Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #1: SIMON AND MARGARET

SIMON AND MARGARET

This tale was told in the 1880s by Gaelic-speaking Michael Faherty of Renvyle in Connemara, Co Galway to William Hartpole Lecky, who wrote it down verbatim; it was then translated by Irish poet William Larminie for his collection ‘West-Irish Folk Tales (1893). Larminie was a careful and responsible collector who took down most of his tales in person. He not only names his sources but gives brief descriptions of them: 'Michael Faherty,' he says, 'was when I first made his acquaintance, a lad of about seventeen. He ... lived with his uncle, who had, or has still, a small holding... and who was also a pilot and repairer of boats.' Unlike many 19th century collectors Larminie did not attempt to improve or embellish the stories he was told; he was so conscientious that his collection even includes one unfinished tale, with a note to explain that the storyteller had forgotten the ending!

In this complete tale, the heroine Margaret follows her married lover Simon to sea, only to be cast overboard like Jonah when the ship is threatened by a female sea serpent with a great dislike of the Irish... It's easy to imagine this story being told aloud: deadpan and deceptively naïve, with elisions, sudden surprises and touches of sly humour. We hear how the two lovers are reunited, how the level-headed Margaret saves Simon by fighting the giant of the White Doon, and how in spite of his attempt to take credit for the victory, he's forced to admit that she was the one who did it. 

Long ago there was a king’s son called Simon, and he came in a ship from the east to Eire. In the place where he came to harbour he met with a woman whose name was Margaret, and she fell in love with him. And she asked him if he would take her with him on the ship. He said he would not take her, that he had no business with her, “for I am married already,” said he.  But the day he was going to sea she followed him to the ship, and such a beautiful woman was she, that he said to himself that he would not put her out of the ship, “but before I go further I must get beef.” He returned back and got the beef. He took the woman and the beef to the ship and ordered the sailors to make everything ready that they might be sailing on the sea.

            They were not long from land when they saw a great bulk making towards them, and it seemed to them that it was more like a serpent than anything else whatever. And it was not long before the serpent cried out, “Throw me the Irish person you have on board.”

            “We have no Irish person in the ship,” said the king’s son, “for it is foreign people we are; but we have meat we took from Eire, and, if you wish, we will give you that.”

            “Give it to me,” said the serpent, “and everything else you took from Eire.”

            He threw out a quarter of the beef, and the serpent went away that day, and on the morrow morning she came again, and they threw out another quarter, and one every day till the meat was gone. And next day the serpent came again, and she cried out to the king’s son, “Throw the Irish flesh out to me.”

            “I have no more flesh,” said the prince.

            “If you have no flesh, you have an Irish person,” said the serpent, “and don’t be telling your lies to me any longer. I knew from the beginning you had an Irish person in the ship, and unless you throw her out to me, and quickly, I will eat up yourself and your men.”

            Margaret came up, and no sooner did the serpent see her than she opened her mouth, and put on an appearance as if she were going to swallow the ship.

            
 “I will not be guilty of the death of you all,” said Margaret; “get me a boat, and if I go far safe it is better, and if I do not, I had rather I perished than the whole of us.”

            “What shall we do to save you?” said Simon.

            “You can do nothing better than put me in the boat,” said she, “and lower me on the the sea, and leave me to the will of God.”

            As soon as she got on the sea, no sooner did the serpent see her than she desired to swallow her, but before she reached as far as her, a billow of the sea rose between them, and left herself and the boat on dry land. She saw not a house in sight she could go to. “Now,” she said, “I am as unfortunate as ever I was. This is no place for me to be!” She arose and began to walk, and after a long while she saw a house a good way from her. “I am not as unfortunate as I thought,” said she. “Perhaps I shall get lodging in that house tonight.” She went in, and there was no one in it but an old woman who was getting her supper ready. “I am asking for lodging till morning.”

            “I will give you no lodging,” said the old woman.

            “Before I go further, there is a boat there below, and it will be better for you to take it into your hands.”

            “Come in,” said the old woman, “and I will give you lodging for the night.”

            The old woman was always praying by night and day. Margaret asked her, “Why are you always saying your prayers?”

            “I and my mother were living a long while ago in the place they call the White Doon, and a giant came and killed my mother, and I had to come away for fear he would kill myself; and I am praying every night and every day that some one may come and kill the giant.”

The old woman owns a ring, which will only fit the finger of the one destined to kill the giant. Simon’s wife and his brother Stephen arrive together to kill the giant, but the ring will not fit Stephen’s finger, and the giant slays them both. At last, Simon himself arrives at the old woman’s house.

            The next morning there came a gentleman and a beautiful woman to the house, and he gave the old woman the full  of a quart of money to say paternosters for them till morning. The old woman opened a chest and took out a handsome ring and tried to place it on his finger, but it would not go on. “Perhaps it would fit you,” said she to the lady. But her finger was too big.

            When they went out, Margaret asked the old woman who were the man and woman.

            “That is the son of a king of the Eastern World, and the name that is on him is Stephen, and he and the woman are going to the White Doon to fight the giant, and I am afraid they will never come back; for the ring did not fit either of them; and it was told to the people that no one would kill the giant but he whom the ring would fit.”

            The two of them remained during the night praying for him, for fear the giant would kill him; and early in the morning they went out to see what had happened to Stephen and the lady that was with him, and they found them dead near the White Doon.

            “I knew,” said the old woman, “this is what would happen to them. It is better for us to take them with us and bury them in the churchyard.”

            About a month after, a man came into the house, and no sooner was he inside the door than Margaret recognised him.

            “How have you been ever since, Simon?”

            “I am very well,” said he; “it can’t be that you are Margaret?”

            “It is I,” said she.

            “I thought that billow that rose after you, when you got in the boat, drowned you.”

            “It only left me on dry land,” said Margaret.

           “I went to the Eastern World, and my father said to me that he sent my brother to go and fight with the giant, who was doing great damage to the people near the White Doon, and that my wife went to carry his sword.”

            “If that was your brother and your wife,” said Margaret, “the giant killed them.”

            “I will go on the spot and kill the giant, if I am able.”

            “Wait while I try the ring on your finger,” said the old woman.

            “It is too small to go on my finger,” said he.

            “It will go on mine,” said Margaret.

            “It will fit you,” said the old woman.

            Simon gave the full of a quart of money to the old woman, that she might pray for him till he came back. When he was about to go, Margaret said, “Will you let me go with you?”

            “I will not,” said Simon, “for I don’t know that the giant won’t kill myself, and I think it too much that one of us should be in his danger.”

            “I don’t care,” said Margaret.  “In the place where you die, there am I content to die.”

            “Come with me,” said he.

            When they were on their way to the White Doon, a man came before them.

“Do you see that house near the castle?” said the man.

“I see,” said Simon.

“You must go into it and keep a candle lighted till morning in it.”

“Where is the giant?” said Simon.

“He will come to fight you there,” said the man.

They went and kindled a light, and they were not long there when Margaret said to Simon, “Come, and let us see the giants.” [There are baby giants as well as the old one.]

            “I cannot,” said the king’s son, “for the light will go out if I leave the house.”

            “It will not go out,” said Margaret; “I will keep it lighted till we come back.”

            And they went together and got into the castle, to the giant’s house, and they saw no one there but an old woman cooking; and it was not long till she opened an iron chest and took out the young giants and gave them boiled blood to eat.

            “Come,” said Margaret, “and let us go to the house we left.”

            They were not long in it when the king’s son was falling asleep.  Margaret said to him, “If you fall asleep, it will not be long till the giants come and kill us.”

            “I cannot help it,” he said.  “I am falling asleep in spite of me.”

            He fell asleep, and it was not long till Margaret heard a noise approaching, and the giant cried from outside for the king’s son to come out to him.

            “Fum, far, faysogue!  I feel the smell of a lying churl of an Irishman.  You are too great for one bite and too little for two, and I don’t know whether it is better for me to send you into the Eastern World with a breath or put you under my feet in a puddle.  Which would you rather have – striking with knives in your ribs or fighting on the grey stones?”

            “Great, dirty giant,” said Margaret, “not with right or rule did I come in, but by rule and by right to cut your head off in spite of you, when my fine silken feet go up, and your big, dirty feet go down.”

            They wrestled till they brought the wells of fresh water up through the gray stones with fighting and breaking of bones, till the night was all but gone. Margaret squeezed him, and first squeeze she put him down to his knees, the second squeeze to his waist, and the third squeeze to his armpits.  

            “You are the best woman I have ever met. I will give you my court and my sword of light and the half of my estate for my life, and spare to slay me.”

            “Where shall I try your sword of light?”

            “Try it on the ugliest block in the wood.”

            “I see no block at all that is uglier than your own great block.”

 

She struck him at the joining of the head and the neck, and cut the head off him.

In the morning when she wakened the king’s son, “Was not that a good proof I gave of myself last night?” said he to Margaret. “That is the head outside, and we shall try to bring it home.”

He went out, and was not able to stir it from the ground.  He went in and told Margaret he could not take it with him, that there was a pound’s weight in the head.  She went out and took the head with her.

            “Come with me,” he said.

            “Where are you going?”

            “I will go the Eastern World, and come with me till you see the place.”

            When they got home, Simon took Margaret with him to his father the king.

            “What has happened to your brother and your wife?” said the king.

            “They have both been killed by giants.  And it is Margaret, this woman here who has killed them.”  

The king gave Margaret a hundred thousand welcomes, and she and Simon were married - and how they are since then, I do not know!

Find more about fairy tales and folklore in my essays "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available from Amazon here and here.


Picture credits:
'Leviathan' by Arthur Rackham
Illustration by Arthur Rackham to 'The Manuscript Found in a Bottle' by Edgar Allen Poe

THE KING WHO HAD TWELVE SONS

Are you sitting comfortably?  Because this is the story of how my blog got its name, as well as being the story of a story.

It’s hardly well known.  I found it because of my habit of picking up shabby-looking books in second hand bookshops: a lovely old book called ‘West Irish Folk-Tales and Romances’ collected and translated by William Larminie (‘with introduction and notes, and appendix containing specimens of the Gaelic originals phonetically spelt.’)  It was published by the Camden Library in 1893.

Larminie, who was born in County Mayo in 1849 and died in 1900, was a minor Irish poet and a folklorist.  He spoke Gaelic, and translated most of the stories in the book from named oral storytellers:

‘All have been taken down in the same way – that is to say, word for word from the dictation of peasant narrators… difficult and doubtful pasts being gone over again and again.  Sometimes the narrator can explain difficulties.  Sometimes other natives of the place can help you.  But after every resource of this kind has been exhausted, a certain number of doubtful words and phrases remain, with regard to which – well, one can only do one’s best.’

He describes his narrators, who come from different districts: this is really fascinating:

“Renvyle… is situated in Connemara... Terence Davis is a labourer pure and simple. A man of about forty-five years of age, and blind in one eye. Some of his tales he got from his mother…

“Next in order, Achill Island, some twenty five miles from Renvyle by sea, more than sixty miles by land.  Two narrators from that locality are … represented in the book.  One of them, Pat. McGrale, is a man of middle age, a cottier with a small holding and besides, a Jack-of-all-trades, something of a boatman and fisherman, ‘a botch of a tailor’, to use his own words, and ready for any odd job.  He can read Irish, but had very little literature on which to exercise his accomplishment.  He knows some long poems by heart, and is possessed of various odds and ends of learning, accurate and not.  John McGinty, a man of Donegal descent and name, has also some land; but his holding is so small that he is to a great extent a labourer for others, and was engaged on relief works when I first came to know him.  He, also, is a middle aged man.  He knows many Ossianic poems by heart, which, he told me, his father taught him, verse by verse…”

It is John McGinty who told William Larminie the story of ‘The King Who Had Twelve Sons’. 

The first thing to be said about this story is that it’s picaresque, episodic, free-moving, fluid.  This is how it begins:

He went down to the river every day and killed a salmon for each one of them.

Who?  Who is this? Who’s ‘them’? What’s going on?  Ah, this is what the King who had Twelve Sons did, of course!  We’ve been flung into the middle of a conversation here.  John (Sean?) McGinty has already introduced the story by its title and plunged straight in.

He saw a duck on the river and twelve young birds with her; and she was beating the twelfth away from her.  He went to the old druid and asked what was the cause why the duck was beating the twelfth bird from her.

“It was this,” said the old druid, “she gave the bird to God and the Djachwi.”

Immediately, the King decides to do the same thing as the duck:

The younger children were running on first to the house, being hungry, and the eldest was coming, reading a book, after them.  The father was standing at the gate on the inside, and he threw him a purse of money and told him he must go seek his fortune, that he gave him to God and the Djachwi. 

The first time I read this, I had no idea what the Djachwi might be.  The story never tells, and the relevant note by Larminie at the back of the book, which might have ventured a guess, had been torn away.  It was only with the help of Charlotte from Charlotte's Library (a truly excellent blog on children's and YA sci-fi and fantasy) and Mr James Nyhan, a colleague of my husband, that I found out.   Charlotte hunted down another copy of the book and actually sent me a photo of the relevant note - here -

 
- and James sent me a link to an article by a Slovenian folklorist, Monika Kropej: 'The Tenth Child In Folk Tradition' which casts further light on who or what the Djachwi is. It seems that the word stems from the Old Irish word for ten or tenth, and refers to the legend that the tenth child (or in some cases the seventh or twelfth) must roam the world as either a sacrifice to (a tithe) or as a personification of Fate or Destiny.


However that may be, the Djachwi never re-enters the story.  This is merely the kick-start to get the son away from the house and on the road to adventure.  Note that the King is conceived pretty much as any small farmer with a garden and a gate… The son soon takes service under another king: his wages ‘the beast that comes and puts his head in this bridle mine.’  He soon hears news:

“The daughter of the King of the great Wren is to be devoured tomorrow by a piast.” 

Here a footnote explains that a Piast is ‘a Gaelic monster, not exactly equivalent to either serpent or dragon.’  There’s no explanation about the Wren, though, and the lad’s informant continues with great and realistic unconcern:

“Was it in a wood or a hole in the ground you’ve been, that you didn’t hear it? Gentle and simple of the three islands are to be there tomorrow to look at the piast swallowing her – at twelve o’ clock tomorrow.”

Naturally, the lad goes riding to save her.

He called for his second best suit of clothes, and it came to him with a leap; and he shook the bridle, and the ugliest pony in the stables came to him and put her head in the bridle.  “Be up riding on me with a jump” (said the pony)… He gave his face to the way and he would overtake the wind of March that was before him, and the wind of March that was after would not overtake him.

The princess is saved, and in a Cinderella-like motif, the lad is identified as her rescuer by his boot, which she had seized as he rode past her. The pair are married: ‘They spent that night part in talking and part in storytelling’: it sounds an idyllic union: but the very next day the lad finds a pearl of gold upon the beach, and the druid (remember him?) tells him it belongs to “the daughter of a king of the eastern world, who lost it from her hair; - that there was a pearl of gold on every rib of her hair”.

The lad wants to find her.

The pony told him that she was hard to see.  “There are seven miles of hill on fire to cross before you come to where she is, and there are seven miles of steel thistles, and seven miles of sea for you to go over. I told you to have nothing to do with the apple.” 

And that's why this blog is called Seven Miles of Steel Thistles. This traditional set of difficulties (there's another variant from Scotland in which the hero has to cross 'seven bens and seven glens and seven mountain moors) strikes me as a pretty good metaphor for the difficulties of writing - as well as for life itself. But anyhow. Note that the lad’s advisor has morphed from the druid to the pony in the space of a couple of sentences.  We’re now a long way from the boy’s father, the eponymous King Who Had Twelve Sons: we’ve had two kings already and are about to meet a third, while the boy is about to collect a second princess.  He leaps the pony into the castle where she lives, catches her up and leaps out with her, and takes her home.  The pony is turned into a rock, which can turn to a pony again if struck with a ‘rod of druidism’. 

Now there are two women in the castle:

And the young queen he married did not know… till the hen-wife told her.  “Well!” said the hen-wife.  “He has no regard for you beside the other.  There is an apple of gold on every rib of hair upon her head.”  

On the hen-wife’s advice, the young queen plays cards with the lad till he loses, and she commands him to bring her ‘the black horse of the bank’. ( Could this be a water horse?  There’s no knowing).  The lad brings the pony back to life, and the pony fights the black horse and brings it home.

At this point, I don’t know about you, but I’m on the side of the young queen who was rescued from the Piast.  I’m expecting this to be her story now.  And so it is, for a while.  She and her husband continue to play cards and send each other on tit-for-tat errands.  The queen has to fetch for him ‘the three black ravens that are in the eastern world’, and succeeds, helped by friendly giants: but – feeling contrary no doubt, and who would blame her? – releases them, once her husband has seen them:

“If I promised to bring them to you, I did not promise to give them to you.”

Now, however, the young man is irritated by the henwife’s interference.  He summons her and sends her off to ‘the Gruagach of the Apple, and bring …the sword of light that is with the King of Rye’. 

Are you still with me?  Still keeping up with the storyteller John McGinty as he leaps from character to character – from King to lad, from lad to queen, from queen to hen-wife – agile as a man crossing a river on stepping stones?

The hen-wife succeeds in her task with the help of a friendly smith (and the loss of both the tips of her little fingers) and brings back the sword. 

Now then!  Surely it’s time for this story to spring back on itself and wrap everything neatly up at last!  But what do we get?  A row of asterisks:

*        *        *        *        *        *       
And a footnote:

‘The narrator’s memory failed him at this point, and he was unable to relate the further developments of this remarkable game of plot and counterplot.  Although the hen-wife was successful in the last event mentioned, it must be inferred that she was ultimately defeated.' 


All John McGinty could remember of the rest of the story was the last, disconnected and downbeat sentence:

And when the first wife saw the second wife with her own eyes, she could esteem herself no longer, and she died of a broken heart.

Here are some asterisks of my own:

*        *        *        *        *         *

Why have I spent so much time telling you about this story – when John McGinty himself couldn’t remember what happened?  What’s the good of a story (as Alice might say) with no proper ending?

To me, the good of it is that it reminds us of the process by which all fairytales have come down to us.  Though there are many good oral storytellers today, as there are many good folk and ballad singers – and I’ve tried my hand at both – we’d have to confess that the immediate origin of most of our stories and songs is from books.

I’m terribly impressed by the honesty which led William Larminie to include this story in his collection.  It starts promisingly, it’s got many intriguing developments – but in the end, we don’t know what happens.  We never will know.  John McGinty forgot. 

And perhaps, who knows? another night, a week or two later, stung by his failure to tell the story all the way through, John McGinty did remember the ending, but Larminie wasn’t there.  Or perhaps he strung on to it the ending of some other story, which could be appropriately altered to fit.  Or perhaps he made something up out of his own head. That’s the way oral storytelling works: it isn’t fixed, it isn’t canonical.  This broken telling is ‘authentic’. 

If I added an ending of my own, it wouldn’t be authentic at all. 

Or would it? 

“This story is true,” as one of the other tales in the book concludes.  “All the other ones are lies.”



Picture credit: Arthur Rackham, frontispiece to 'Irish Fairy Tales' by James Stephens,

Folklore Snippets: The Ghost and His Wives

Here's a story from Ireland which insists on the traditional message of the Lyke Wake Dirge: whatever charity or good deeds you do in life will be rewarded you in equal and accurate measure after death. 

I love the flat, unastonished tone of this story, which of course was originally told out loud by Michael Flaherty, and is much better read aloud than silently.  The confusion of hero and narrator at the end is a characteristic feature of oral storytelling; and so is the fairy dance after which the narrator awakes to find the vision has fled.  ("And I awoke and found me here/On the cold hill's side.")


"The Ghost and His Wives" from: West Irish Folk Tales, ed: William Larminie 1893
Narrator Michael Faherty, Renvyle, County Galway.

There was a man coming from a funeral, and it chanced as he was coming along by the churchyard he fell in with the head of a man. “It is good and right,” said he to himself, “to take that with me and put it in a safe place.” He took up the head and laid it in the churchyard. He went on along the road home, and he met a man with the appearance of a gentleman.

“Where were you?” said the gentleman.
“I was at a funeral, and I found the head of a man in the road.”
“What did you do with it?” said the gentleman.
“I took it with me and left it in the churchyard.”
“It was well for you,” said the gentleman.
“Why so?” said the man.
“That is my head,” said he, “and if you did anything out of the way to it, assuredly I would be even with you.”

“And how did you lose your head?” said the man.
“I did not lose it at all, but I left it in the place where you found it to see what you would do with it.”
“I believe you are a good person [ie: a fairy]” said the man; “and if so, it would be better for me to be in any other place than in your company.”
“Don’t be afraid, I won’t touch you. I would rather do you a good turn than a bad one.”
“I would like that,” said the man. “Come home with me till we get our dinner.”

…They were playing cards that evening, and the gentleman slept that night in the house, and on the morning of the morrow, “Come with me,” said the gentleman.


They got up and walked together till they came to the churchyard. “Lift the tombstone,” said the gentleman. He raised the tombstone and they went in. “Go down the stairs,” said the gentleman. They went down together till they came to the door; and it was opened, and they went into the kitchen. There were two old women sitting by the fire. “Rise,” said the gentleman to one of them, “and get dinner ready for us.” She rose and took some small potatoes.

“Have you nothing for us for dinner but that sort?” said the gentleman.
“I have not,” said the woman.
“As you have not, keep them.”
“Rise you,” he said to the second woman, “and get ready dinner for us.” She rose and took some meal and husks. “Have you nothing for us but that sort?” “I have not,” said she.
“As you have not, keep them.”

He went up the stairs and knocked at a door.
There came out a beautiful woman in a silk dress, and it ornamented with gold from the sole of her foot to the crown of her head. She asked him what he wanted. He asked her if she could get dinner for himself and the stranger. She said she could. She laid a dinner before him fit for a king. And when they had eaten and drunk it, the gentleman asked if he knew the reason why she was able to give them such a dinner.

“I don’t know,” said the man, “but tell me if it is your pleasure.”

“When I was alive I was married three times, and the first wife I had never gave anything to a poor man except little potatoes; and she must live on them herself till the day of judgement. The second wife, whenever anyone asked alms of her, never gave anything but meal and husks, and she will be no better off herself, nor anyone else who asks her, till the day of judgement. The third wife, who got the dinner for us – she could give us everything from the first – because she never spared on anything she had; and she will have of that kind till the day of judgement.”

"Come with me till you see my dwelling," said the gentleman.  There were outhouses and stables and woods around the house, and to speak the truth, he was in the prettiest place ever I saw with my eyes. "Come inside with me," said he to the man, and I was not long within, when there came a piper, and he told him to play, and he was not long playing when the house was filled with men and women. They began dancing. When part of the night was spent, I thought I would go and sleep; and when I awoke in the morning I could see nothing of the house or anything in the place.


Picture credit:  Helen West Heller,Ghost on the Stairs c.1925
linoleum-cut or woodcut
© private collection 
See website http://helenwestheller.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/helen-west-heller/