Lora O'Brien's Blog, page 8

Poisoned - Snow White Series

Poisoned by Katherine Pine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Really clever take on the fairytale.

I'd never read this author before, but chanced across this book as a free kindle offer and was very pleasantly surprised. A little short for my tastes, but it's well written, with good character development, and had me hooked from the start.

There's a point of view switch which I found to be well executed, and really added to the character interest. I'm off now to buy the next in the series!

View all my reviews .gr_container { font-family:arial,verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; width: 250px; } .gr_book_container { border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7; padding: 5px 0px; } .gr_book_image { float: left; padding-right: 20px; } .gr_book_title {} .gr_review_stats {} Please Review My Books on Goodreads? Irish Witchcraft from an Irish Witch
reviews: 5
ratings: 39 (avg rating 4.00)
A Practical Guide to Irish Spirituality: Slí Aon Dhraoí
reviews: 2
ratings: 12 (avg rating 4.92)
Rathcroghan: A Journey
ratings: 5 (avg rating 5.00)
Beside the Fire: A Collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

The Three Realms in Irish Tradition

Perhaps, since you already work in this realm, you could look at the three realms (land, sea and sky) from the Tain and the three worlds of the shaman? Either from scholarship or practice. Formal is by no means necessary, though some reference to sources is appreciated.  In fact, with so much commentary and research I would be quite open to more subjective work...

Communication from Frater Docet Umbra, 2012

This article first appeared in the Journal of the Irish Order of Thelema, 'Fortified Island', Issue #1, in March 2013.

It’s a long time since I thought of my work in a Thelemic context.  Unsurprisingly, to me at least, not a lot changes when that shift does take place.  It didn’t take much to change my perspective to the concepts and practices of Thelema – different words, different names, different rituals, but the essence is the same as I had always believed and experienced.  

I started through the Man of Earth initiation cycle as a personal journey, a challenge to myself that is one in a long series of such challenges.  A lifetime’s worth, or more, one might say.  I came from a firm family grounding in Irish heritage and nature exploration, exceedingly boring to the child I was, but ever appreciated since.  From personal Gnosis in my teens, I found training and connection in a Traditional Wiccan coven, working through their triple degree system and learning a whole lot.  Moving from there I found myself in Roscommon.  Not quite knowing how or why that had happened, I set to explore, and found I had landed in Cruachan.  Ancient Royal Capital, perhaps one of the first sites in Ireland of consistent ritual and ceremonial use.

Connection to the land became about more than just local entities and legends, as I had previously experienced.  A small group, just four of us, remained of our previous working group, and we were three intensely dedicated sisters and one male; who was learning a lot, but in some ways along for the ride.  And we began working through the worlds.

Neart mara dhuit,
Neart talamh dhuit,
Neart nèimhe.

Mathas mara dhuit,
Mathas talamh dhuit,
Mathas nèimhe.

Power of sea be with you,
Power of land be with you,
Power of sky.

Goodness of sea be with you,
Goodness of land be with you,
Goodness of sky.

Collected by Alexander Carmichael I remain a little wary of Carmichael’s work, I must admit, but no more so than I am wary of many of the other folklorists of his time.  I find it difficult to reconcile how a person from another culture entirely - particularly when the language from which they are hoping to collect has so much in the way of tenuous and liminal associations and inflection (as is the case in Scots Gaelic and Irish) - can accurately capture or convey the ‘true’ meanings of the original.  However, the same can be said for nearly every single piece of literary material we have to work from, starting with the Christian Monks who faithfully transcribed the Irish myths, legends and even historical accounts (albeit changing the timelines on occasion to fit in the Christian worldview), and on up to certain more recent ‘Celtic’ explorers.  We must do what we can with what we have.

There is value to be had, even if at times it might only be useful in an inspirational sense, from the literature that is available.  As modern seekers, we can study the source material available, understand what we can from that, review and share experiences and theories with other seekers, and work consistently on developing our own connection from this point; the only place we have from which to work. 

And so, that is what we did.  Looking at the Táin, an integral tale to this complex of sites, as well as it’s broader value in Irish Literature, we developed the idea of the Earth, Sea, and Sky model, the three worlds.  How would we learn this, experience this, with no one to teach it?  How could it be taught?  What would the journey of an initiation cycle look like when based around this core concept?  How could we make that work?

There were many late night conversations, many heated debates, and even a few all round arguments.  A loose plan was formed to work through each world on an annual basis, with a programme of rituals and exercises for each, culminating in an intense practical initiatory experience of the particular elements of that world.  We put ourselves through the wringer - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  We survived Earth, we survived Sea, we survived Sky. 

Then everything blew apart, in quite a spectacular fashion.  The small sparks suddenly exploded out of all proportion.  Family relationships, careers, friendships, even a marriage, all burned up in the unplanned extra, the middle of the triple spiral that touches all three worlds, the sacred centre of every circle.  The world of Fire.

We survived Fire, but we did it as individuals.  Our work exploded and imploded, and, speaking for myself at least, evened out (eventually) into a steady, burning core of power and connection that touches all the worlds.  And it is that connection that has been my most important lesson.  Nothing stands alone.  There are stories within stories, sites within sites, people within people.  Inter-linking circles, spirals, which join place to place, people to people, and one time to another.  None of our sacred sites is just one thing, at one time.  None of our deities or archetypal characters stand alone, none are confined to one location, one function, one relationship.  None of the Daoine Eile are restricted to one role, one aspect, one place.  Recognising and studying the layers, the overlap, the bridging points, is essential.  Working between worlds is the key to understanding Irish traditions.
If you enjoyed this Blog Post, please share!

To Read more about Irish Spirituality  -- Click Here --  :o)

Winter Solstice in Ireland

Being Pagan in Ireland is a little different, I think, than being Pagan anywhere else.  We’re an odd lot, and we value individual strength, as long as it doesn’t upset the apple cart of family/community tradition, or give the neighbours anything bad to talk about.
I’m a... well, I don’t actually have a label that fits what I am or what I do, and that’s fairly reflective of Irish Paganism generally.  I’m an Irish heritage professional, in my day job.  Personally, Bean Draoi is the closest accurate description I’ve got, a ‘female user of magic’.  Traditionally I might have been called a Bean Feassa (wise woman), but it seems a little arrogant to take that on for oneself.  Before that, perhaps a Druid, though modern Druidry is very different to what that word means to me.  I am spiritual, but not religious, and I have a solid working relationship with the Gods, Guides and Guardians of old Ireland, and our sacred places.

How does all that translate into today's Irish Christmas?  Most folk here go to mass on the eve or day, even if it’s only their token attendance of the year. Besides the fact of the Catholic Church in Ireland essentially stopping anybody from leaving their organisation (is it just me, or is that a little cult-like? Illegal, even?) – Irish people are still stuck in ‘the done thing’, so babies are baptised, kids make communion and confirmation, and most people still get married in the church.

Many of us know that Winter Solstice is a much older tradition than our modern Christmas. There's the world famous Newgrange Alignment, and the new but old City of Dublin Winter Solstice Celebration, with much more going on around the country, publicly and formalised just in the last few years.  Before that, you'd have to know someone who knows someone to get a personal invite to a genuine celebration rooted in Irish Spirituality. If you're not familiar, there's a great post by Bernadette over at the Rathcroghan blog.

So, raising kids in Ireland, interacting with non-Pagan friends and family, working, and all that jazz, you kinda have to do the Christmas thing, to some extent at least. But Winter Solstice is still a big deal, and getting more so. How do we Irish Pagans handle that? We have a party. Every year, on the Saturday before Christmas. We invite everybody we know. We start late afternoon, and carries on til the wee small hours. 

This is the time of year we acknowledge the deepest and longest darkness, and make a point of balancing it with the lights of food and fire and feasting, family and friends.
And every year, I take a personal vigil through the longest night, to greet the sun the following morning. It's a mark of respect, a point of sacrifice, and a time for quiet reflection on the balance of dark and light in my life, in my spirit. Time to adjust as necessary.

Do I think the sun won't rise unless I am there to greet it? No, not as such... but I guess it doesn't hurt to be sure, right? You're welcome ;o) Have a Cool Yule folks, a Peaceful and Blessed Winter Solstice, and a Happy Christmas - wherever you are, whoever you're with, and whatever you believe in. 

The Other Whisper

The Other Whisper by Ian Paul Power
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

We've all been there.

Group of angry kids facing one kid all alone, with others standing by and watching, cheering, or praying fervently that they're not next. Whatever part you played in a scene just like that, you've been there.

This book is full of scenes that actually (whether painfully or joyfully) relate to Young Adult life experiences, or symbolically represent the journeys we've all taken, the challenges we've all faced, and the achievements we've all strived for. The protagonist, Eoin Murphy, is Holden Caulfield if he had to deal with doctors and demons.

The story gripped me, from start to finish. I can't wait to read the next one, and watch this author develop that blaze of raw talent, and grow as the series progresses.

View all my reviews

Review of the Tain on Goodreads

The Tain by Thomas Kinsella (Translator)
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the most accurate translation of the epic Irish tale, the Táin Bó Cuailnge, and includes the major remscéla or pre-tales which go a long way towards putting some of the madder stuff into a bit of context.

There's still a lot of mad stuff in there, but sure it's all good.

Starting at Rathcroghan, in County Roscommon, the story wends it's way across the country to Cooley in County Louth. Featuring CúChulainn, Lugh, the Morrigan, Ferdia, Conor MacNessa, Fergus Mac Roich, and the notorious warrior Queen of Connacht, Medb - you won't be short of an interesting character to keep track of.

I really like the artwork included in this version, by Louis le Brocquy; it captures well the tenuous nature of the meanings and symbolism that are woven into the fabric of this teaching tale.

View all my reviews

You Can Learn to Speak Irish Gaeilge!

It's not that hard, really.

Us Irish actually have the toughest time of it, with our outdated dinosaur curriculum forced-by-nuns-and-christian-brothers system of learning the Irish or Gaeilge, from the age of 4 or 5 until we leave school at 17 or 18.  There's many an Irish person who's done over 13 years of schooling here, with Irish lessons most days, only to firmly believe that they can't speak a damn word of it past 'how are ya', and the ubiquitous 'póg mo thóin'.

But see if we could spend that much time learning it like any other language is taught? We'd be a nation of Gaelgeorí once more. Learning to speak Irish is no more difficult than learning any other language, with the right tools and tricks up your sleeve. That's where this blog post comes in!

When a friend (check her out, she's awesome) asked me for some tips and tricks recently, this is what shot off the top of my head...

These graphic novels are awesome, and the kid's books make it suitable for all levels (seriously like, who wouldn't want to learn Irish through the medium of COMIC BOOK?) - Cló Mhaigh Eo Foilsitheoirí / Book Publishers 
I'm sure you know the site Comhaltas - promotes traditional Irish music and culture around the world. Best known for teaching Irish traditional music through a global network of branches and for running the Fleadh Cheoil music competitions, but good for the oul Gaeilge too.
And there's an extensive list of resources here - Foras na Gaeilge or GAEILGE.IE, it's a great resource for anyone interested in any aspect of the Irish language. The aim of this new website from Foras na Gaeilge is to create a central point on the internet for everything to do with the Irish language, classes, course, events, and the likes.
And this is good for saturation, even if they don't translate it's really useful to just have it going in the background so your mind learns the patterns - Radionalife.ie
Western Radio Station IRadio do a good show here which mingles pop stuff with Irish and English, it's really good for confidence building because you're not lost ALL the time like a full on Irish programme, and they have podcasts too.

Then Kass returned the favour by showing me this: List of Resources for Learning Irish.
If you're learning Irish, I'd love to hear about your favourite resources and experiences? Just comment here or share this post on Social Media and tag me to start a chat about it!

Fionn's Feast

When Fionn MacCumhaill, Chief of all the Fianna, summoned his warriors for a feast, all came – for a gathering given by Fionn was a gathering not to be missed.  And so he did, one day, and so they came to his feast.

Every man of them, and his clann (family), arrived to the great hall at Tara on the appointed day.  Fionn sat in the Chief Captain’s chair, in the centre, with Goll Mac Morna set in front of him, and every man and woman of them set out in their rightful place.  There was Fionn’s son Oisín, and his grandson Oscar, Diarmuid (they say his face was lovely and gay, in the old stories, but I don’t think that means what you might think it means), and Caelte Mac Ronan, Fionn’s brother Caireall Whiteskin, and Goll’s brother Conan the Swearer.  Indeed, there were too many to name; they all had their runners and their Poets along, and the whole hall bristled with the banners of war and battle torches of the Gael that each clann carried when visiting.

Each person there was served food to delight the desires, right to the bursting point of their bellies, and then the golden, be-jewelled drinking horns were passed around; they were full of sweet, smooth stuff and none of that moonshine muck, I can tell you.  Goll looked at Fionn, and Fionn looked at Goll, and the two of them spread such satisfied smiles that you’d think nothing could wipe them off at all.  Music hushed as the Poets stepped forward, as this was their time to shine at any great gathering.  It was also their time to get paid, for when the assembled clans were happy with their declamations, gifts were bestowed and they could go home with full pockets as well as full bellies, and sure what Poet wouldn’t want that?

Fergus True-Lips began, and he sang the deeds of Fionn and his ancestors, great and mighty.  When he was finished, finally, Fionn’s family weighed him down with costly presents, until even he - who was well used to the benevolence of good men – was astonished and delighted with the tribute.  Goll Mac Morna, with his generosity well oiled by fine liquor, realised that he wouldn’t be able to match that standard with what he had about his person, and so he summoned his runner for a word.  He asked her, who was near the swiftest and strongest among them, if she had collected the tribute due him from the King of Denmark and Norway.  She had indeed, and was able to triple again Goll’s supply of treasure, and leave him well assured that he’d not be shown up as niggardly at this nice gathering of friends and family.  Whatever Fionn had given Fergus was doubled again by Goll Mac Morna, to the surprise of all there, and the mild annoyance of Fionn himself. 

It wasn’t really the done thing to outshine your Chief like that, but as the Poets progressed, and Goll oiled that generosity more and more liberally, his gift giving prowess was growing at about a steady pace with Fionn’s irritation, and the discomfort of all around him.  Eventually, the Fianna Leader queried his second in command, as to where and how he came across such tribute from the King across the Northern seas.  Goll, always keen to share a story he loved, regaled the hall to his tale of travels to the land of Saxons, and battle with Fionn’s own father.  It was only when he remembered it was that very same battle at which Fionn’s father had been killed, by him, that it started to dawn on him that this might not be the best place to be telling that tale.  Fionn closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to salvage the situation by reminding Goll that he had a hundred men to every one of his, and perhaps that should be an end to it.  Goll’s response – “Well, so had your father” – put an end to the pretence of calm, and started a riot and a court case that is still sung of.  But sure, they are all stories for another day.

©Lora O’Brien 2013
If you like this Seanchai Story, please Share!

Brian Boru's Fort in County Clare

This is Brian Boru's Fort, Ballyvally, Co. Clare, in the South West of Ireland.  The Record of Monuments and Places (RMP) number is CL045-031.  For your Sat Nav, the GPS co-ordinates are approximately 52.819486, -8.451598, and it’s in Irish State ownership, so you don’t have to get permission to walk the site.

You can fly straight into Shannon Airport and be here within the hour, and I highly recommend booking into Glocca Morra B&B, just down the road in Ogonnelloe.  There’s an excellent atmosphere, with consistent top reviews for the host there, Mike, who just can’t do enough for you when you stay, and with the views over Lough Derg, fresh coffee and scones on arrival, and healthy countryside walks, you won’t want to be leaving.  It’s worth a trip into Scarriff though, to visit the gorgeous little health food and gift shop, the Grainey.

From Killaloe, you’re taking the R463 for Scarriff, and driving to approximately to the co-ordinates 52.818708, -8.456329.  Park safely (unfortunately, the only available parking is by the side of the road), and you’ll see a shaded woody laneway in to the right, with an information panel on the entranceway, and a sign pointing to ‘Brian Boru’s Fort’.  Follow that lane to the end, and you will see the monument off to your left.

First President of Ireland - Douglas Hyde

‘We need not claim that in quantity and quality of achievement he was great as a writer; but we surely can say that he did write well, that he did help others to write greatly - that he did help Irish letters, in all its branches, to be native, continuous, rooted, branching and fruitful.’ Robert Farren, ‘Douglas Hyde the Writer’, in Irish Press (14 July 1949) [obituary notice on the day following his death]

Hyde as a Young Man A boy, transplanted to Roscommon soil – in an alien garden; he not only put down firm roots, but proceeded to flourish and bloom like no other before him, to cross pollinate thoughts and ideas that would wake and revive the native life, all the while respecting, caring for and nurturing the fields and gardens which surrounded him – Douglas Hyde.

Born by accident in County Roscommon, on 17th January 1860; while his mother, Elizabeth, was on a short visit to Longford House, in Castlerea.  Raised in his father’s Church of Ireland rectory in County Sligo, Hyde didn’t return to Roscommon until he was 7 years old.  His father, Arthur, was appointed Rector and Prebendary (a type of Canon) of Tibohine, and the family moved to the village of Frenchpark in 1867.   There were 4 brothers, but the youngest, Douglas, was educated at home due to illness, by his father and his aunt.  At the time, Irish people were still suffering the after effects of the extreme poverty and denigration of the Big Famine.  An Gorta Mór, ‘the Great Hunger’, took about a million people in death, and approximately another million in emigration.  That was about 25% of our population.  And the anger that remained!  The loss and grief were terrible, but the anger and frustration felt by the Irish people equaled, and even surpassed it - to know that there was plenty of food all along, grown on our land, with our labour, and leaving our country to grace the tables of Landlords and their class, while our children starved to death.  The Irish ‘peasantry’ were suffering and struggling still by the time Hyde was born, to a county that was among the worst affected.  His family were well off, of a higher class, and it would have been unseemly for their child to mingle with the peasantry.  
But mingle he did.  In particular, he was fascinated by listening to the older people in the community speaking the Roscommon Gaeilge dialect.  He became friends with an old Gilly on his father’s estate, a gamekeeper by the name of Seamus Hart.  The job title ‘Gilly’, by the way, comes from the old Irish term Giolla, meaning servant or slave.  The Irish language was deemed coarse, backward, savage – old-fashioned, at best.  It had been made shameful to speak it, to teach it to your children.  Parents were convinced that their children would never, ever, get anywhere, progress at all in life unless they could speak with a proper English tongue.  But to the young Douglas Hyde, the language was lyrical, eternally pleasant to listen to, witty and wise and unendingly beautiful.  He fell in love with the Irish language, and began to study it of his own accord.  

The boy would roam the estates, and the countryside, listening to the stories, exploring the ancient places, talking to the older people in their own tongue. Learning.  He loved the legends of Rathcroghan, home of Queen Meadbh (Maeve) and Gaelic royalty for over 2000 years.  He carved his name in Uaimh na gCait, the Cave of the Cats – fabled entrance to the Irish Otherworld.  He was devastated when Seamus Hart died, 7 years later, when Hyde was just 14.  He flagged a bit, stopping his studies of the language and the culture, but his interest and passion began to rally when over the course of a few visits to Dublin he discovered there were others like him; groups of people who wanted to preserve and speak the Irish language, to whom it was just as important and wonderful as he found it to be.

Hyde rejected family pressure to follow their traditional career in the Church, and instead went to Trinity College, Dublin, where his flair for languages continued into fluency in French, German, Latin, Hebrew and Greek.

At the age of 20 (1880), he joined the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, and published over a hundred pieces of Irish language poetry under his pen name An Craoibhín Aoibhinn, ‘the Pleasant Little Branch’.  The Irish Language movement was viewed as eccentric at first, the province of bored academics looking for novel ways to spend their time.  But it gained respect, and a huge following, steadily in the years to follow.  Hyde was a huge influence on this, helping to establish the Gaelic Journal in 1892, and speaking publicly on topics such as “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland”, where he said:

But the Irish language is worth knowing, or why would the greatest philologists of Germany, France, and Italy be emulously studying it, and it does possess a literature, or why would a German savant have made the calculation that the books written in Irish between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries, and still extant, would fill a thousand octavo volumes…

We must arouse some spark of patriotic inspiration among the peasantry who still use the language, and put an end to the shameful state of feeling -- a thousand-tongued reproach to our leaders and statesmen -- which makes young men and women blush and hang their heads when overheard speaking their own language…

To a person taking a bird's eye view of the situation a hundred or five hundred years hence, believe me, it will also appear of greater importance than any mere temporary wrangle, but, unhappily, our countrymen cannot be brought to see this…

We must teach ourselves to be less sensitive, we must teach ourselves not to be ashamed of ourselves, because the Gaelic people can never produce its best before the world as long as it remains tied to the apron-strings of another race and another island, waiting for it to move before it will venture to take any step itself…

I appeal to everyone whatever his politics -- for this is no political matter -- to do his best to help the Irish race to develop in future upon Irish lines, even at the risk of encouraging national aspirations, because upon Irish lines alone can the Irish race once more become what it was of yore -- one of the most original, artistic, literary, and charming peoples of Europe.

The following year, the same in which he married a German lady by the name of Lucy Cometina Kurtz (1893), Douglas Hyde helped found the ‘Gaelic League’, Conradh na Gaedhilge, to preserve and promote Irish culture and language.  Contrary to other organisations of the time, Conradh na Gaedhilge accepted women as full members right from the start, and did not assign them to subordinate roles.   Many notable women, such as Lady Esmonde, Lady Gregory, and Mary Spring Rice, played an active part in establishment of the League, and in leadership roles in their local communities.  At the 1906 annual convention, out of 45 executive roles, 7 were filled by women.  Hyde resigned in 1915, when the League formally committed to the Nationalist political movement, as he felt that the culture and importance of our language should be above politics.  His influence though, was huge, as many of the prominent Irish leaders (such as Earnest Blythe, Pádraig Pearse, Éamon De Valera, and Michael Collins) first became educated and passionate about Irish independence through their involvement with Conradh na Gaedhilge.

It seems he tried his best to stay out of politics, and returned to the life of academia.  He did get sucked in briefly, accepting a nomination to Seanad Eireann, the Irish Senate, after the creation of the new Irish state.  But things got messy in 1925, and a Catholic smear campaign caused the loss of his electoral seat, so he settled in to be Professor of Irish at UCD (University College Dublin), instead.  In 1938 though, then Taoiseach (Irish political leader) Éamon de Valera, re-appointed him to the Seanad.  From here he was nominated and elected uncontested to the position of An tÚachataráin, first President of the Irish Republic, on 26th June 1938.  Although the President could choose either English or Irish in which to recite the Presidential Declaration of Office, Hyde set the precedent by (unsurprisingly) declaring in his chosen native tongue.  His speech, the first ever recitation of the Irish Republic’s President, is one of the few remaining recordings of the now lost Roscommon dialect in which he was fluent.

He was a very popular president, cultivating friendship with many world leaders such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and the English King George V, but due to ill health decided not to run for a second term, leaving office on 25th June 1945.  He never returned to Roscommon, his wife having died early in his presidential term, but moved to a residence in the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin, the President’s Residence in the Phoenix Park, Dublin; where he died quietly on 12th July 1949, at the age of 89.  Douglas Hyde is buried with his family at Portahard Church, which is now the Douglas Hyde Museum, beside the Main N5 road between Tulsk and Frenchpark, in County Roscommon.

The great Irish Poet and Writer W.B. Yeats had this to say on Douglas Hyde:

‘He had much frequented the company of old countrymen, and had so acquired the Irish language, and his taste for snuff, and for moderate quantities of a detestable species of illegal whiskey distilled from the potato by certain of his neighbours’…

‘the cajoler of crowds, and of individual men and women … and for certain years young Irish women were to display his pseudonym Craoibhin Aoibhin in gilt letters upon their hat-bands’.

‘The man most important for the future was certainly Dr Douglas Hyde. I had found a publisher while still in London for his Beside the Fire and his Love Songs of Connacht and it was the first literary use of the English dialect of the Connacht country people that had aroused my imagination for those books. His faculty was by nature narrative and lyrical, and at our committees […] he gave me an impression of timidity or confusion. His perpetual association with peasants, whose songs and stories he took down in their cottages from early childhood when he learned Irish from an old man on a kitchen floor, had given him. Though a strong man, that cunning that is the strength of the weak. He was always diplomatising, evading as far as he could prominent positions and the familiarity of his fellows that he might escape jealousy and detraction. […] He never spoke his real thought […] for his mind moved among pictures, itself indeed a premise but never an argument. In later years the necessities of Gaelic politics destroyed his sense of style and undermined his instinct for himself. He ceased to write in that delicate, emotional dialect of the people, and wrote and spoke, when he spoke in public, from coarse reasoning’.

He said Hyde ‘wrote out of imitative sympathy’; he was to create a popular movement (the Gaelic League) but Yeats nonetheless mourned for ‘the greatest folklorist who ever lived’… ‘his style is perfect - so sincere and simple - so little literary’.

And now you can see for yourself....
From "Beside the Fire: A Collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories", edited by Lora O'Brien. Click Here to Look!

Padraig and the Púca

There was a young man in Clare, a miller’s son, whose name was Padraig.  He worked hard for his father, for they hadn’t much, but every day he went to the mill he would have to shout and shuffle the lazy labourers out there to get them to do even a tap of work.  One of the days, when they had a big order on, he couldn’t even get them to raise a toe, never mind a finger, and when he went to check at end of day, didn’t he find them all fast asleep - and not a bit of the corn was ground for the order.

Frustrated and furious, he walked out along the stream for a bit, and was sitting head in hands when he heard a fierce snorting behind him.  Turning, he met a large black bull, pawing the ground and about to charge.  Now, Padraig knew there was no such bull with his family nor with the neighbours, and his own mother was a fairy woman, who’d been telling him old tales since he was born - so he could well recognise a Pouca no matter what form it was taking.  He stood and said that if the Pouca would help his family that night, he’d give him his own thick coat to wear, for it was fierce cold.  He laid the coat over the shoulders of the bull, and it rested down meek as a lamb, then lumbered off back up to the mill.  Padraig sat for a while by the stream, his head much quieter, and waited, for the fairies don’t like to be disturbed in their work.  After a time, he saw an old man leave, away into the scrubland behind.  The poor thing was skin and bones, and cold even with the heavy coat draped over him, for he was dressed only in rags beneath.  When Padraig went into the mill though, he saw the corn all ground; a week’s work had been done in a single night and it certainly wasn’t the labourers who’d done it, for they were still snoring.

The next night, Padraig was back by the mill at the same time, with a drop of whiskey and a bit of a cake his mam had made, and left them by the door.  Sure enough, it wasn’t long before he heard the mill working away, and he knew again it wasn’t the labourers, for they were all still down at the pub.  He went and dismissed the lot of them, and was back in time to see the Pouca leave the same as the last night.  This happened every night, and the family grew very rich, for the miller was getting a week’s work done in a night, and he never had to pay a wage other than the whiskey and a bit of cake of an evening.  But Padraig grew tired of seeing the Pouca heading off through all kinds of weather with not even a shoe on his foot, nor trousers to keep his skinny old legs a bit warm.  So he got a superb suit of clothes made up, and left them out one night in place of the usual whiskey and cake. 

He watched the Pouca find them, try them on, and preen as he examined himself looking like a fine gentleman.  Indeed, he must have thought himself such, and fine gentlemen don’t labour each night in a mill, so he took himself off to see the countryside, and laboured no more.  But Padraig didn’t mind, for they were wealthy by then, and sold the mill for good profit.  He made a match after with a Lord’s daughter, and had a fine wedding party with all the trimmings.  At the feast, he found a grand golden cup laid up at the top table, and knew it to be a gift from the Pouca, so he insisted that only himself and his bride drink from it that day, and every day thereafter.  The couple never had a day’s bad luck in their lives from then on, and their descendants went to many adventures with the fairies.  But sure, they are all stories for another day...
If you like this Seanchai Story, please Share!