Part 32 (1/2)
It wasn't long till the gate was thrune open, and the Ould Boy received Tom with bows and sc.r.a.pes, and axed his business.
”My business isn't much,” says Tom. ”I only came for the loan of that flail that I see hanging on the collar-beam, for the king of Dublin to give a thras.h.i.+ng to the Danes.”
”Well,” says the other, ”the Danes is much better customers to me; but since you walked so far I won't refuse. Hand that flail,” says he to a young imp; and he winked the far-off eye at the same time. So, while some were barring the gates, the young devil climbed up, and took down the flail that had the hand-staff and booltheen both made out of red-hot iron. The little vagabond was grinning to think how it would burn the hands o' Tom, but the d.i.c.kens a burn it made on him, no more nor if it was a good oak sapling.
[Ill.u.s.tration:]
”Thankee,” says Tom. ”Now would you open the gate for a body, and I'll give you no more trouble.”
”Oh, tramp!” says Ould Nick; ”is that the way? It is easier getting inside them gates than getting out again. Take that tool from him, and give him a dose of the oil of stirrup.”
So one fellow put out his claws to seize on the flail, but Tom give him such a welt of it on the side of the head that he broke off one of his horns, and made him roar like a devil as he was. Well, they rushed at Tom, but he gave them, little and big, such a thras.h.i.+ng as they didn't forget for a while. At last says the ould thief of all, rubbing his elbow, ”Let the fool out; and woe to whoever lets him in again, great or small.”
So out marched Tom, and away with him, without minding the shouting and cursing they kept up at him from the tops of the walls; and when he got home to the big bawn of the palace, there never was such running and racing as to see himself and the flail. When he had his story told, he laid down the flail on the stone steps, and bid no one for their lives to touch it. If the king, and queen, and princess, made much of him before, they made ten times more of him now; but Redhead, the mean scruff-hound, stole over, and thought to catch hold of the flail to make an end of him. His fingers hardly touched it, when he let a roar out of him as if heaven and earth were coming together, and kept flinging his arms about and dancing, that it was pitiful to look at him. Tom ran at him as soon as he could rise, caught his hands in his own two, and rubbed them this way and that, and the burning pain left them before you could reckon one. Well, the poor fellow between the pain that was only just gone, and the comfort he was in, had the comicalest face that you ever see, it was such a mixtherum-gatherum of laughing and crying. Everybody burst out a laughing--the princess could not stop no more than the rest; and then says Tom, ”Now, ma'am, if there were fifty halves of you, I hope you'll give me them all.”
Well, the princess looked at her father, and by my word, she came over to Tom, and put her two delicate hands into his two rough ones, and I wish it was myself was in his shoes that day!
Tom would not bring the flail into the palace. You may be sure no other body went near it; and when the early-risers were pa.s.sing next morning, they found two long clefts in the stone, where it was after burning itself an opening downwards, n.o.body could tell how far. But a messenger came in at noon, and said that the Danes were so frightened when they heard of the flail coming into Dublin that they got into their s.h.i.+ps and sailed away.
Well, I suppose, before they were married, Tom got some man, like Pat Mara of Tomenine, to learn him the ”principles of politeness,”
fluxions, gunnery and fortification, decimal fractions, practice, and the rule of three direct, the way he'd be able to keep up a conversation with the royal family. Whether he ever lost his time learning them sciences, I'm not sure, but it's as sure as fate that his mother never more saw any want till the end of her days.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MAN OR WOMAN
BOY OR GIRL
THAT READS WHAT FOLLOWS
3 TIMES
SHALL FALL ASLEEP
AN HUNDRED YEARS
JOHN D BATTEN DREW THIS: AUG 29TH 1891
GOOD-NIGHT. ]
Notes and References
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 sc.r.a.ps). 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, etc., 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, etc.); 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-cla.s.s 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 t.i.tle of _Irische Elfenmarchen_. 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 (cla.s.ses 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 _volkstumlich_ 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 Wilde 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 an American gentleman named Curtin, _Myths and Folk-Tales of Ireland_, 1890, and Dr. Douglas Hyde who has published in _Beside the Fire_, 1891, spirited English versions of some of the stories he had published in the original Irish in his _Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta_, Dublin, 1889. Miss Maclintock 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 (cla.s.s 2) which formed the staple of the old _ollamhs_ or bards. Of these tales of ”cattle-liftings, elopements, battles, voyages, courts.h.i.+ps, caves, lakes, feasts, sieges, and eruptions,” a bard of even the fourth cla.s.s 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's _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 a.s.sociation), 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 t.i.the of what he collected. At the end of the fourth volume he gives a list of 791 tales, &c., collected by him or his a.s.sistants 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.