horse. And one day the mare and foal were down by the sea, and a horse put up its head and neighed, and away went the foal to it and came back no more.

And there was a man on this island watched his field one night where he thought the neighbours' cattle were eating his grass, and what he saw was horses and foals coming up from the sea. And he caught a foal and kept it, and set it racing, and no horse or no pony could ever come near it, till one day the race was on the strand, and away with it into the sea, and the jockey along with it, and they never were seen again.



Mrs O'Dea and Mrs. Daly:

There was a cow seen come up out of the sea one day and it walked across the strand, and its udder like as if it had been lately milked. And Tommy Donohue was running up to tell his father to come down and see it, and when he looked back it was gone out to sea again.

There was a man here was going to build a new house, and he brought a wise woman to see would it be in the right place. And she made five heaps of stones in five places, and said, "Whatever heap isn't knocked in the night, build it there." And in the morning all the heaps were knocked but one, and so he built it there [9].

One time I was out over by that island with another man, and we saw three women standing by the shore, beating clothes with a beetle. And while we looked, they vanished, and then we heard the cry of a child passing over our heads twenty feet in the air.

I know they go out fishing like ourselves, for Father Mahony told me so; and one night I was out myself with my brother, beyond where that ship is, and we heard talk going on, so we knew that a boat was near, and we called out to let them know we heard them, and then we saw the boat and it was just like any other one, and the talk went on, but we couldn't understand what they were saying. And then I turned to light my pipe, and while I lighted it, the boat and all in it were gone.



Mrs. Casey:

I got a story from an old man down by the sea at Tyrone. He says there was a man went down one night to move his boat from the shore where it was to the pier. And when he had put out, he found it was going out to sea, instead of to touch the pier, and he felt it very heavy in the water, and he looked behind him and there on the back of the boat were six men in shiny black clothes like sailors, and there was one like a harvest-man dressed in white flannel with a belt round his waist. And he asked what they were doing, and the man in white said he had brought the others out to make away with them there, and he took and cut their bodies in two and threw them one by one over the boat, and then he threw himself after them into the sea. And the boat went under water too, and the poor man himself lost his wits, but it came up again and he said he had never seen as many people as he did in that minute under the water. And then he got home and left the boat, and in the morning he came down to it, and there was blood in it; and first he washed it and then he painted it, but for all he could do, he couldn't get rid of the blood.



Peter Donohue:

There was a woman, a friend of this man's, living out in the middle island, and one day she came down to where a man of this island was putting out his curragh to come back, and she said, "I just saw a great crowd of them--that's the Sheogue--going over to your island like a cloud." And when he got home he went up to a house there beyond, where the old woman used to be selling poteen on the sly. And while he was there her little boy came running in and cried, "Hide away the poteen, for the police are on the island!

Such a man called to me from his curragh to give warning, for he saw the road full of them with the crowd of them and they with their guns and cutlasses and all the rest." But the man was in the house first knew well what it was, after what he heard from the woman on the other island, and that they were no right police, and sure enough no other one ever saw them. And that same day, my mother had put out wool to dry in front of where that house is with the three chimneys, near the Chapel.

And I was there talking to some man, one on each side of the yard, and the wall between us. And the day was as fine as this day is and finer, and not a breath of air stirring. And a woman that lived near by had her wool out drying too. And the wool that was in my mother's yard began to rise up, as if something was under it, and I called to the other man to help me to hold it down, but for all we could do it went up in the air, a hundred feet and more, till we could see it no more. And after a couple of hours it began to drop again) like snow, some on the thatch and some on the rocks and some in the gardens. And I think it was a fortnight before my mother had done gathering it. And one day she was spinning it, I don't know what put it in my mind, but I asked her did she lose much of that wool. And what she said was, "If I didn't get more than my own, I didn't get less." That's true and no lie, for I never told a lie in my life-I think. But the wool belonging to the neighbouring woman was never stirred at all.

And the woman that had the wool that wasn't stirred, she is the woman I married after, and that's now my wife.

There was a man, one Power, died in this island, and one night that was bright there was a friend of his going out for mackerel, and he saw these sands full of people hurling, and he well knew Power's voice that he heard among them.

There was a cousin of my own built a new house, and when they were first in it and sitting round the fire, the woman of the house that was singing for them saw a great blot of blood come down the chimney on to the floor, and they thought there would be no luck in the house and that it was a wrong place. But they had nothing but good luck ever after.



Peter Dolan:

There was a man that died in the middle island, that had two wives. And one day he was out in the curragh he saw the first wife appear. And after that one time the son of the second wife was sick, and the little girl, the first wife's daughter, was out tending cattle, and a can of water with her and she had a waistcoat of her father's put about her body, where it was cold. And her mother appeared to her in the form of a sheep, and spoke to her, and told her what herbs to find, to cure the step-brother, and sure enough they cured him. And she bid her leave the waistcoat there and the can, and she did. And in the morning the waistcoat was folded there, and the can standing on it. And she appeared to her in her own shape another time, after that. Why she came like a sheep the first time was that she wouldn't be frightened. The girl is in America now, and so is the stepbrother got well [10].



A Galway Woman:

One time myself, I was up at the well beyond, and looking into it, a very fine day, and no breath of air stirring, and the stooks were ripe standing about me. And all in a minute a noise began in them, and they were like as if knocking at each other and fighting like soldiers all about me.



Mary Moran:

There was a girl here that had been to America and came back, and one day she was coming over from Liscannor in a curragh, and she looked back and there behind the curragh was the "Gan ceann" the headless one. And he followed the boat a great way, but she said nothing. But a gold pin that was in her hair fell out, and into the sea, that she had brought from America, and then it disappeared. And her sister was always asking her where was the pin she brought from America, and she was afraid to say. But at last she told her, and the sister said, "It's well for you it fell out, for what was following you would never have left you, till you threw it a ring or something made of gold." It was the sister herself that told me this.

Up in the village beyond they think a great deal of these things and they won't part with a drop of milk on May Eve, and last Saturday week that was May Eve there was a poor woman dying up there, and she had no milk of her own, and as is the custom, she went out to get a drop from one or other of the neighbours. But not one would give it because it was May Eve. I declare I cried when I heard it, for the poor woman died on the second day after.

And when my sister was going to America she went on the first of May and we had a farewell party the night before, and in the night a little girl that was there saw a woman from that village go out, and she watched her, and saw her walk round a neighbour's house, and pick some straw from the roof.

And she told of it, and it happened a child had died in that house and the father said the woman must have had a hand in it, and there was no good feeling to her for a long while. Her own husband is lying sick now, so I hear.

[ladyanastasia]

Notes by W.B. Yeats

Sea Stories

NOTE 1. THE FAERY PEOPLE. The first detailed account of the Faery People of the Gaelic race was made by the Reverend Robert Kirk in 1691. His book which remained in manuscript till it was discovered by Sir Walter Scott in 1815 was called The Secret Commonwealth, an essay "of the nature of the subterranean (and for the most part invisible people) heretofore going under the names of elves, fays, and faeries." Kirk was a Gaelic scholar, a translator into Gaelic of the Psalms.

He is described upon his tomb as Lingnae hibernaelumen, for in his day little distinction was made between the Irish and the Scottish-Irish among whom he lived and whose words he has recorded. He died a year after he had finished his manuscript or, as the people of his parish say, was taken by the faeries. The Reverend William Taylor, the present incumbent of Abberfoyle, Kirk's old living, told Mr. Wentz that it was generally believed at the time of Kirk's death, that the faeries had carried him off because he had looked too deeply into their secrets.

He seems to have fainted while walking upon a faery knoll, a little way from his own door, and to have died immediately. Mr. Wentz found one old Gaelic speaker who believed that his spirit had been taken, but others who said there was nothing in the grave but a coffin full of stones, for body and soul had been taken. Mr. Lang prints a tradition that Kirk appeared to his cousin Graham of Ducray and could have been saved if the cousin had dared to throw a knife over the apparition's head.

Kirk describes "the subterranean people" or "the abstruse people," as he sometimes calls them, much as they are described today in Galway or in Mayo. He is clear that they are not demons and like Father Sinistrari, a Catholic theologian of Padua, quotes the Scriptures in support of this opinion.

The "abstruse people" are not indeed without sin though mid-way between men and angels, but being in no way "drenched into so gross and dredgy bodies as we are especially given to the more spiritual and haughty sins." "Whatever their own laws, be sure according to ours and equity natural civil and revealed" they do wrong by "their stealing of nurses to their children and that other sort of Plaginism in catching our children away (may seem to heir some estate in those invisible dominions) which never return.

For the inconvenience of their succubi who tryst with men it is abominable, but for swearing and intemperance they are not observed so subject to this irregularity as to envy, spite, hypocrisy, lying, and simulation." Some have thought the spirit controls of our best mediums no better. "They are not subject to sore sickness, but dwindle and decay at a certain period all about ane age" and "they pass after a long healthy life into one orb and receptacle fitted to their degree till they come under the general cognism at the last day." They are the "Sleagh Math or the good people" being called so by the "Irish" . . . "to prevent the dint of their ill-attempts" and being "of a middle nature betwixt man and angel" have "intelligent, studious spirits, and light changeable bodies (like those called astral) somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud and best seen in twilight.

Their bodies are so pliable through the subtlety of the spirits that agitate them that they can make them appear or disappear at pleasure. Some have bodies or vehicles so spongeous, thin, and desiccate, that they are fed by only sucking into some fine spirituous liquors that pierce like pure air and oil; others feed more gross on the foisone or substance of corns and liquors or corn itself that grows upon the surface of the earth which these faeries steal away, partly invisible, partly preying on the grain as do crows and mice."

Lady Gregory has a story of the crying of new dropped lambs of faery in November and some evidence that there is a reversal of the seasons, our winter being their summer, and some such belief was known to Kirk for "when we have plenty they have scarcity at their homes; and on the contrary (for they are empowered to catch as much prey everywhere as they please)."

"Their bodies of congealed air are sometimes carried aloft, other whiles grovel in different shapes and enter into any cranny or cleft of the earth where air enters to their ordinary dwellings, the earth being full of cavities and cells and there being no place nor creature but is supposed to have other animals greater or lesser, living in or upon it as inhabitants, and no such thing as a pure wilderness in the whole universe and we must always "labour for that abstruse people as well as for ourselves."

Unless Kirk is in error, as seems probable, they are unlike the Irish faeries who shift but twice a year in May and in November, when the ancient Irish perhaps shifted from their winter houses to summer pastures or home again, for they have formed the custom to "remove to other lodgings at the beginning of each quarter of the year, so traversing till doomsday some being impudent [impotent?] of staying in one place and finding some ease by so punning [turning] and changing habitations)" and at these times they are much seen when "their chameleon-like bodies swim in the air near the earth with bag and baggage." He is evidently puzzled how to place them among the orders and admits that it is uncertain "What at the last revolution will become of them when they are locked up into ane unchangeable condition." He even believes that they are so beset with anxiety upon this subject that have they "any frolic fit for mirth 'tis as the confirmed grinning of a mort head."

Many of the second-sighted men about him would have nothing of this doctrine and still believed, it seems, the old Celtic theory of the rebirth of the soul, a Manichaean and gnostic doctrine, for being "unwary in their observations" they believed what the "abstruse people" themselves declared "one averring those subterranean people to be departed souls attending awhile in this inferior state and clothed with bodies procured through their alms deeds in this life; fluid, active ethereal vehicles to hold them that they may not scatter or wander or be lost in the totum or the first nothing; but if any were so impious as to have given no alms they say when the souls of such do depart, they sleep in an uncertain state till they resume the terrestrial body."

These bodies, come at by the giving of alms, suggest to one that body of Christ which, as Boehme taught, alone enables the shade to escape from turba magna the great wrath and dream-like transformation into the shape of beasts. One remembers also the celestial body of the seventeenth century Platonists. The power attributed to almsgiving calls to mind those tales of clothes given to the poor in some ghost's name thereby enabling the ghost to be decked out in their double.

Lady Gregory has found the idea of rebirth in Aran, but in what seems the Cabalistic form not the Celtic; and it occurs again and again in the Gaelic romances. Cuchulain was the rebirth of Lug; and Mongan who was killed by Arthur of Britain was the rebirth of Finn Mac Cool. Here and there through the seventeenth-century Platonists, Kirk's contemporaries, one finds some story that might have been in Lady Gregory's book. Glanvill in the second part of his Sadducismus Triumphatus published in 1674 has an Irish tale where the dead and the faeries are associated as in Gaiway today. "A gentleman in Ireland near to the Earl of Orrery's seat sending his butler one afternoon to buy cards; as he passed a field, he, to his wonder, espied a company of people sitting round a table, with a deal of good cheer before them in the midst of a field. And he going up towards them, they all arose and saluted him, and desired him to sit down with them."

But one of them said these words in his ear: "Do nothing this company invites you to." "He therefore refused to sit down at the table, and immediately the table and all that belonged to it were gone; and the company are now dancing and playing upon musical instruments, and the butler being desired to join himself to them; but he refusing this also, they fall all to work, and he not being to be prevailed with to accompany them in working, any more than in feasting and dancing, they all disappeared, and the butler is now alone." For some days attempts are made to carry away the butler. During one of these he is levitated in the presence of the Earl of Orrery and certain of his guests. Then the man who warned him to do nothing he was bid, came to his bedside. "'I have been dead,' said the spectre or ghost, 'seven years and you know that I lived a loose life. And ever since have been hurried up and down in a restless condition with the company you saw and shall be till the Day of Judgment.' "

Throughout the Middle Ages, there must have been many discussions upon those questions that divided Kirk's Highlanders. Were these beings but the shades of men? Were they a separate race? Were they spirits of evil? Above all, perhaps, were they capable of salvation? Father Sinistrari in De Daemonialitate et Incubis, et Succubis, reprinted in Paris with an English translation in 1879, tells a story which must have been familiar through the Irish Middle Ages, and the seed of many discussions.

The Abbot Anthony went once upon a journey to visit St. Paul, the first hermit. After travelling for some days into the desert, he met a centaur of whom he asked his road and the centaur, muttering barbarous and unintelligible words, pointed to the road with his outstretched hand and galloped away and hid himself in a wood. St. Anthony went some way further and presently went into a valley and met there a little man with goat's feet and horns upon his forehead. St. Anthony stood still and made the sign of the cross being afraid of some devil's trick.

But the sign of the cross did not alarm the little man who went nearer and offered some dates very respectfully as it seemed to make peace. When the old Saint asked him who he was, he said: "I am a mortal, one of those inhabitants of the desert called fauns, satyrs, and incubi, by the Gentiles. I have come as an ambassador from my people. I ask you to pray for us to our common God who came as we know for the salvation of the world and who is praised throughout the world." We are not told whether St. Anthony prayed but merely that he thought of the glory of Christ and thereafter of Christ's enemies and turning towards Alexandria said: "Woe upon you harlots worshipping animals as God." This tale so artfully arranged as it seems to set the pious by the ears may have been the original of a tale one hears in Ireland today. I heard or read that tale somewhere before I was twenty, for it is the subject of one of my first poems.

But the priest in the Irish tale, as I remember it, tells the little man that there is no salvation for such as he and it ends with the wailing of the faery host. Sometimes too, one reads in' Irish stories of hoof-footed creatures, and it may well be that the Irish theologians who read of St. Anthony in Sinistrari's authority, St. Hieronymus, thought centaur and homunculus were of like sort with the shades haunting their own raths and barrows. Father Sinistrari draws the moral that those inhabitants of the desert called "fauns and satyrs and incubi by the Gentiles" had souls that could be shrived, but Irish theologians in a country full of poems very upsetting to youth about the women of the Sidhe who could pass, it may be even monastic walls, may have turned the doubtful tale the other way. Some-times we are told following the traditions of the eleventh-century poems that the Sidhe are "the ancient inhabitants of the country" but more often still they are fallen angels who, because they were too bad for heaven and not bad enough for hell, have been sent into the sea and into the waste places.

More probably still the question was never settled, sometimes Christ was represented as throwing them into hell till someone said he would empty the whole paradise, and thereupon his hand slackened and some fell in this place and some in that other, as though providence itself were undecided. Father Sinistrari is conscious of weighty opponents but believes that Scripture is upon his side. He quotes St. John, Chapter x., verse 16: "And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." He argues that the commentators are wrong who say that the fold is the synagogue and the other sheep the Gentiles, because the true church has been from the beginning of the world, and has had nothing to do with Jewish observances, for its revelations were made to the first man and Jews and Gentiles have belonged to it.

If the Gentiles were not also of Christ's fold, he would not have sent them prodigies to announce his birth, the star of the Magi, the silencing of their oracle, a miraculous spring of oil at Rome, the falling down of the images of Egyptian gods and so on. The other fold should therefore, he thinks, refer to those "rational animals" who sent their ambassador to St. Anthony and who were to hear Christ's voice "either directly through Himself or through His apostles."

He argues that they are a race superior to the human and must not be confused with angels and devils who are pure spirits being in a final state of salvation or of judgment. He has written his book as a guide to confessors who have frequently, it seems, to protect men and women, often nuns or monks, who are plagued by spirits or tempted by spirit lovers, and to apportion penalties to those who have fallen. It is a great sin should they confuse their lovers with devils, for then they "sin through intention," but otherwise it is a venal sin, and seeing that incubi and succubi by reason of their "rational and immortal" spirits are the equal of man and by reason of their bodies being "more noble because more subtle," "more dignified than man," a commerce that does not "degrade but rather dignify our nature" (et hoc homo jungens se incubo non vilificat, immo dignificat suam naturam). The incubus, (or succuba) however, does, he holds, commit a very great sin considering that we belong to an inferior species. It is difficult to drive them away, for unlike devils they are no more subject to exorcism than we are ourselves, but just as we cannot breathe in the higher peaks of the Alps because of the thinness of the air, so they cannot come near to us if we make certain conditions of the air.

They are of different kinds but always one or other of the four elements predominates, and those who are predominantly fiery cannot come if we make the air damp, and those that are watery cannot come if we use hot fumigations and so on. You can generally judge the kind by remembering that a man attracts spirits according to his own temperament, the sanguine, the spirits of fire, and the lymphatic, those of watery nature, and those of a mixed nature, mixed spirits; but it is easy to make mistakes. He tells of the case that came into his own experience. He was asked to drive a spirit away that was troubling a young monk and advised hot fumigations because it was by their means "a very erudite theologian" drove away a spirit who made passionate love in the form of "a very handsome young man to a certain young nun" after holy candles burning all night and "a crowd of relics and many exorcisms" had proved of but as little value as her own vows and fasts. A vessel made of "glass-like earth" containing "cubeb seed, roots of both aristolochies, great and small cardamon, ginger, long pepper, caryophylias, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeeg, calamite, storax, benzoin, aloes wood root, one ounce of triasandates and three pounds of half brandy and water," was set upon hot ashes to make it fume, and the door and window of the cell were closed.

The young friar, a deacon of the great Carthusian priory of Padua, was further advised to carry about with him perfumes of musk, amber, chive, peruvian bark, and the like, and to smoke tobacco and drink brandy perfumed with musk. All was to no purpose for the spirit appeared to him in many forms such as a skeleton, a pig, an ass, an angel, a bird" or "in the figure of one or other of the friars." These appearances seem to have had no object except that like the Irish faeries the spirit was pleased to make game of somebody.

Presently it came in the likeness of the abbot and heard the young deacon's confession and recited with him the psalms Exsurgat Deus and Qui habitat and the Gospel according to St. John, and bent its knee at the words Verbum caro factum est, and then after sprinkling with holy water and blessing bed and cell and commanding the spirit to come there no more, it vanished. Presently in the likeness of the young friar, it called at the vicar S room and asked for some tobacco and brandy perfumed with musk of which it was, it said, extremely fond, and having received them "disappeared in the twinkling of an eye." Sinistrari, however, having decided that the demon must be igneous or "at the very least aerial, since he delighted in hot substances" and since the monk's temperament seemed "choleric and sanguine," advised the vicar to direct his penitent to strew about the cell and hang by the window and door bundles of "water-lily, liverwort, spurge, mandrake, house-leek, plantain," and henbane and other herbs of a damp nature which drove the spirit away though it came once to the cell door to speak of Sinistrari all the evil it could. He has other like stories; one to show the uselessness of mere sacred places and objects, describes a woman followed to the Steps of the Cathedral altar and there stripped by invisible hands.

One remembers a passage in PLUTARCH "But to believe the gods have carnal knowledge, and do delight in the outward beauty of creatures, that seemeth to carry a very hard belief. Yet the wise Egyptians think it probable enough and likely, that the spirit of the gods hath given original of generation to women, and does beget fruits of their bodies; howbeit they hold that a man can have no corporal company with any divine nature."

One hears today in Galway, stories of love adventures between countrywomen or countrymen and the People of Faery--there are several in this book and these adventures have been always a principal theme to Gaelic poets. A goddess came to Cuchulain upon the battlefield, but sometimes it is the mortal who must go to them. "Oh beautiful woman, will you come with me to the wonderful country that is mine? It is pleasant to be bolting at the people there: beautiful people without any blemish; their hair is of the colour of the flag flower, their fair body is as white as snow, the colour of the foxglove is on every cheek. The young never grow old there, the fields and the flowers are as pleasant to be looking at as the blackbird's eggs; warm and sweet streams of mead and wine flow through that country; there is no care and no sorrow upon any person; we see others, but we ourselves are not seen." Did Dame Kettler, a great lady of Kilkenny who was accused of witchcraft early in the fifteenth century, find such a lover when she offered up the combs of cocks and the bronzed tail feathers of nine peacocks; or had she indeed, as her enemies affirmed at the trial, been enamoured with "one of the meaner sort of hell"?

[ladyanastasia]

Sea Stories

NOTE 2. This light occurs again and again in modern spiritism as in old legends. It shows in some form in almost every dark séance. Grettir the Strong saw it over buried treasure. It surrounded the head of Hereward the Wake in childhood, and in the middle of the nineteenth century, Baron Reichenbach called it "odic light" and published much evidence taken down from his "sensitives" who saw it about crystals, magnets, and one another, and over new-made graves. Holman Hunt represents in his Flight into Egypt the souls of the Innocents encircled by creeping and clinging fire. When his fire encircles a good spirit it is generally described as white and brilliant, but about the evil as lurid and smoky.


NOTE 3. When I was a boy, there was a countryman in a Sligo madhouse who was sane in all ways except that he saw, in pools and rivers) beings who called and beckoned. I have myself known a landscape Painter who after Painting a certain stagnant pool was nightly afflicted by a dream of strange shapes, bidding him to drown himself there. The obsession was so strong that he could not throw it off during his waking hours, and for some days struggled with the temptation. I was with him at the time and had noticed his growing gloom and had questioned him about it.


NOTE 4. Bran, in the Voyage of Bran, when sailing, meets Manannan the sea-god. "And Manannan spoke to him in a song, and this is what he said:

"It is what Bran thinks, he is going in his curragh over the wonderful, beautiful, clear sea; but to me, from far off in' my chariot, it is a flowery plain he is riding on.

"What is a clear sea to the good boat Bran is in, is a happy plain with many flowers to me in my two-wheeled chariot.

"It is what Bran sees, many waves beating across the clear sea; it is what I myself see, red flowers without any fault.

"The sea-horses are bright in Summer-time, as far as Bran's eyes can reach; there is a wood of beautiful acorns under the head of your little boat.

"A wood with blossom and with fruit, that has the smell of Wine; a wood without fault, without withering, with leaves of the colour of gold."
(Gods and Fighting Men, by Lady Gregory.)


NOTE 5. Swedenborg describes these colours and I have a note of similar visions as seen by a fellow-student of mine at the Dublin Art School. Mrs Besant in her Ancient Wisdom and other writers of the Modern Theosophical School describe them and moralize about them.



NOTE 6. There are constant stories in the history of modern spiritism of people carried through the air often for considerable distances. It is not my business to weigh the evidence at this moment, for I am concerned only with similarity of belief. The medium, Mrs. Guppy, somewhere in the "sixties" was believed to have been carried from Hampstead, a pen in one hand and an account book in the other, and dropped on to the middle of a table in South Conduit Street. Lord Dunraven was one of a number of witnesses who testified to having seen the medium Hume float out of one window of the upper room, where they were sitting, and in at another window. I read the other day in a spiritistic paper, of two boys carried through the air in Italy and dropped in front of a bishop who immediately handed them over to the police. And of course the folk-lore of all countries and the legends of the saints are full of such tales.



NOTE 7. The offering to the Sidhe is generally made at Halloween, the old beginning of winter, and upon that night I was told when a boy the offering was still made in the slums of Dublin.



NOTE 8. Father Sinistrari speaks of a like commerce between beasts and spirits. "Et non solum hoc evenit cum mulieribus, sed etiam cum equabus, cum quibus commicetur; quae si libenter coitum admittunt, ah co curantur optime, ac ipsarum jubæ varie artificiosis et inextricabilibus nodis texuntur; Si autem ilium adversentur, eas male tractat, percutit, macras reddit, et tandem necat, ut quotidiana constat experienta."



NOTE 9. Houses built upon faery paths are thought to be unlucky. Often the thatch will be blown away, or their in-habitants die or suffer misfortune.



NOTE 10. The number of quotations I can find to prove the universality of the thought that the dead and other Spirits change their shape as they please is but lessened by the fewness of the books that are near my hand in the country where I am writing. John Heydon, "a servant of God and secretary of nature," writing in 1662 in The Rosie Cross Uncovered which is the last book of his Holy Guide says that a man may become one of the heroes: "A hero," he writes, "is a daemon, or good genius, and a genius a partaker of divine things and a companion of the holy company of unbodied souls and immortal angels who live according to their vehicles a versatile life, turning themselves proteus-like into any shape."

And Mrs. Besant, a typical writer of the modern Theosophical School, insists upon these changes of form, especially among those spirits that are most free from the terrestrial body and explains it by saying that, "astral matter takes form under every impulse of thought." Swedenborg I have already quoted in my long essay, but to prove that the shape-changer is a part of general literature I have but Wordsworth and Milton under my hand. When the white doe of Rylstone shows itself at the church door according to its Sunday custom, one has one tale to tell, another another, but an Oxford student will have it that it is the faery that loved a certain "shepherd-lord."

'Twas said that she all shapes could wear."

And Milton writes like any Platonist of his time:

"For Spirits, when they please,
Can either sex assume, or both; so soff
And uncompounded is their essence pure,
Not ty'd or manacled with joint or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aery purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfil."

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