[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The passage certainly seems to me to imply a different conception from the ordinary classical views of the life after death, the dark and dismal plains of Erebus peopled with ghosts; and the passage I have italicised would chime in well with the conception of a continuance of youth (idem spiritus) in Tir-nan-Og (orbe alio).One of the most pathetic, beautiful, and typical scenes in Irish legend is the return of Ossian from Tir-nan-Og, and his interview with St.Patrick.The old faith and the new, the old order of things and that which replaced it, meet in two of the most characteristic products of the Irish imagination (for the Patrick of legend is as much a legendary figure as Oisin himself).Ossian had gone away to Tir-nan-Og with the fairy Niamh under very much the same circumstances as Condla Ruad; time flies in the land of eternal youth, and when Ossian returns, after a year as he thinks, more than three centuries had passed, and St.Patrick had just succeeded in introducing the new faith.The contrast of Past and Present has never been more vividly or beautifully represented.II.GULEESH.Source.—From Dr.Douglas Hyde's Beside the Fire, 104- 28, where it is a translation from the same author's Leabhar Sgeulaighteachta.Dr Hyde got it from one Shamus O'Hart, a gamekeeper of Frenchpark.One is curious to know how far the very beautiful landscapes in the story are due to Dr.Hyde, who confesses to have only taken notes.I have omitted a journey to Rome, paralleled, as Mr.Nutt has pointed out, by the similar one of Michael Scott (Waifs and Strays, i.46), and not bearing on the main lines of the story.I have also dropped a part of Guleesh's name: in the original he is "Guleesh na guss dhu," Guleesh of the black feet, because he never washed them; nothing turns on this in the present form of the story, but one cannot but suspect it was of importance in the original form.Parallels.—Dr.Hyde refers to two short stories, "Midnight Ride" (to Rome) and "Stolen Bride," in Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends.But the closest parallel is given by Miss Maclintock's Donegal tale of "Jamie Freel and the Young Lady," reprinted in Mr.Yeats' Irish Folk and Fairy Tales, 52-9.In the Hibernian Tales, "Mann o' Malaghan and the Fairies," as reported by Thackeray in the Irish Sketch-Book, c.xvi., begins like "Guleesh."III.FIELD OF BOLIAUNS.Source.—T.Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland, ed.Wright, pp.135-9.In the original the gnome is a Cluricaune, but as a friend of Mr.Batten's has recently heard the tale told of a Lepracaun, I have adopted the better known title.Remarks.—Lepracaun is from the Irish leith bhrogan, the one-shoemaker (cf.brogue), according to Dr.Hyde.He is generally seen (and to this day, too) working at a single shoe, cf.Croker's story "Little Shoe," l.c.pp.142-4.According to a writer in the Revue Celtique, i.256, the true etymology is luchor pan, "little man." Dr.Joyce also gives the same etymology in Irish Names and Places, i.183, where he mentions several places named after them.IV.HORNED WOMEN.Source.—Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends, the first story.Parallels.—A similar version was given by Mr.D.Fitzgerald in the Revue Celtique, iv.181, but without the significant and impressive horns.He refers to Cornhill for February 1877, and to Campbell's "Sauntraigh" No.xxii.Pop.Tales, ii.52 4, in which a "woman of peace" (a fairy) borrows a woman's kettle and returns it with flesh in it, but at last the woman refuses, and is persecuted by the fairy.I fail to see much analogy.A much closer one is in Campbell, ii.p.63, where fairies are got rid of by shouting "Dunveilg is on fire." The familiar "lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children at home," will occur to English minds.Another version in Kennedy's Legendary Fictions, p.164, "Black Stairs on Fire."Remarks.—Slievenamon is a famous fairy palace in Tipperary according to Dr.Joyce, l.c.i.178.It was the hill on which Finn stood when he gave himself as the prize to the Irish maiden who should run up it quickest.Grainne won him with dire consequences, as all the world knows or ought to know (Kennedy, Legend Fict., 222, "How Fion selected a Wife").V.CONAL YELLOWCLAW.Source.—Campbell, Pop.Tales of West Highlands, No.v.pp.105-8, "Conall Cra Bhuidhe." I have softened the third episode, which is somewhat too ghastly in the original.I have translated "Cra Bhuide" Yellowclaw on the strength of Campbell's etymology, l.c.p.158.Parallels.—Campbell's vi.and vii.are two variants showing how widespread the story is in Gaelic Scotland.It occurs in Ireland where it has been printed in the chapbook, Hibernian Tales, as the "Black Thief and the Knight of the Glen," the Black Thief being Conall, and the knight corresponding to the King of Lochlan (it is given in Mr.Lang's Red Fairy Book).Here it attracted the notice of Thackeray, who gives a good abstract of it in his Irish Sketch-Book, ch.xvi [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]