Descriptive Formulae in Scottish and Irish Wonder Tales

 

I've been reading a lot of Irish and Scots fairy tales or wonder tales lately and have been struck, as often before, by the sheer beauty of expression in many of them. I cannot read the original Gaelic of course, but various Victorian translators seem to have done a marvellous job of indicating the poetry. For example, here are some extracts from ‘The Young King of Easaidh Ruadh’ in J.F. Campbell’s orally collected ‘Popular Tales of the West Highlands’. It was narrated in Gaelic circa 1820 on Islay by ‘an old man of the name of Angus McQueen to James Wilson, a blind fiddler on Islay' – who recited it to Hector MacLean, the schoolmaster on Islay, who wrote it down in Gaelic and sent it to Campbell in 1859. The tale tells how the young king decides to play a game (gambling) against the local Gruagach (‘the hairy one’), the stake being ‘the cropped rough-skinned maid that is behind the door’. He wins, and marries the maid, the Gruagach’s own daughter who in fact is very beautiful. Next day he visits the Gruagach again and his wife advises him to play for ‘the dun shaggy filly with the stick saddle’. Again he wins, and the dun filly is his. Of course the third time he plays, the Gruagach wins and sets out the penalty.

‘The stake of my play is,’ said he, ‘that I lay it as crosses and as spells on thee, and as the defect of the year, that the cropped rough-skinned creature, more uncouth and unworthy than thyself, should take thy head, and thy neck and thy life’s look off, if thou dost not get for me the Glaive of Light of the king of the oak windows.’

This is unfortunate. His own wife must kill him if he cannot bring back the Glaive (sword) of Light! No wonder, then –

The king went home, heavily, poorly, gloomily. The young queen came meeting him and she said, ‘Mohrooai! my pity! there is nothing with thee tonight.’ Her face and her splendour gave some pleasure to the king when he looked on her brow, but when he sat on a chair to draw her towards him, his heart was so heavy that the chair broke under him.

I love ‘heavily, poorly, gloomily’ – and the chair breaking under him because of the heaviness of his heart. Only in a fairy tale could you get away with that. But the queen tells him to cheer up. After all, he has ‘the best wife in Erin and the second-best horse in Erin’ and if he follows her advice and the filly’s advice, all will turn out well!

She set in order the dun shaggy filly, on which was the stick saddle, and though he saw it as wood, it was full of sparklings of gold and silver. He got on it; the queen kissed him and she wished him the victory of the battlefields. ‘Take thou the advice of thine own she-comrade the filly, and she will tell thee what thou shouldst do.’ He set out on his journey, and it was not dreary to be on the dun steed.

            She would catch the swift March wind that would be before her, and the swift March wind would not catch her. They came at the mouth of dusk and lateness, to the court and castle of the king of the oak windows.

‘The mouth of dusk’... all that last paragraph is pure poetry, yet made up of formulae that with variations turn up again and again in these fairy tales. (You’ll find ‘the wind of March’ in an Irish tale, below.) These repeated formulae or set pieces are an important part of oral storytelling, going back at least as far as Homer. ‘Dawn with her rosy fingers’, ‘thoughtful Telemachos’, ‘gray-eyed Athena’ – as Richmond Lattimore comments in the introduction to his verse translation of the Odyssey:

In both epics, women are deep-girdled, iron is gray, ships are hollow, words are winged and go through the barrier of the teeth, the sea is wine-coloured, barren and salt, bronze is sharp and pitiless. [...] The poet repeats brief formulae and even sizeable sequences. Adaptation may be necessary. Amphimonos goes down, Odyssey xxii: ‘He fell, thunderously, and took the earth full on his forehead.’ We cannot quite have the standard Iliad line: ‘He fell, thunderously, and his armour clattered upon him’: Amphimonos has no armour.

Memorable for their cadences and evocative power, such ready-made phrases take the strain of description, painting familiar but vivid pictures for those listening. (And to to return for a moment to ‘The Young King of Easaidh Ruadh’: the swift filly tells the young king how to steal the sword of light. She helps him escape and advises him how to slash off the head of the king of the oak windows – catching the head neatly in her mouth as they gallop side by side. On the young king’s return his wife tells him that since the king of the oak windows was the Gruagach’s brother, he had better kill him too, or be killed himself. This he successfully does, but that’s not the end of the story; next thing his wife is stolen by a giant and the king sets out to find her with the help of ‘the slim dog of the greenwood’...)

            In another very long tale, ‘The Battle of the Birds’, told by ‘John Mackenzie, fisherman, near Inverarie’ the king’s son of Tethertown arrives late to view the annual battle of the birds. The raven has won, but is being attacked by a snake which the king’s son swiftly dispatches with a blow of his sword. To reward him, the raven takes him up on his back and flies ‘over seven Bens and seven Glens and seven Mountain Moors’ to the house of the raven’s sister where he receives ‘meat of each meat, drink of each drink, warm water to his feet and a soft bed for his limbs’. A similar journey is repeated on the next day; on the third, the king’s son is given the gift of a bundle to carry to the place he would wish to dwell. (Inside the bundle is a castle: much more follows.) However, the ‘seven bens and seven glens and seven mountain moors’ over which the raven flies is a stock phrase echoed by the Irish tale ‘The King Who Had Twelve Sons’ (in ‘West Irish Folk-Tales and Romances’ collected and translated by William Larminie, 1893). In this tale a boy rides a pony over ‘seven miles on hill on fire and seven miles of steel thistles and seven miles of sea’, while a shorter variant of those steel thistles appears in ‘The Wal at the Warld’s End’, a story from Fife printed in Robert Chambers’ ‘Popular Rhymes of Scotland’. A lassie’s stepmother sends her to fill a bottle of water from the well at the world’s end: she gets there on the back of a pony who gallops over a ‘muir of hecklepins’ – that is, a moor of sharp steel pins of the type used for combing flax or wool.

             Another ‘West Irish Folk-Tale’ is ‘The Story of Bioultach’, narrated to Larminie in the 1880s by Terence Davies of Renvyle, Co. Galway. It contains what Larminie terms ‘a sea run’: the description of a voyage. Bioultach (the name means Yellow-Hair) is searching for his lost brother Maunus. After slaying a giant who has spirited away the three suitors of a king’s daughter – Maunus being the last – Bioultach sets out for the mysterious ‘bake-house in the east’ where Maunus is imprisoned. Since Bioultach has saved the king’s daughter, the king fits him out with a ship and two champions, and eight hundred men.

When Bioultach went on board the ship they raised their great sails, speckled, spotted, red-white, to the top of the mast, and he left not a rope unsevered, nor a helm without [here, Larminie says, ‘there were several words in the Gaelic I am unable to translate’] in the place where there were seals, whales, creeping things, little beasts of the sea with red mouth, rising on the sole and palm of the oar, making fairy music and melody for themselves, till the sea arose in strong waves, hushed with wondrous voices, with greatness and beauty was the ship sailing, till to haven she came and harbour on the coast of the Land of Brightness.

Similarly worded ‘sea-runs’ occur in other tales from the same collection. In ‘King Mananaun’, narrated by Patrick McGrale of Achill Island, a king’s daughter called Pampogue is fought over by two princes, Londu and Kaytuch. The one she loves, Kaytuch, is killed by Londu, but she refuses to marry the victorious prince. Instead she takes Kaytuch and ‘put him in a box, and the herbs of the hill about him’, and –

She went then and fitted out a ship great and gallant, till she raised the great sails, speckled, spotted, as long, as high as the top of the mast; and she left not a rope without breaking, an oar without tearing, with the crawling, creeping creatures, the little beasts, the great beasts of the deep sea coming up on the handle and blade of the oar, till she let two-thirds (of the sail) go, and one third held in, till the eels were whistling, the froth down and the sand above; till she overtook the red wind of March that was before her, and the red wind of March that was after did not overtake her; and she was sailing nine months before she came to land.

As she approached this island she witnesses two men carrying a dead man: he is alive in the morning but dead again by evening, ‘and so it was like that for three days’. Then one of the men rows out in a currach to ask rudely if she wants a husband. (‘She told him to be off, or she would sink him’.) The second approaches in the same rude manner, but the third is courteous and explains that they are three sons of a king, ‘and when he died there came Fawgawns and Blue-men on us,’ so they are now stranded on this island and their enemies attack them each day and kill one of them, whom they then bring back to life with ‘healing water’. Pampogue replies,

‘With me is a champion, the best that ever struck blow with sword; and I promise you his help for a day if you bring him to life.’

            The man went in and brought the healing water and rubbed the wound; and Kaytuch arose alive again; and he rubbed his eyes with his hands and said, ‘Great was the sleep that was on me’; and she laughed and told him everything from the time the young king cut his head off. ‘I took you on board ship, and we were sailing for nine months before we came here; and I promised your help for a day to this man if he would bring you to life; but you will not go far for a month until you grow strong.

            So he and she spent the night together – a third in talking, a third in storytelling, and a third in soft rest and deep slumber, till the whiteness of the day came upon the morrow. 

‘Till the whiteness of the day came upon the morrow.’ And I love the matter-of-fact way Kaytuch comes back to life as after a long sleep, and Pampogue’s laugh as she welcomes him.

            The third of the stories is ‘The Champion of the Red Belt’, told by Patrick Minahan of Malinmore, Glencolumkille, Co. Donegal; it is the tale of two young children who are put out to the sea in a barrel, along with two swords. One boy wears a black belt, the other a red belt; they are washed up on the shores of Greece and adopted by the king, who assumes (correctly) they are of royal blood. The boys believe they are the sons of this king but, eventually learning that they are not, they set out to discover their true parentage. Promising to come back and marry the girl he has supposed to be his sister, the Champion of the Red Belt and his brother come to the shores of the sea. 

He threw his hat out. He made a ship of the hat, a mast of his stick, a flag of his shirt. He hoisted the sails speckled, spotted, to the top of the straight mast. He turned the prow to sea, the stern to shore, and he left not a rope without breaking, nor a cable without rending, till he was listening to the blowing of the seals and the roaring of the great beasts, to the screams of the seagulls; till the little red-mouthed fishes were rising on the sole and palm of the oars; till they steered the vessel in under court and castle of the King of the Underwaveland. 

‘Not a rope without breaking, nor a cable without rending’: all three of these ‘sea-run’ passages employ a language of extravagant violence and damage to convey the topsy-turvy urgency of these journeys – ‘the froth down and the sand above’, and all three celebrate the diversity and plenty of the sea, filled with the life and activities of seals, whales, gulls, ‘great beasts’, and the little ‘red-mouthed’ fishes that rise and jump among the oar-strokes. Although these ships are supposedly large, even magical ones, with tall sails and masts, it is a fisherman’s currach close to the surface of the sea that is really being evoked each time, and the fisherman’s everyday familiarity with the sea’s creatures...

 ‘The sole and palm of the oars’ - what better phrase could there be for the way the oar-blades dip and twist as you row?

Picture credit: 

Riders of the Sidhe - by John Duncan, 1866 - 1945

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #31: THE GIRL AND THE ROBBERS

 

This Irish tale can be found in Jeremiah Curtin’s ‘Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World’ (1895) and is a version of the widespread tale type 'The Robber Bridegroom'. It was told to Curtin by a man ‘about forty years old’ named Diarmid Duvane, at a gathering of neighbours in a house near Ventry Strand at ‘a cross-road west of Dingle’. Duvane, who had been born in the area, had emigrated to America and lost his eyesight in a quarry explosion in Massachusetts. Returning to Ireland, ‘though blind, he found a wife and with her lives in a little cottage with a garden and a quarter acre of potatoes.’ He was, says Curtin, ‘a sceptic by nature’ but one who could tell many a good fairy tale. [NB: a wether is a gelded male sheep.]

 

There was a farmer in Kerry who owned a great many cattle and sheep and was a very rich man. There were four fairs in the year near his land, and one these was always held on St Martin’s Day. On that day they used to kill a sheep, a heifer or something to offer St Martin. That was the custom all over Ireland then, and still is.

           The wife of this rich farmer died and left him with one son and one daughter. He didn’t remarry, and the son and daughter grew till they were of the age to be married, and off they went to the fair on St Martin’s Day. While they were gone their father forgot all about killing the beast for St Martin. Late in the evening his children came home, and they weren’t in the house five minutes before their father remembered what he should have done.

            ‘A thing has happened that never happened before to myself, my father or my grandfather,’ he said to his son. ‘I forgot to bring an animal into the house to kill for St Martin!’

            ‘What a misfortune!’ said the son.

            ‘We can mend it,’ said his father. ‘I want you to go up the hill now and bring me a wether. Go up to the pen on the hill and bring him down to me.’

            ‘I may not come back alive if I do,’ said the son, ‘and ‘tis you yourself that ought to think of St Martin, and get the sheep.’ The son wouldn’t be told, and he wouldn’t go, so then the daughter said to her brother that she’d go with him, but he swore he wouldn’t go at all, either alone or in company, so the sister said, ‘I’ll go without you.’ And she went to get a rope to tie the sheep.

            In the parlour was a nice sword they kept in case there was need of it; it was in a scabbard hanging from a belt. The young woman buckled the belt around her waist and off she went to the hill, where the sheep were penned in a yard with a high stone wall to keep out dogs and wolves, and at one end was a little stone hut where a herder could take shelter. The girl chose the best wether she could find and tied the rope on him, but just as she started for home a great fog came down. She and the sheep got lost and wandered on the hill till they came back to the yard and the hut again, and she decided to wait out the fog and go home in the morning.

            Around midnight what did she hear but men talking, and out of the fog and the dark came three fellows driving a great flock of sheep before them. Three brothers they were, robbers that plagued the whole countryside, and there was a hundred pounds reward on the head of each one of them. The girl hid herself in the stone hut and listened. One of the robbers picked out the best of her father’s sheep, the second added them to the flock they’d stolen, while the third man stood guard at the gate. The man choosing the sheep had chosen a good many, when he noticed the hut and said to himself, ‘Maybe he keeps the best of the bunch in here.’ He opened the door and put his head in. The girl was waiting behind it with the naked sword in her two hands. With one blow she took his head off and dragged him into the hut.

            The other two called and asked what was keeping him. Getting no answer, the man who was minding the sheep put his head into the hut, and she served him the same way as the first one. The third and youngest called to his brothers, but what was use was it? Sure, they couldn’t answer. He went to the hut and what did he find but his brother stretched in the doorway; he pulled out the body and saw that the head was gone. The fear fell on him, and he took to his heels and left the others behind.

            The girl was afraid to come out and stayed where she was till clear day. Then she found two flocks of sheep, for the robber had run off with only his life. She found the wether the rope was on and led him home with her. Her father had been crying and lamenting all night, sure that some evil had come to her. He welcomed her with gladness and asked what had kept her all night. She told him how she had killed the two robbers and left the yard full of sheep. It was well pleased he was to see her safe, and himself and the son went to the sheep yard, fetched the two heads, and taking the girl with them they went to claim the reward, Two hundred pounds she received, for her father said she had earned it and she should keep it.

            Well, the news flew all over the country how the young woman had done such a great deed of bravery, and all the people, young and old, were talking of her. About a year later, who should come to the farmer’s house one evening but a man on horseback, and he dressed like any nobleman. They stabled his horse and after supper the farmer, who was wondering what could bring such a fine young man to his house, asked him who he was and what brought him?

            ‘I’ve come for a wife,’ said the young man.

            ‘Ah, don’t be talking,’ said the farmer, ‘my daughter is not a fit wife for the likes of you.’

            ‘If she pleases me, isn’t that enough?’ asked the young man. ‘I have riches enough for myself, and the two hundred pounds she got for the heads of the robbers is enough for her. I want no fortune, I want nothing but herself.’

            By the end of the evening, the farmer was well pleased wth the man, and the match was settled. The very next morning they had the marriage and the wedding, but then the husband wouldn’t stop another night: he said he must get home that very day. When the bride saw that, she looked at him closely and thought to herself, ‘He may well be a brother to the two men I killed.’ The young man mounted his horse and she sat behind him, pillion, but she had put the sword belt around her, and hidden the sword under her long cloak. 

 

             Away they rode, and not on the highway but through wild and lonely places, and never a word the man spoke to her till the middle of the afternoon, when he stopped and said, ‘Too long I’ve been waiting. I’ve the last of my patience lost and I’ll give you no more time. Come down from the horse.’

            ‘What are you saying?’ said she.

            ‘You killed my two brothers in the sheep yard,’ said he. ‘I have you now, and I don’t know how in this world I will make you suffer enough for it. It’s not a sudden death, but a long one I’ll be giving you.’ And what did he tell her then but to undress till he’d cut the flesh from her bit by bit, and she alive.

            She came down from the horse. ‘Well,’ said she, ‘I’ve only one thing to ask.’

            ‘You’ll get nothing from me,’ said the robber.

            ‘All I wish is for you to turn your face from me while I’m undressing.’

            It was the will of God that he turned his face away, and that moment she gave one blow of her sword on his neck and swept the head off him. She hid the head among the rocks where no dog or beast could come at it, for there were two hundred pounds on this man’s head, for he was the worst of the brothers.

            Then she tried to turn the horse, but he wouldn’t move a step for her, so she let him have his head and take his own way and he never stopped till he reached the robbers’ house. There was no one there but a very old man, and when he heard the clatter he came out. Seeing the horse, he saluted the farmer’s daughter and asked where was his son?

            ‘He’s at his father-in-law’s house,’ said she. ‘He got married this morning. He’ll stop there tonight, and be here with his wife tomorrow. Friends will come with them to have a feast here; he sent me to tell you.’

            The old man ordered his servant to make everything ready. ‘This is a rich house,’ he told the young woman.

            ‘Oh, sure your riches could never compare to what your son’s wife has!’

            ‘I’ll show you a part of the place,’ said the old man, and he showed her a room that was full of gold and silver in heaps. ‘Look at this!’ he said.

            ‘That is a deal of riches,’ said she, ‘but if there was twice more, ’twould be less than the riches your son’s wife has.’ At supper she asked, was it far to a town or city?

            ‘Cork is eight miles from this,’ said the old man, and he pointed out the road that led to the highway. Then he showed her to a room and a bed and told her to sleep without fear.

            Well, the room was full of men’s clothes – coats, caps and three-cornered hats. She didn’t sleep, she slipped off her dress and put on a man’s clothes. She started at midnight and travelled till daylight. Not two miles from Cork, what did she see coming towards her but a young man on horseback. He saluted her and said, ‘I suppose you have been travelling all night?’

            ‘A good part of it,’ said she, ‘and I suppose you have, too?’

            ‘No, but I have to rise early. I am the Mayor of Cork, and have a great deal of work on my hands,’ said he.

            Hearing this, she threw herself on her knees, and the Mayor asked what trouble was on her. She told all that had happened. So the Mayor went back to the city and brought out a good company of soldiers with two wagons, and they never stopped till they reached the robbers’ house, while the farmer’s daughter led the Mayor and some men to the place where she had hidden the head. They brought the head with them and gathered up all the riches at the robbers’ house, bound the old father and took him to Cork to be tried and judged and hanged. And the Mayor was unmarried, and what did he do but marry the farmer’s daughter, and she was his wife for as long as she lived. 

 

* For more on the old Irish custom of killing a beast for St Martin, visit https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2019/1108/1089533-martinmas-blood-sacrifice-rites-ireland-november-11th/

 

Picture credit

Shepherdess by her hut, by Wilhelm Frey, 1872 

Riding pillion, The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual, Project Gutenberg

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #25: FAIR, BROWN AND TREMBLING

This Irish tale was collected by American folklorist Jeremiah Curtin who travelled through Kerry, Galway and Donegal in 1887 to transcribe and translate folk- and fairy tales from speakers of Erse. Curtin didn’t publish detailed notes on his sources, so the name of whoever told him the story is lost to history. 

Fair, Brown and Trembling are princesses, daughters of the King of Tir Conal (Donegal in Ulster). We quickly forget their status though, since they live without servants in what seems to be no more than a small farmhouse. The tale falls into two halves: the first half is a Cinderella variant in which the two elder sisters make the youngest one, Trembling, do all the cooking and housework – and prevent her from attending church, which is the only social occasion available to them. But Trembling has a magical ally in the henwife – always a powerful figure in Irish tales – who sends her to church marvellously dressed and riding a succession of splendid mares. The second half of the story combines the various motifs of ‘the false bride’, ‘one sister pushes another into the water to drown’, and ‘being swallowed by a sea-monster’ – so there is plenty of action! 

                A thing I love about this story is that the Cinderella-figure, Trembling, gets to decide for herself the colour and style of the magically-produced fine clothes she wears to church. And she does this with delighted exuberance. After all, magic can do anything, so why not test the limits? Most fairy tale dresses are gold as the sun or silver as the moon and stars, but Trembling’s dresses put these into the shade – with no lack of specificity. First she asks for a white dress with green shoes, next for a dress of black satin with red shoes – and finally a dress of red and white with a green cape to wear over it, a multi-coloured feathered hat, and shoes with 'the toes red, the middle white, and the backs and heels green'. And that's before we even get to the horses. Such innocent flamboyance reminds me of my neighbour’s little girl, who was invited to choose a name for the family’s new kitten. After some thought she announced it would be called ‘Sparkling Rosy Crystal Pendant’ – and why not? (She was cross when her parents shortened it to Rosy.) 

 No wonder Trembling’s sisters (determined followers of fashion) can find no such dresses in all Erin. And if fashion can work such miracles, no wonder the son of the King of Omanya (Emain Macha) forgets his original attachment to the eldest sister, Fair, and transfers it to Trembling. Red and green are fairy colours, while black satin, splendid as it sounds, is not the usual garb for a simple maiden, so it’s hardly surprising when, dressed in magical clothes and riding on magical mares, all conjured up with the aid of a 'cloak of darkness', Trembling is strictly warned by the henwife not to go inside the church. (If she did, would the magical clothes vanish?) As the finishing touch, the henwife places ‘a honey-bird’ on Trembling’s right shoulder and a ‘honey-finger’ on her left. The story does not explain the significance of these, and I was left wondering what on earth a honey-finger could be? Some kind of sweetmeat? 

Then I found a strikingly similar fairy tale which sheds light on it. ‘The Snow-White Maiden, and The Fair Maid, and The Swarthy Maid, and Frizzle or Bald-Pate Their Mother’ is a tale from Tiree in the Inner Hebrides which appeared in The Celtic Magazine, No. CLIV, August 1888, Vol XIII, contributed by the translator, Mrs Jessie Wallace, sister to the folklorist J G Campbell. (You will notice that although the heroines’ names are different, they both have one sister called ‘Fair’ and one called ‘Brown’; swarthy of course being simply another word that means ‘dark’.) 

In this Hebridean tale the heroine’s magical helper is named in the Gaelic 'an Eachrais Urlair', which Wallace translates as ‘Trouble the House’ but glosses as ‘Cantrip’- a spell. 'Cantrip' places three twittering starlings on the girl’s right shoulder and three more on her left - a choice perhaps of magical significance. Starlings can be easily tamed and are great mimics; in the Second Branch of the Mabinogion it’s a starling which Branwen raises, teaches to speak, and sends from Ireland to Wales with a message to her brother Bendigeidfran which prompts war between the countries. The magical ‘Cantrip’ also grants to the Snow-White Maiden the gift that whenever she is thirsty all she has to do is put her hand to her mouth ‘and wine and honey will flow from your fingers’. The ‘honey-finger’ of the Irish tale must be a memory of this. The heroine's sister Fair Maid’s inability to refresh the prince with wine and honey in this way leads him to suspect her when, having pushed the Snow-White Maiden into a loch to be swallowed by a creature called the ‘Huge Senseless Beast’, she takes her place and pretends to be his wife. (Somehow it’s easier to accept the death of the Huge Senseless Beast than that of the whale in 'Fair, Brown and Trembling', but wincingly vivid as the details of its demise may be, we should regard this particular whale as simply another fairy tale monster.) Fair Maid lured her sister to the brink of the loch by calling her to look at their reflections and see how alike they are, which of course explains why she is able to deceive the prince at all. With nothing written down, details like these may often have been left out or forgotten by individual storytellers. 

A distinctive feature of 'Fair, Brown and Trembling' is the combat between the princes to win Trembling’s hand in marriage. It doesn’t occur in most Cinderella variants, but oral story-telling is all about matching and mending and spinning a tale out to last a whole evening if necessary. I’ve left the passage in – but if I were telling it aloud I’d leave it out: it adds nothing of any real interest and distracts attention from the heroine, who is otherwise centre stage. Trembling directs events even after the whale has swallowed her, and her specific consent seems to be required for the marriage of her daughter to the little herd-boy. I have to add that the usually excellent John D Batten's illustrations for the story err on the tame side. Why show Trembling sitting passively on the horse, and lying in a heap on the beach, when he could have shown her galloping away from church and telling the herd-boy what to do? And - when you get to it - imagine the fun you could have, painting the third mare! It would be lovely to know of any illustrations which better express the colour and vigour of this tale.

King Aedh Cúracha lived in Tir Conal, and he had three daughters whose names were Fair, Brown, and Trembling.

                Fair and Brown had new dresses, and went to church every Sunday. Trembling was kept at home to do the cooking and work. They would not let her go out of the house at all, for she was more beautiful than the other two, and they were in dread she might marry before themselves.

                They carried on in this way for seven years. At the end of seven years the son of the king of Omanya fell in love with the eldest sister.

                One Sunday morning, after the other two had gone to church, the old henwife came into the kitchen to Trembling and said, “It’s at church you ought to be this day, instead of working here at home.”

                “How could I go?” said Trembling. “I have no clothes good enough to wear at church, and if my sisters were to see me there, they’d kill me for going out of the house.”

                “I’ll give you,” said the henwife, “a finer dress than either of them has ever seen. And now be telling me what dress will you have?”

                “I’ll have,” said Trembling, “a dress as white as snow, and green shoes to my feet.”

                Then the henwife put on the cloak of darkness, clipped a piece from the old clothes the young woman had on, and asked for the whitest robes in the world and the most beautiful, and a pair of green shoes.

                That moment she had the robe and the shoes, and she brought them to Trembling, who put them on. When Trembling was dressed and ready, the henwife said, “I have a honey-bird here to sit on your right shoulder, and a honey-finger to put on your left. At the door stands a milk-white mare, with a golden saddle for you to sit on, and a golden bridle to hold in your hand.”

                Trembing sat on the golden saddle, and when she was ready to start, the henwife said, “You must not go inside the door of the church, and the minute the people rise up at the end of Mass, you must ride home as fast as the mare can carry you.”

                When Trembling came to the door of the church there was no one inside who caught a glimpse of her but was striving to see who she was; and when they saw her hurrying away at the end of the Mass they ran out after her. But no use in their running: she was away before any man could come near her, and from the minute she left the church until she got home she overtook the wind before her and outstripped the wind behind.

                She came down at the door, went in, and found the henwife had dinner ready. She put off the white robes and had her old dress on in a twinkling.

                When the two sisters came home the henwife asked, “Have you any news today from the church?”

                “We have, and great news,” they said. “We saw a grand, wonderful lady at the church door. We never saw the like of the robes she had on; it’s little was thought of our dresses beside what she was wearing, and there wasn’t a man at the church from the king to the beggar but was trying to look at her and see who she was.”

                The sisters would give no peace till they had two dresses like the robes of the strange rich lady; but honey-birds and honey-fingers were not to be found.

                Next Sunday the two sisters went to church again, and left the youngest at home to cook the dinner. After they had gone, the henwife came in and asked, “Will you go to church today?”

                “I would go,” said Trembling, “if I could get the going.”

                “What robe will you wear?” asked the henwife.

                “The finest black satin that can be found, and red shoes to my feet.”

                “What colour do you want the mare to be?”

                “I want her to be so black and so glossy I can see myself in her body.”

                The henwife put on the robes of darkness and asked for the robes and the mare. That moment, she had them. When Trembling was dressed, the henwife put the honey-bird on her right shoulder and the honey-finger on her left. The saddle on the mare was silver, and so was the bridle.

                When Trembling sat in the saddle and was going away, the henwife ordered her strictly not to go inside the door of the church, but to rush away as soon as the people rose at the end of Mass, and hurry home on the mare before any man could stop her.

                That Sunday the people were more astonished than ever, and gazed at her more than the first time; and all they were thinking of was to know who she was. But they had no chance, for the moment the people rose at the end of Mass she slipped from the church, was in the silver saddle, and home before a man could stop her or talk to her.

                The henwife had the dinner ready. Trembling took off her satin robe, and had on her old clothes before her sisters got home.

                “What news have you today?” asked the henwife of the sisters when they came from the church.

                “Oh, we saw the grand, strange lady again! And it’s little that any man could think of our dresses after looking at the robes of satin she had on! And all at church, from high to low, had their mouths open, gazing at her, and no man was looking at us.”

                The two sisters gave neither rest nor peace till they got dresses as nearly like the strange lady’s as could be found. Of course they were not so good; for the like of those robes could not be found in Erin.

                When the third Sunday came, Fair and Brown went to church dressed in black satin. They left Trembling at home to work in the kitchen, and told her to be sure and have the dinner ready when they came back.

                After they were out of sight, the henwife came to the kitchen and said, “Well my dear, are you for church today?”

                “I would go if I had a new dress to wear.”

                “What dress would you like?” asked the henwife.

                “A dress red as a rose from the waist down, and white as snow from the waist up; a cape of green on my shoulders; and a hat on my head with a red, a white and a green feather in it; and shoes for my feet with the toes red, the middle white, and the backs and heels green.”  

                The henwife put on the cloak of darkness, wished for all these things and had them. When Trembling was dressed, the henwife put the honey-bird on her right shoulder and the honey-finger on her left, and placing the hat on her head, clipped a few hairs from one lock and a few from another with her scissors, and that moment the most beautiful golden hair was flowing down over the girl’s shoulders. Then the henwife asked what kind of a mare she would ride. She said white, with blue and gold-coloured diamond spots all over her body, on her back a saddle of gold, and on her head a golden bridle.

                The mare stood there before the door, and a bird sitting between her ears, which began to sing as soon as Trembling was in the saddle, and never stopped till she came home from the church.

                The fame of the beautiful strange lady had gone out through the world, and all the princes and great men that were in it came to church that Sunday, each one hoping that it was himself would have her home with him after Mass.

                Now the son of the king of Omanya forgot all about the eldest sister whom he’d fallen in love with, and he remained outside the church so as to catch the strange lady before she could hurry away.

                The church was more crowded than ever before, and there were three times as many outside. There was such a throng before the church that Trembling could only come inside the gate.

                As soon as the people were rising at the end of Mass, the lady slipped out through the gate, was in the golden saddle in an instant, and sweeping away ahead of the wind. But if she was, the prince of Omanya was at her side, and seizing her by the foot he ran with the mare for thirty perches and never let go of the beautiful lady till the shoe was pulled from her foot, and he was left behind with it in his hand. She came home as fast as the mare could carry her, and was thinking all the time that the henwife would kill her for losing the shoe.

                Seeing her so vexed and so changed in the face, the old woman asked: “What’s the trouble that’s on you now?”

                “Oh! I’ve lost one of the shoes off my feet,” said Trembling.

                “Don’t mind that, don’t be vexed,” said the henwife; “maybe it’s the best thing that ever happened to you.”

                Then Trembling gave up all the things she had to the henwife, put on her old clothes and went to work in the kitchen. When the sisters came home, the henwife asked, “Have you any news from the church?”

                “We have indeed,” said they, “for we saw the grandest sight today. The strange lady came again, in grander array than before. On herself and the horse she rode were the finest colours of the world, and between the ears of the horse was a bird which never stopped singing from the time she came till the she went away. The lady herself is the most beautiful woman ever seen by man in Erin.”

                After Trembling had disappeared from the church, the son of the king of Omanya said to the other kings’ sons, “I will have that lady for my own.”

                They all said, “You didn’t win her just by taking the shoe off her foot, you’ll have to win her by the point of the sword; you’ll have to fight for her with us before you can call her your own.”

                “Well,” said the son of the king of Omanya, “when I find the lady that shoe will fit, I’ll fight for her, never fear, before I leave her to any of you.”

                Then all the kings’ sons were uneasy, and anxious to know who was she that lost the shoe, and they began to travel all over Erin to know could they find her. The prince of Omanya and all the others went in a great company together, north, south, east and west: not a house in the kingdom did they leave out, to find the woman the shoe would fit, nor did they care whether she was rich or poor, of high or low degree.

                The prince of Omanya always kept the shoe, and when the young women saw it they had great hopes, for it was of proper size, neither large nor small, though it would beat any man to know of what material it was made. One woman thought it would fit her if she cut a little from her great toe, and another, whose foot was too short, put something in the toe of her stocking. But no use, they only spoiled their feet, and were curing them for months afterwards.

                The two sisters, Fair and Brown, heard that the princes of the world were looking all over Erin for the woman that could wear the shoe, and every day they were talking of trying it on, and one day Trembling spoke up and said, “Maybe it’s my foot that the shoe will fit.”

                “Oh, the breaking of the dog’s foot on you! Why say so when you were at home every Sunday?”

                So that way they went on waiting, and scolding the younger sister. The day the princes were to come, the sisters put Trembling in a closet and locked the door on her, and when the company came to the house, the prince of Omanya gave the shoe to the sisters. But though they tried and tried, it would fit neither of them.

 

                “Is there any other young woman in the house?” asked the prince.

                “There is!” said Trembling, speaking up in the closet. “I’m here.”

                “Oh, we only have her here to put out the ashes,” said the sisters, but the prince and the others wouldn’t leave the house till they had seen her, so the two sisters had to open the door. When Trembling came out, the shoe was given to her, and it fitted exactly.

                The prince of Omanya looked at her and said, “You are the woman the shoe fits, and you are the woman I took the shoe from.”

                Then Trembling spoke up and said, “Do you stay here till I return.”

                She went to the henwife’s house. The old woman put on the cloak of darkness, got everything for her she had the first Sunday at church, and put her on the white mare in the same fashion. Then Trembling rode along the highway to the front of the house, and all who saw her the first time said, “This is the lady we saw at church!”

                Then she went away a second time, and a second time came back on the black mare, in the black dress the henwife gave her. All who saw her the second Sunday said, “That is the lady we saw at church.”

A third time she asked for a short absence, and soon came back on the third mare and in the third dress. All who saw her the third time said, “That is the lady we saw at church.” Everyone was satisfied and knew that she was the woman.

Then all the princes and great men spoke up. They said to the son of the king of Omanya, “You’ll have to fight now for her, before we let her go with you.”

“I’m here before you, ready for combat!”

So the son of the king of Lochlin stepped forth and a terrible struggle began. They fought for nine hours, and then the son of the king of Lochlin gave up the claim and left the field. Next day the son of the king of Spain fought six hours and yielded his claim. On the third day the son of the king of Nyerfói fought eight hours and stopped. The fourth day the son of the king of Greece fought six hours and stopped. On the fifth day no more strange princes wanted to fight, and all the sons of the kings in Erin said they would not fight with a man of their own land, that the strangers had had their chance, and as no others came to claim the woman, she belonged of right to the son of the king of Omanya.

The marriage day was fixed and the invitations were sent out. The wedding lasted for a year and a day. When the wedding was over, the king’s son brought home the bride, and when the time came, a son was born. Trembling sent for her eldest sister, Fair, to be with her and care for her.  One day, when Trembling was well and her husband was away hunting, the two sisters went out to walk; and when they came to the seaside, the eldest pushed the youngest sister in. A great whale came and swallowed her.

The eldest sister came home alone, and the husband asked, “Where is your sister?”

“She has gone home to her father in Ballyshannon; now that I am well I don’t need her.”

“Well,” said the husband, looking at her, “I’m in dread it’s my wife that’s gone.”

“Oh no!” said she, “it’s my sister Fair that’s gone.”

Since the sisters were very much alike, the prince was in doubt. That night he put his sword between them and said, “If you are my wife, this sword will get warm; if not, it will stay cold.”

In the morning when he rose up, the sword was as cold as when he put it there.

 

It happened that when the two sisters were walking by the seashore, a little boy was down by the water minding cattle, and he saw Fair push Trembling into the sea; and next day when the tide came in he saw the whale swim up and throw her out on the sand. When she was on the sand she said to the little boy, “When you go home in the evening with the cows, tell your master that my sister Fair pushed me into the sea yesterday, that a whale swallowed me and then threw me out, but will come again and swallow me with tomorrow’s tide and throw me out again on the strand. The whale will throw me out three times. I’m under the geas of this whale and cannot leave the beach or escape myself. Unless my husband saves me before I’m swallowed the fourth time, I shall be lost. He must come and shoot the whale with a silver bullet when he turns on the broad of his back. Under the breast-fin of the whale is a reddish-brown spot. My husband must hit him in that spot, for it is the only place in which he can be killed.”

When the little boy got home, the eldest sister gave him a draught of oblivion, and he did not tell.

Next day he went to the sea again. The whale came and cast Trembling up on the shore. She asked the boy, “Did you tell your master?”

“I did not,” said he. “I forgot.”

“How did you forget?” asked she.

“The woman of the house gave me a drink that made me forget.”

“Well don’t forget telling him this night, and if she gives you a drink, don’t take it from her.”

As soon as the boy came home, the eldest sister offered him a drink. He refused to take it till he had delivered his message and told all to the master. The third day he prince went down to the shore with his gun and a silver bullet in it. He was not long down when the whale came and threw Trembling upon the beach as the two days before. She had no power to speak to her husband till he had killed the whale. Then the whale went out, turned over one on the broad of his back and showed the spot for a moment only. That moment the prince fired. He had but the one chance, and a short one at that, but he took it and hit the spot, and the whale, mad with pain, made the sea all around red with blood and died.

That minute Trembling was able to speak, and went home with her husband, and as for the eldest sister, they had her put out to sea in a barrel, with provisions in it for seven years, to drift where the waves would bring her.

In time Trembling had a second child, a daughter. The prince and she sent the little herd boy to school and trained him up as one of their own children, and said, “If the little girl that is born to us now lives, no other man in the world will marry her but him.”

The herd boy and the prince’s daughter lived on till they were married. Trembling said to her husband, “You could not have saved me from the whale but for the little herd boy, and on that account I don’t grudge him my daughter.”

The son of the king of Omanya and Trembling had fourteen children, and they lived happily until the two of them died of old age.