Celtic Fairy Tales (25 page)

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:

Et vos barbaricos ritus, moremque sinistrum,
Sacrorum, Druidae, positis repetistis ab armis,
Solis nosse Deos et coeli numera vobis
Aut solis nescire datum; nemora alta remotis
Incolitis lucis. Vobis auctoribus umbrae,
Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi,
Pallida regna petunt:
regit idem spiritus artus
Orbe alio
: longae, canitis si cognita, vitae
Mors media est.

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."