Read Ebook: Poets and Dreamers: Studies and translations from the Irish by Gregory Lady

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that, His Mother and Mary and Joseph gathered these herbs and cured His wounds.

Another authority says:--'Dandelion is good for the heart; and when Father Quinn was curate here, he had it rooted up in all the fields about to drink it; and see what a fine man he is. The wild parsnip is good for the gravel; and for heart-beat there's nothing so good as dandelion. There was a woman I knew used to boil it down; and she'd throw out what was left on the grass. And there was a fleet of turkeys about the house, and they used to be picking it up. At Christmas they killed one of them; and when it was cut open, they found a new heart growing in it with the dint of the dandelion.'

'Connolly cured many a one; Jack Hall, that fell into a pot of water they were after boiling potatoes in, and had the skin scalded off him, and that Dr. Lynch could do nothing for, he cured. He boiled down herbs with a bit of lard, and after that was rubbed in three times, he was well.

The man from East Galway says: 'The herbs they cure with, there's some that's natural, and you could pick them at all times of the day.'

'Sea-grass' is sometimes useful as a natural and sometimes as an occult cure. One who has tried it and other herbs, says: 'Indeed the porter did me good, and good that I'd hardly like to tell you, not to make a scandal. Did I drink too much of it? Not at all. But this long time I am feeling a worm in my side that is as big as an eel, and there's more of them in it than that. And I was told to put seagrass to it; and I put it to the side the other day; and whether it was that or the porter I don't know, but there's some of them gone out of it.

'There is something in flax, for no priest would anoint you without a bit of tow. And if a woman that was carrying was to put a basket of green flax on her back, the child would go from her; and if a mare that was in foal had a load of flax on her, the foal would go the same way.'

And a neighbour of hers confirms this, and says: 'There's something in green flax, I know; for my mother often told me about one night she was spinning flax before she was married, and she was up late. And a man of the fairies came in--she had no right to be sitting up so late: they don't like that--and he told her it was time to go to bed; for he wanted to kill her, and he couldn't touch her while she was handling the flax. And every time he'd tell her to go to bed, she'd give him some answer, and she'd go on pulling a thread of the flax, or mending a broken one; for she was wise, and she knew that at the crowing of the cock he'd have to go. So at last the cock crowed, and she was safe, for the cock is blessed.'

Old Bridget Ruane will not do any more cures by charms or by simples, or 'bring children home to the world' any more. For she died last winter; and we may be sure that among the green herbs that cover her grave, there are some that are 'good for every bone in the body,' and that are 'very good for a sore heart.'

THE WANDERING TRIBE

When poor Paul Ruttledge made his great effort to escape from the doorsteps of law and order--from the world, the flesh, and the newspaper--and fell among tinkers, I looked with more interest than before at the little camps that one sees every now and then by the roadside for a few days or weeks. And I wondered why our country people--who are so kind to one another, and to tramps and beggars, that they seem to live by the rule of an old woman in a Galway sweet-shop: 'Refuse not any, for one may be the Christ'--speak of a visit of the tinkers as of frost in spring or blight in harvest. I asked why they were shunned as other wayfarers are not, and I was told of their strange customs and of their unbelief.

'They come mostly from the County Mayo,' I am told; 'and, indeed, they have not much religion; but last year Father Prendergast offered to marry a man and woman of them for nothing. But after he had them married, they made him give them a shilling for a lodging.

'The people wouldn't like to let them into their house; for if you would let one man in, maybe twelve families would follow them and take possession of the whole place.

'Some of them that do smiths' work are middling decent. They will sit there with their little pot and melt metal in it, and make things that belong to a plough; but the most of them have no trade but to be going to fairs and doing tricks, and having a table for getting money out of you with games. Indeed the most of them are no better than pickpockets--"newks" they are called. And they never go to Mass; and, as to marriage, some used to say they lepped the budget, but it's more likely they have no marriage at all.

'They never go in lodgings; but they'll tilt up the cart, and put a bit of guano cloth over it and a little kennel of straw in it. Or if a man is alone, he'll lay down on the sheltery side of a wall and sleep there. They are hardy with all the hardships they go through; they are the hardiest people in the world.

'And they make sport and fun sometimes. I used to see them dancing at Rathin gate; but no one would dance along with them; it is only among themselves they would have it. And they sing songs too--"The sweet boy of Milltown" I heard them singing.

'There was a sweep in Gort joined them. Charlie his name was. He went into Greely's shop one time, that had set up a little public-house, and bid him give him five pounds and he'd make his fortune. And he was afraid to refuse; and gave it to him, and off walked Charlie, and was never seen there again.

'He died after that in hospital. He slept out one night and the frost went through his body. There was another of them stole two of old Quin's geese at Ballylee one night, and sold them to him again next day. After he had them bought, Mrs. Quin came down and when she looked at them she knew them to be her own geese. "Give me back the money," she said. "I'd be a fool if I did," said he, and he went away.'

Another neighbour says: 'They often made their camp in the boreen near my house; but one of them never came into the house, and I never saw one of them at Mass. One very hard morning I passed by them as I was bringing in pigs to the fair of Gort. There they were, sleeping under an ass-cart, quite happy and satisfied. They fight at night and make friends again in the daytime; and they sell their wives to one another; I've seen that myself.'

And an old man says: 'I think the tinkers are not the same as the rest of us; I think they originated in themselves. They are very mirthful, and they have no control; but sometimes there will be a tyrant among them that is a good fighter, and they will obey him.

'They have no religion; and it might be true they don't believe in the devil--but what of that? Aren't there many on your side and our own that think there is no resurrection, but that we go straight to heaven at the minute of death?

'They never go into any house; and there's a great many of them wouldn't go in a house if they were asked. My father went one time from Ballylee to Limerick; and there was a tinker at that time the Government wanted to get information from; something about Bonaparte it was. And they offered him a good lodging with a feather-bed in it to sleep on; and he said if he slept one night on a feather-bed, he'd never be any good after; that it was more wholesome to sleep outside on a bed of rushes. They didn't get any information out of him after; though they offered him good reward, he wouldn't give it to them.

'They have no marriage at all; but their women might be ten times better than the rural women for all that, and true to their men. The women are very smart at cooking. You'll see them make a fire by the roadside with a bundle of straw and a bit of wood, and they'll put the pot down. What goes into the pot? Well, how would I know? but the men are very handy, and when they put their hand in the pot, believe me it doesn't go in empty.

'They used to be prone to coining at one time; but the law of transportation stopped that. And there's few of the police would like to grabble with them. I saw four of the police trying to take one the other day, and he bet them all; and it was a countryman got a hold of him in the end.'

And a woman whose house they have often made their camp near, says: 'They are bad, and we don't like them to be coming near us. There was a little lad of them came running to the door one night, and he called to us to come; for there was a man killing his mother. But we drove him away and didn't go; for we knew her to be a bad woman.' And another woman says: 'If they have a religion, it's a wandering one; wandering like themselves.'

And a farmer living by the roadside says: 'A bad class they are, indeed, sleeping out under a little bit of cloth, and hardy for all that. Wild beasts they are, stealing turf from the banks.'

But an old man from Slieve Echtge takes a more kindly view of them. 'There are very nice men among them,' he says; 'and they are as hardy as goats or as Connemara sheep. They go about to fairs and deal in asses and in horses, and sometimes they are rich. There was one I knew, a sieve-maker--they are of the same class--and that married a tinker's daughter; they were in here two or three times. I told him I wondered they wouldn't settle down in one place; for if I knew the way to make money, I said, I'd make plenty--for they are said to coin money. But he said it made no difference if they had money; they couldn't stop in one place; they must be walking always and going through the whole country.'

And then we got to the reason of their wandering.

'It was a tinker put St. Patrick astray one time. For he was a slave in Ireland after he was brought out of France, and it would take a hundred pounds to buy his freedom. And he found a lump of gold or of silver in a field one day, where he was minding sheep; and he brought it to a tinker and asked the value of it. "It's nothing at all but a bit of solder," says the tinker. "Give it here to me." But St. Patrick brought it to a smith then, and he told him the value of it. And then St. Patrick put a curse on the tinkers that they might be for ever with every man's face against them, and their face against every man; and that they should get no rest for ever but to travel the world.

'And there are some say that when our Lord was on the cross there could be no tradesman found to drive the nails in His hands and His feet till a tinker was brought, and he did it; and that is why they have to walk the world; and I never met anyone that had seen a tinker's funeral.

'But they may believe some things. For there was a woman of them told me one time they were camping near the railway bridge that in the night-time she saw the whole wall beside her falling down and shattered; but in the morning it was standing as it did before. "And we'll get out of this place as fast as we can," she said.'

'They are a class of themselves,' says another man, 'and they have been there ever since the world began. I often heard it said that our Lord asked a tinker one time to make Him some vessel He wanted, and he refused Him. He went then to a smith, and he did what was wanted. And from that time the tinkers have been wandering on the roads; but they wouldn't have refused Him if they had known He was God. I never saw them at Mass; but I am sure they believe in God. It was here in Ireland they refused our Lord, the time He walked the whole world after the Crucifixion.'

'To be sure they are under a curse,' said another, 'like the Jews, to be wandering always; and they have some religion of their own, but it's a bad one. It's likely St. Patrick put the curse on them; for a fleet of children of tinkers went after him one time, mocking at him, and he turned one of them into a pillar of stone.'

And that is their story as I have heard it so far.

WORKHOUSE DREAMS

Last June I had a few free days, and I chose to spend them among the imaginative class, the holders of the traditions of Ireland, country people in thatched houses, workers in fields and bogs.

I was looking for legends of those shadow-heroes, Finn and his men, to help me in writing their story; and I heard many tales and long poems about fair-haired Finn, who 'had all the wisdom of a little child'; and Conan of the sharp tongue, who was 'some way cross in himself,' and who had a briar on his shield; and their adventures beyond sea, and their hunting after deer that were 'as joyful as the leaves of a tree in summer time.' But some of the people repeated verses by Raftery and Callinan and Sweeny, and some told stories of the kingdom of the Sidhe.

I spent three happy afternoons in a workhouse in my own county, but not in my own parish; and after we had spoken of the Fianna for a while, the old men began to tell me these long, rambling stories I am about to repeat.

We sat in a gravelled yard, where only the leaves of a few young sycamores told that spring had come. Some of the old men sat on a bench against the whitewashed wall of a shed, in their rough frieze clothes and round grey caps, and others stood round, pressing closer and closer as their interest in the story grew.

Some of the stories were new to me; some I had heard in other versions; but all--even those like the 'Taming of the Shrew,' which have, one must believe, been brought in from other countries--have taken an Irish colouring. I began to listen, half interested and half impatient; for I had never cared much for this particular kind of tale.

But as I listened, I was moved by the strange contrast between the poverty of the tellers and the splendours of the tales. These men who had failed in life, and were old and withered, or sickly, or crippled, had not laid up dreams of good houses and fields and sheep and cattle; for they had never possessed enough to think of the possession of more as a possibility. It seemed as if their lives had been so poor and rigid in circumstance that they did not fix their minds, as more prosperous people might do, on thoughts of customary pleasure. The stories that they love are of quite visionary things; of swans that turn into kings' daughters, and of castles with crowns over the doors, and lovers' flights on the backs of eagles, and music-loving water-witches, and journeys to the other world, and sleeps that last for seven hundred years.

I think it has always been to such poor people, with little of wealth or comfort to keep their thoughts bound to the things about them, that dreams and visions have been given. It is from a deep narrow well the stars can be seen at noonday; it was one left on a bare rocky island who saw the pearl gates and the golden streets that lead to the Tree of Life.

One of the old men told me a story in Irish--another translating it as he went on; for my ear was not practised enough to follow it well:--'There was a farmer one time had one son only, and the son died, and the father wouldn't go to the funeral, where he had had some dispute with him.

'And, after a while, a neighbour died, and he went to his funeral. And a while after that he was in the churchyard looking at the grave. And he took up a skull that was lying there--one of four--and he said: "It's a handsome man you may have been when you were young; and I'd like to know something about you," he said. And the skull spoke, and it is what it said: "I'll go spend to-morrow night with you, if you'll come and spend another night with me." "I will do that," said the farmer.

'And on the way home he met with the priest, and he told him what had happened. "I would never believe that a skull spoke," said the priest. "Come to my house to-morrow night, and you'll hear him speak," said the farmer.

'So the next night they were sitting together in the house, and they had dinner set out on the table. And after a while they heard something come to the door; and the skull came in, and it got up on the table, and it ate all the dinner that was there; and after that it went out again. "Why didn't you speak to it?" said the farmer to the priest. "Why didn't you speak to it yourself?" said the priest. "What will it do to me at all when I go to see it to-morrow night?" said the farmer; "but I must hold to my promise when it came here first."

'So the next evening he set out for the churchyard, and he could see nothing at all in it. And then he went down three steps that were beside the church; and presently he was in a field, and it full of men fighting one against the other with spades and reaping-hooks. "Is it looking for a head you are?" they said; "it's gone into that field beyond."

'So he went on into the other field; and it was full of men and women, all of them fighting one against the other. "Are you looking for a head?" they said; "it's after going into that field beyond."

'So he went into the third field; and there he saw a big house, and he went into it. And he saw a fire on the hearth, and a lady in the room, and a serving-girl. And the lady was walking up and down the room; and whenever she would go near to the fire to warm herself, the serving-girl would put her away from it.

'Then they said: "If it's for a head you're looking, it's within in the room."

'So he went into the room; and the head was there before him, and it asked him would he have some dinner; and he said he would, and it brought him into a kitchen; and there were three women in it, and the head bade one of them to give the man his dinner; and what she put before him was a bit of brown bread and a jug of water, and he did not think it worth his while to eat that; and then the head bade the second woman to give him his dinner, and she gave him a worse dinner again; and then the third woman was told to give it to him, and she spread a nice table, and put the best of everything on it, and he ate and drank; and then he asked the head what was the meaning of all he saw.

'And the head said: "The men you saw in the first field used to be fighting when they were in life, because they had land near to one another, and they used to be for moving the merings, and now they have to be fighting with one another for ever and always. And the men and the women you saw, they were married people that used to be fighting with one another, and they must go on fighting for ever now. And the lady you saw in the house, when she was in life, she usedn't to let the serving-girl near to the fire when she would come in wet and cold, and would want to warm herself; and now the serving-girl is doing the same to her, and that will go on to the Day of Judgment.

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