Celtic Fairy Tales

It may be as well to give the reader some account of the enormous extent of the Celtic folk-tales in existence. I reckon these to extend to 2000, though only about 250 are in print. The former number exceeds that known in France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, where collection has been most active, and is only exceeded by the MS. collection of Finnish folk-tales at Helsingfors, said to exceed 12,000. As will be seen, this superiority of the Celts is due to the phenomenal and patriotic activity of one man, the late J. F. Campbell, of Islay, whose Popular Tales and MS. collections (partly described by Mr. Alfred Nutt in Folk-Lore, i. 369-83) contain references to no less than 1281 tales (many of them, of course, variants and scraps). Celtic folk-tales, while more numerous, are also the oldest of the tales of modern European races; some of them—e.g., "Connla," in the present selection, occurring in the oldest Irish vellums. They include (1) fairy tales properly so-called—i.e., tales or anecdotes about fairies, hobgoblins, &c., told as natural occurrences; (2) hero-tales, stories of adventure told of national or mythical heroes; (3) folk-tales proper, describing marvellous adventures of otherwise unknown heroes, in which there is a defined plot and supernatural characters (speaking animals, giants, dwarfs, &c.); and finally (4) drolls, comic anecdotes of feats of stupidity or cunning.

The collection of Celtic folk-tales began in IRELAND as early as 1825, with T. Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. This contained some 38 anecdotes of the first class mentioned above, anecdotes showing the belief of the Irish peasantry in the existence of fairies, gnomes, goblins, and the like. The Grimms did Croker the honour of translating part of his book, under the title of Irische Elfenmärchen. Among the novelists and tale-writers of the schools of Miss Edgeworth and Lever folk-tales were occasionally utilised, as by Carleton in his Traits and Stories, by S. Lover in his Legends and Stories, and by G. Griffin in his Tales of a Jury-Room. These all tell their tales in the manner of the stage Irishman. Chapbooks, Royal Fairy Tales and Hibernian Tales, also contained genuine folk-tales, and attracted Thackeray's attention in his Irish Sketch-Book. The Irish Grimm, however, was Patrick Kennedy, a Dublin bookseller, who believed in fairies, and in five years (1866- 71) printed about 100 folk- and hero-tales and drolls (classes 2, 3, and 4 above) in his Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, 1866, Fireside Stories of Ireland, 1870, and Bardic Stories of Ireland, 1871; all three are now unfortunately out of print. He tells his stories neatly and with spirit, and retains much that is volkstümlich in his diction. He derived his materials from the English-speaking peasantry of county Wexford, who changed from Gaelic to English while story-telling was in full vigour, and therefore carried over the stories with the change of language. Lady Wylde has told many folk-tales very effectively in her Ancient Legends of Ireland, 1887. More recently two collectors have published stories gathered from peasants of the West and North who can only speak Gaelic. These are by an American gentleman named Curtin, Myths and Folk-Tales of Ireland, 1890; while Dr. Douglas Hyde has published in Beside the Fireside, 1891, spirited English versions of some of the stories he had published in the original Irish in his Leabhar Sgeulaighteachta, Dublin, 1889. Miss Maclintoch has a large MS. collection, part of which has appeared in various periodicals; and Messrs. Larminie and D. Fitzgerald are known to have much story material in their possession.

But beside these more modern collections there exist in old and middle Irish a large number of hero-tales (class 2) which formed the staple of the old ollahms or bards. Of these tales of "cattle-liftings, elopements, battles, voyages, courtships, caves, lakes, feasts, sieges, and eruptions," a bard of even the fourth class had to know seven fifties, presumably one for each day of the year. Sir William Temple knew of a north-country gentleman of Ireland who was sent to sleep every evening with a fresh tale from his bard. The Book of Leinster, an Irish vellum of the twelfth century, contains a list of 189 of these hero-tales, many of which are extant to this day; E. O'Curry gives the list in the Appendix to his MS. Materials of Irish History. Another list of about 70 is given in the preface to the third volume of the Ossianic Society's publications. Dr. Joyce published a few of the more celebrated of these in Old Celtic Romances; others appeared in Atlantis (see notes on "Deirdre"), others in Kennedy's Bardic Stories, mentioned above.

Turning to SCOTLAND, we must put aside Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1842, which contains for the most part folk-tales common with those of England rather than those peculiar to the Gaelic-speaking Scots. The first name here in time as in importance is that of J. F. Campbell, of Islay. His four volumes, Popular Tales of the West Highlands (Edinburgh, 1860-2, recently republished by the Islay Association), contain some 120 folk- and hero-tales, told with strict adherence to the language of the narrators, which is given with a literal, a rather too literal, English version. This careful accuracy has given an un-English air to his versions, and has prevented them attaining their due popularity. What Campbell has published represents only a tithe of what he collected. At the end of the fourth volume he gives a list of 791 tales, &c., collected by him or his assistants in the two years 1859-61; and in his MS. collections at Edinburgh are two other lists containing 400 more tales. Only a portion of these are in the Advocates' Library; the rest, if extant, must be in private hands, though they are distinctly of national importance and interest.

Campbell's influence has been effective of recent years in Scotland. The Celtic Magazine (vols. xii. and xiii.), while under the editorship of Mr. MacBain, contained several folk- and hero-tales in Gaelic, and so did the Scotch Celtic Review. These were from the collections of Messrs. Campbell of Tiree, Carmichael, and K. Mackenzie. Recently Lord Archibald Campbell has shown laudable interest in the preservation of Gaelic folk- and hero-tales. Under his auspices a whole series of handsome volumes, under the general title of Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, has been recently published, four volumes having already appeared, each accompanied by notes by Mr. Alfred Nutt, which form the most important aid to the study of Celtic Folk-Tales since Campbell himself. Those to the second volume in particular (Tales collected by Rev. D. MacInnes) fill 100 pages, with condensed information on all aspects of the subject dealt with in the light of the most recent research in the European folk-tales as well as on Celtic literature. Thanks to Mr. Nutt, Scotland is just now to the fore in the collection and study of the British Folk-Tale.

WALES makes a poor show beside Ireland and Scotland. Sikes' British Goblins, and the tales collected by Prof. Rhys in Y Cymrodor, vols. ii.-vi., are mainly of our first-class fairy anecdotes. Borrow, in his Wild Wales, refers to a collection of fables in a journal called The Greal, while the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine for 1830 and 1831 contained a few fairy anecdotes, including a curious version of the "Brewery of Eggshells" from the Welsh. In the older literature, the Iolo MS., published by the Welsh MS. Society, has a few fables and apologues, and the charming Mabinogion, translated by Lady Guest, has tales that can trace back to the twelfth century and are on the border-line between folk-tales and hero-tales.

CORNWALL and MAN are even worse than Wales. Hunt's Drolls from the West of England has nothing distinctively Celtic, and it is only by a chance Lhuyd chose a folk-tale as his specimen of Cornish in his Archaeologia Britannica, 1709 (see Tale of Ivan). The Manx folk-tales published, including the most recent by Mr. Moore, in his Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man, 1891, are mainly fairy anecdotes and legends.

From this survey of the field of Celtic folk-tales it is clear that Ireland and Scotland provide the lion's share. The interesting thing to notice is the remarkable similarity of Scotch and Irish folk-tales. The continuity of language and culture between these two divisions of Gaeldom has clearly brought about this identity of their folk-tales. As will be seen from the following notes, the tales found in Scotland can almost invariably be paralleled by those found in Ireland, and vice versa. This result is a striking confirmation of the general truth that folk-lores of different countries resemble one another in proportion to their contiguity and to the continuity of language and culture between them.

Another point of interest in these Celtic folk-tales is the light they throw upon the relation of hero-tales and folk-tales (classes 2 and 3 above). Tales told of Finn of Cuchulain, and therefore coming under the definition of hero-tales, are found elsewhere told of anonymous or unknown heroes. The question is, were the folk-tales the earliest, and were they localised and applied to the heroes, or were the heroic sagas generalised and applied to an unknown [Greek: tis]? All the evidence, in my opinion, inclines to the former view, which, as applied to Celtic folk-tales, is of very great literary importance; for it is becoming more and more recognised, thanks chiefly to the admirable work of Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his Studies on the Holy Grail, that the outburst of European Romance in the twelfth century was due, in large measure, to an infusion of Celtic hero-tales into the literature of the Romance-speaking nations. Now the remarkable thing is, how these hero tales have lingered on in oral tradition even to the present day. (See a marked case in "Deirdre.") We may, therefore, hope to see considerable light thrown on the most characteristic spiritual product of the Middle Ages, the literature of Romance and the spirit of chivalry, from the Celtic folk-tales of the present day. Mr. Alfred Nutt has already shown this to be true of a special section of Romance literature, that connected with the Holy Grail, and it seems probable that further study will extend the field of application of this new method of research.

The Celtic folk-tale again has interest in retaining many traits of primitive conditions among the early inhabitants of these isles which are preserved by no other record. Take, for instance, the calm assumption of polygamy in "Gold Tree and Silver Tree." That represents a state of feeling that is decidedly pre-Christian. The belief in an external soul "Life Index," recently monographed by Mr. Frazer in his "Golden Bough," also finds expression in a couple of the Tales (see notes on "Sea-Maiden" and "Fair, Brown, and Trembling"), and so with many other primitive ideas.

Care, however, has to be taken in using folk-tales as evidence for primitive practice among the nations where they are found. For the tales may have come from another race—that is, for example, probably the case with "Gold Tree and Silver Tree" (see Notes). Celtic tales are of peculiar interest in this connection, as they afford one of the best fields for studying the problem of diffusion, the most pressing of the problems of the folk-tales just at present, at least in my opinion. The Celts are at the furthermost end of Europe. Tales that travelled to them could go no further and must therefore be the last links in the chain.

For all these reasons, then, Celtic folk-tales are of high scientific interest to the folk-lorist, while they yield to none in imaginative and literary qualities. In any other country of Europe some national means of recording them would have long ago been adopted. M. Luzel, e.g., was commissioned by the French Minister of Public Instruction to collect and report on the Breton folk-tales. England, here as elsewhere without any organised means of scientific research in the historical and philological sciences, has to depend on the enthusiasm of a few private individuals for work of national importance. Every Celt of these islands or in the Gaeldom beyond the sea, and every Celt-lover among the English-speaking nations, should regard it as one of the duties of the race to put its traditions on record in the few years that now remain before they will cease for ever to be living in the hearts and memories of the humbler members of the race.

In the following Notes I have done as in my English Fairy Tales, and given first, the sources whence I drew the tales, then parallels at length for the British Isles, with bibliographical references for parallels abroad, and finally, remarks where the tales seemed to need them. In these I have not wearied or worried the reader with conventional tall talk about the Celtic genius and its manifestations in the folk-tale; on that topic one can only repeat Matthew Arnold when at his best, in his Celtic Literature. Nor have I attempted to deal with the more general aspects of the study of the Celtic folk-tale. For these I must refer to Mr. Nutt's series of papers in The Celtic Magazine, vol. xii., or, still better, to the masterly introductions he is contributing to the series of Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, and to Dr. Hyde's Beside the Fireside. In my remarks I have mainly confined myself to discussing the origin and diffusion of the various tales, so far as anything definite could be learnt or conjectured on that subject.

Before proceeding to the Notes, I may "put in," as the lawyers say, a few summaries of the results reached in them. Of the twenty-six tales, twelve (i., ii., v., viii., ix., x., xi., xv., xvi., xvii., xix., xxiv.) have Gaelic originals; three (vii., xiii., xxv.) are from the Welsh; one (xxii.) from the now extinct Cornish; one an adaptation of an English poem founded on a Welsh tradition (xxi., "Gellert"); and the remaining nine are what may be termed Anglo-Irish. Regarding their diffusion among the Celts, twelve are both Irish and Scotch (iv., v., vi., ix., x., xiv.-xvii., xix., xx., xxiv); one (xxv.) is common to Irish and Welsh; and one (xxii.) to Irish and Cornish; seven are found only among the Celts in Ireland (i.-iii., xii., xviii., xxii., xxvi); two (viii., xi.) among the Scotch; and three (vii., xiii., xxi.) among the Welsh. Finally, so far as we can ascertain their origin, four (v., xvi., xxi., xxii.) are from the East; five (vi., x., xiv., xx., xxv.) are European drolls; three of the romantic tales seem to have been imported (vii., ix., xix.); while three others are possibly Celtic exportations to the Continent (xv., xvii., xxiv.) though the, last may have previously come thence; the remaining eleven are, as far as known, original to Celtic lands. Somewhat the same result would come out, I believe, as the analysis of any representative collection of folk-tales of any European district.

I. CONNLA AND THE FAIRY MAIDEN

Source.—From the old Irish "Echtra Condla chaim maic Cuind Chetchathaig" of the Leabhar na h-Uidhre ("Book of the Dun Cow"), which must have been written before 1106, when its scribe Maelmori ("Servant of Mary") was murdered. The original is given by Windisch in his Irish Grammar, p. 120, also in the Trans. Kilkenny Archaeol. Soc. for 1874. A fragment occurs in a Rawlinson MS., described by Dr. W. Stokes, Tripartite Life, p. xxxvi. I have used the translation of Prof. Zimmer in his Keltische Beiträge, ii. (Zeits. f. deutsches Altertum, Bd. xxxiii. 262-4). Dr. Joyce has a somewhat florid version in, his Old Celtic Romances, from which I have borrowed a touch or two. I have neither extenuated nor added aught but the last sentence of the Fairy Maiden's last speech. Part of the original is in metrical form, so that the whole is of the cante-fable species which I believe to be the original form of the folk-tale (Cf. Eng. Fairy Tales, notes, p. 240, and infra, p. 257).

Parallels.—Prof. Zimmer's paper contains three other accounts of the terra repromissionis in the Irish sagas, one of them being the similar adventure of Cormac the nephew of Connla, or Condla Ruad as he should be called. The fairy apple of gold occurs in Cormac Mac Art's visit to the Brug of Manannan (Nutt's Holy Grail, 193).

Remarks.—Conn the hundred-fighter had the head-kingship of Ireland 123-157 A.D., according to the Annals of the Four Masters, i. 105. On the day of his birth the five great roads from Tara to all parts of Ireland were completed: one of them from Dublin is still used. Connaught is said to have been named after him, but this is scarcely consonant with Joyce's identification with Ptolemy's Nagnatai (Irish Local Names, i. 75). But there can be little doubt of Conn's existence as a powerful ruler in Ireland in the second century. The historic existence of Connla seems also to be authenticated by the reference to him as Conly, the eldest son of Conn, in the Annals of Clonmacnoise. As Conn was succeeded by his third son, Art Enear, Connla was either slain or disappeared during his father's lifetime. Under these circumstances it is not unlikely that our legend grew up within the century after Conn—i.e., during the latter half of the second century.

As regards the present form of it, Prof. Zimmer (l.c. 261-2) places it in the seventh century. It has clearly been touched up by a Christian hand who introduced the reference to the day of judgment and to the waning power of the Druids. But nothing turns upon this interpolation, so that it is likely that even the present form of the legend is pre-Christian-i.e. for Ireland, pre-Patrician, before the fifth century.

The tale of Connla is thus the earliest fairy tale of modern Europe. Besides this interest it contains an early account of one of the most characteristic Celtic conceptions, that of the earthly Paradise, the Isle of Youth, Tir-nan-Og. This has impressed itself on the European imagination; in the Arthuriad it is represented by the Vale of Avalon, and as represented in the various Celtic visions of the future life, it forms one of the main sources of Dante's Divina Commedia. It is possible too, I think, that the Homeric Hesperides and the Fortunate Isles of the ancients had a Celtic origin (as is well known, the early place-names of Europe are predominantly Celtic). I have found, I believe, a reference to the conception in one of the earliest passages in the classics dealing with the Druids. Lucan, in his Pharsalia (i. 450-8), addresses them in these high terms of reverence:

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."