Strong Fairytale Heroines #12: THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO HELL

This story of a young woman who goes down into the underworld to save her lover was narrated in Gaelic some time around 1885 by Patrick Minahan, of Malinmore, Glencolumkill, Co. Donegal, to William Larminie who translated and published it in ‘West Irish Folk-Tales’, (Camden Library, 1893). Larminie - one of those excellent 19^th century collectors who named and respected their oral sources - says of Minahan: “I obtained more stories from him than from any other one man. He said he was eighty years old; but he was in full possession of all his faculties. He also had a holding on which he still worked industriously. … His style, with its short, abrupt sentences, is always remarkable, and at its best I think excellent.”

Of the tale itself, Larminie has only this to say, but it’s to the point: “This touching tale has a curious far-away resemblance to certain classical legends. A good deal must [have been] lost, and in consequence the long struggle of the young man with the devil has much that requires explanation. It is unique among Celtic stories.”

I can’t be sure what classical stories Larminie had in mind – Persephone’s sojourn in Hades, perhaps, for it’s not really the young man’s struggle so much as that of the young woman who becomes his wife! Myself, I'd like to note that the restorative fire in which the dead man asks the young woman to burn him to ashes reminds me of the fire of roses in George Macdonald's  'The Princess and Curdie' – and that her return home, worn and almost unrecognisable, reminds me of the return of Homer's Odysseus. 

The story begins when the devil tricks a woman into promising him her 'burden', which she assumes means the cabbages she is carrying. In fact it is her unborn son. The boy is born, grows up and dies suddenly aged 18. When a young woman enters the chapel where his body lies coffined, the dead young man arises and persuades her to help him. By burning his corpse she restores him to a kind of spirit life, and he sires a son on her. But the devil claims him - unless someone else will go to Hell in his place. His lover volunteers. 

The young woman's descent into Hell and her subsequent ascent reminds me of a story older even than Homer's - that of Inanna of Sumer, Queen of Heaven and Earth, the goddess of love and of the morning and evening star, whose descent to the realm of Ereshkigal Queen of the Dead is chronicled on clay tablets dating back to 2000 BCE.

In summary, it goes like this: Inanna abandons her temples and palaces in heaven and earth and goes down to the underworld. Her journey seems to be a rite of passage rather than an attempt to rescue a friend or lover such as those of Gilgamesh and Orpheus. In order to pass through the underworld’s seven gates she must relinquish at each one a part of her 'mes' (roughly her power), signified by regalia of crown, beads, robe, ring, breastplate, measuring rod and line. At last, naked and powerless she enters the throne room of Ereshkigal where the goddess strikes her dead and hangs her body – now nothing but ‘a piece of rotting meat’ – from a stake. But, following Inanna’s previous orders, her faithful servant Ninshibur persuades Enki, god of wisdom, to save her. He creates two sexless creatures from the dirt under his fingernails, furnishes them with the food and water of life, and sends them to the underworld to ask for Inanna’s corpse. Sprinkling the corpse with the food and water, the creatures restore it to life, but the judges of the underworld decree another must take her place. As Inanna ascends, the 'galla' or small demons of the underworld cling to her side and rise with her. They ‘know not food, they know not water, they know not sprinkled flour,’ but their purpose is to seize and bring back the one who will die for her. Her loving servant Ninshibur and her own sons offer themselves, but Inanna refuses to give them up. She chooses instead her husband Dumuzi, who has not even risen from his throne to welcome her home! Dumuzi is taken to the underworld. After his death, Inanna weeps for him, and later in the tale she allows his faithful sister to take his place for six months of every year.[1] 

This myth has cast a long shadow. Sumerian Inanna and Dumuzi became the Akkadian Ishtar and Tammuz, and the Egyptian goddess Isis perhaps shares some of Inanna’s attributes. It predates the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades, first noted in Hesiod's Theogony, by one and a half millennia. Now, obviously there can't be any direct connection, but I feel there’s still a faint trace of it in this Irish story – in the young woman’s voluntary descent, and in the touching moment when the lost souls cling to her, clotted in her hair.   

There was a woman coming out of her garden with an apron-full of cabbage. A man met her. He asked her what she would take for her burden. She said it was not worth a great deal, she would give it to him for nothing. He said he would not take it, but would buy it. She said she would only take sixpence. He gave her the sixpence, and she threw the cabbage towards him. He said that was not what he had bought, but the burden she was carrying. Who was there but the devil? She was troubled then.

            She went home and she was weeping. It was a short time till her young son was born, and he was growing till he was eighteen years old. Then he was out one day and fell, and never rose up till he died. When they were going to bury him, they took him to the chapel and left him there till morning. 

            There was a man among the neighbours who had three daughters. He took out a box of snuff to give the men a pinch, and the last man to whom the box went round left it on the altar. They all went home, and when the man was going to bed he looked for his box. The box was not to be got; it was left behind in the chapel. He said he could not sleep that night without a pinch of snuff. He asked one of his daughters to go to the chapel and bring him the box that was on the altar. She said there was loneliness on her. He cried to the second girl, would she go? She said she would not go, that she was lonely. He cried to the third, would she go? And she said she would go, that there would be no loneliness on her in the presence of the dead.

            She went to the chapel, she found the box, she put it in her pocket. When she was coming away she saw a ring at the end of the coffin. She caught hold of it till it came to her. The end came from the coffin. The man that was dead came out. He begged her not to be afraid.

            “Do you see that fire over yonder? If you are able, carry me to that fire.”

            “I am not able,” said she.

            “Be dragging me along with you as well as you can.”

            She put him on her back. She dragged him till they came to the fire. “Draw out the fire,” said he, “and put me lying in the middle of it; fix up the fire over me. Anything of me that is not burnt, put the fire on it again.” 

            He was burning till he was all burnt. When the day was coming she was troubled on account of what she had seen in the night, and when the day grew clear there came a young man, who began making fun with her. 

            “I have not much mind for fun on account of what I have seen during the night.”

            “Well, it was I who was there,” said the young man. “I would go to heaven if I could get an angel made by you left in my father’s room.” 

            Three quarters of a year from that night she dressed herself up as if she was a poor woman. She went to his father’s house, and asked for lodging till morning. The woman of the house [the young man's mother] said that they were not giving lodging to any poor person at all.

 She said she would not ask for more than a seat by the fire. The man of the house told her to stay till morning. They both went to lie down. She sat by the fire. In the course of the night she went into the room and there she had a young son. Her husband came in at the window in the shape of a white dove. He dressed the child, the child began to cry, and the woman of the house heard the crying. She rose to get out of her bed. Her husband told her to lie quiet and have patience. She got up in spite of him. The door of the room was shut. She looked in through the keyhole and saw him standing on the floor; she perceived it was her son who was there. She cried to him, was it he that was there? He said it was. 

“One glance of your eye has sent me for seven years to hell.”

“I will go myself in your place,” said his mother. 

She went then to hell. When she came to the gate, there came out steam so hot that she was burned and scalded, and had to return. “Well,” said the father, “I will go in your place.” He had to return too. The young man began to weep. He said he must go himself, but the mother of the child said she would go.

“Here is a ring for you,” said he. “When thirst comes on you, or hunger, put the ring in your mouth; you will feel neither thirst nor hunger. This is the work that will be on you – to keep down the souls: they are stewing and burning in the boiler. Do not eat a bit of food there. There is a barrel in the corner, and all the food that you are given, throw into the barrel.”

She went to hell then. She was keeping down the souls in the boiler. They were rising in leaps out of it. All the food she got she threw on the barrel till the seven years were over. She was making ready to be going then. The devil came to her; he said she could not go yet awhile till she had paid for the food she had eaten. She said she had not eaten one morsel of his: “All that I got, it is in the barrel.” The devil went to the barrel, and all that he had given her was there for him.

“How much will you take to stay seven years more?”

“Oh, I am long enough with you,” said she; “if you give me all that I can carry, I can stay with you.” 

He said he would give it. She stopped. She was keeping down the souls during seven more years, she was shortening the time as well as she could till the seven years were ended. Then she was going. When the souls saw her going they rose up with one cry, lest one of them should be left. They went clinging to her; they were hanging to her hair, all that were in the boiler. She moved on with her burden. 

She had not gone far when a lady in a carriage met her.

“Oh! great is your burden,” said the lady, “will you give it to me?”

“Who are you?” said she.

“I am the Virgin Mary.”

“I will not give it to you.”

She moved on with herself. She had not gone far when a gentleman met her. “Great is your burden, my poor woman’; will you give it to me?”

“Who are you?” said she

“I am God,” said he.

“I will not give my burden to you.”

She went on with herself another while. Another gentleman met her. “Great is the burden you have,” said the gentleman; “will you give it to me?”

“Who are you?” said she.

“I am the King of Sunday,” said he.

“I will give my burden to you,” said she. “No rest had I ever in hell except on Sunday.”

 

“Well, it is a good woman you are; the first lady you met, it was the devil was there; the second person you met, it was the devil was there, trying if they could get your burden from you back. Now,” said God, “the man for whom you have done all this is going to be married tomorrow. He thought you were lost since you were in that place so long. You will know nothing till you are at home.”

She knew nothing till she was at home. The house was full of drinking and music.  She went to the fire. Her own son came up to her.

She was making him wonder, she was so worn and wasted.  She told the child to go to his father and get a glass of whisky for her to drink. The child went crying to look for his father. He asked his father to give him a glass of whisky. His father gave it. He came down where she was by the fire. He gave her the glass. She drank it, there was so much thirst on her. The rinf that her husband gave her she put in the glass.

“Put your hand over the mouth of the glass; give it to no one at all till you hand it to your father.”

The lad went to his father. He gave him the glass, The father looked into it, and saw the ring. He recognised the ring.

“Who has given you this?” said he.

“A poor woman by the fire,” said the lad. 

The father raised the child on his shoulder that he might point out to him the woman who had given him the ring. The child came to the poor woman. 

“That is the woman,” said he, “who gave me the ring.”

The man recognised her then. He said that hardly did he know her when she came so worn and wasted. He said to all the people that he would never marry any woman but this one; that she had done everything for him; that his mother sold him to the devil, and the woman had earned him back; that she had spent fourteen years in hell, and now she had returned

This is a true story. They are all lies but this one. 

 

---

[1] My summary  of Inanna’s descent into the underworld is based on the translations in ‘Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer’ by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, Rider, 1984. It is wonderful and I recommend it.

More on William Larminie's "West Irish Folk-Tales" in my book of essays on folklore and fairytales, "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles"

Picture credits: The Woman Who Went To Hell - (artist unknown) frontispiece to "The Woman Who Went To Hell: and other ballad and lyrics" by Dora Sigerson (Mrs Clement Shorter), De la More Press, 1902

Strong Fairy Tale Heroines #6: GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTS

 

GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTS

Told in the 1880s by Patrick McGrale of Dugort, Achil, County Mayo, to William Larminie (“West Irish Folk-Tales”, Camden Library, 1893). Larminie says of this tale that it combines domestic incident with romantic extravagance. It is a variant of Aarne-Thompson Tale Type 451: the brothers who are turned into birds. Towards the end of the story I have made some slight changes where Patrick McGrale's oral rendition, faithfully reproduced by Larminie, becomes a little unclear as to who does what to whom.

Although the parallels with better-known tales are clear (such as the Grimms' 'The Six Swans', KHM 49, and 'The Seven Ravens, KHM  25), this story has its own individual character. It’s both confusing and fascinating, with a great deal to puzzle over. On the death of his wife the queen, Gilla’s father sends his three sons away to a ‘greenawn’ – a sort of sunny pavilion on an island. He appears to do this in order to keep them safe from his new wife, from whom he has kept all knowledge of them. But his daughter Gilla has inherited powerful magic in the shape of a cloak left to her by her dead mother (just as the power of Aschenputtel’s dead mother is channeled to her through the tree planted on her grave). She cannot be harmed while she is wearing it. Only Gilla may ever visit the brothers; she brings them food, and she cuts off, washes and replaces their heads each day. It is as if they are dependent on their sister for continuance in life: perhaps the greenawn itself is an otherworld, a liminal land which requires them to undergo a daily resurrection only Gilla can perform. Gilla is both a magic-worker, and a person who can bring back the dead. At the same time, she belongs to the fairy tale sisterhood of those who persist and endure trials in order to rescue the brothers they love. The motif of the death of a child, and smearing its mother with blood in an attempt to frame her for its murder, is reminiscent of the story of Rhiannon and her son Pryderi, in the First Branch of the Mabinogi. 

There was a king in Ireland and his wife, and they had but one daughter, whose name was Gilla of the Enchantments, and she had a magic coat that her mother had left her when she died. And there was a man courting her whose name was George nă Riell, and the two were courting.

                When her mother died the king made a fair and beautiful greenawn [a summer-house or sunny palace] for his three sons on an island in the midst of the sea, and there he put them to live, and he sent his daughter to them with food every evening.

                It was not long after that till he married another wife, and by this wife he had three daughters. She was one day walking in the garden and she got the corner of her apron under her foot and she fell.

                “May neither God nor Mary be with you,” said the hen-wife.

                “Why do you say that?” said the queen.

                “Because the wife that was here before you was better than you.”

                “Was there a wife before me?”

                “There was; and that one is her daughter, and there are three sons also in an island in the sea, and the daughter goes every night to them with food.”

                “What shall I do to the three of them, to put them to death?”

                “I’ll tell you,” said the hen-wife, “if you will do what I advise you.”

                “I will do it,” said she.

                “Promise a dowry to your eldest daughter if she will follow the other daughter out when she is going with food to her brothers.”

                So the queen sent her daughter out after Gilla who was going with food, but Gilla looked behind and saw the other one coming, and she made a bog and a lake between them, so that the queen’s daughter went astray and was wandering all night. She told her mother, and her mother went to the henwife, and the henwife said, “Promise a dowry to your second daughter.”

                And she did this, and the second daughter fared in the same way as the first, and she came and told her mother. And the mother went to the hen-wife, and the hen-wife said, “Promise the dowry to your third daughter.”

                Now the third daughter followed Gilla of the Enchantments as she was going with the food, and this time Gilla did not look behind her. She parted the sea and she came to her brothers’ house, and she put the pot of water down and cut off the heads of her three brothers and washed them, and put them on their shoulders again. And the half-sister was at the window looking on at everything she did, and she went home through the sea, before the sea returned together, and while they were eating their supper, Gilla came home.

                The mother went next morning to the hen-wife and told her the third daughter had succeeded, and had learned everything. And she asked her what she should do.

                “Say now, your daughter is going to be married, and ask Gilla for the loan of her coat. She will not know that the power of the coat will be gone if she gives it away. So long as she keeps the coat herself she can do everything; there are spells on the coat so that the sea must open before it, without closing after it; but she does not know that the spell of the coat will be lost.”

                The third daughter got the loan of the coat from Gilla, but instead of going to be married, this is what she did. When night came she put the coat on and went to the house of her half-brothers, knocked at the door and asked them to open it. And one of the brothers said, “That is not my sister.” But another looked out of the window and saw the coat and recognised it, and he opened the door and let her in. She cut the three heads off, and took them three-quarters of a mile and put them into a hole in the ground, and went back to her mother and told her she had killed the three.

                She gave the coat back to Gilla of the Enchantments, and Gilla went in the evening to her brothers with food, and whatever sort of fastening the other one put on the door she could not open is, but had to go in by a window, and she found her three brothers dead.

                She wept and she screamed and pulled the hair from her head in her lamentations, till the whiteness of the day came upon the morrow. She had not one head of the heads to get, but she followed the trace of the blood, and three-quarters of a mile from the house were they, in the place where they were buried. She dug them up and took them to her, and washed and cleaned them as was her wont, and put them on the bodies, but down they fell. She had to take them up at last, and cry to God to do something to them, that she might see them alive. And they turned into three otters, and she made another otter of herself. They were swimming that way for a time and then they made themselves into three doves, and she made of herself another dove. They were flying and she was flying, and the four came and settled on the gable of the house, and in the morning the man [the king] said to his wife,

                “There is a barrel of water. Let it be wine in the evening.” (He thought to test her, he thought it was not the right woman he had got.)

                Then said one of the brothers to the sister, “Go in, and do good in return for evil, and make wine of the water.”

                She went down, and when she got in, and she in the shape of a dove, the old blind wise man who was lying in his bed under the window got his sight, and he saw her dipping her finger in the water and making of wine, cold and wholesome.

                And in the morning the man said to his wife, “Here is a barrel of water. Let it be wine with you in the evening.”

                And the second brother said to his sister, “Go in, and do good in return for evil, and make wine of the water.”

                She went down, and when she went in at the window, and she in the shape of a dove, the wise old blind man who was lying on the  bed under the window got his sight, and he saw her dipping her finger in the water and making it wine, cold and wholesome.

                And in the morning on the third day the wise old man spoke to the king, and said to him that he had seen a beautiful woman come in by the window on two days, and that he got his sight when she came in and lost it when she went out and (said he) “Stretch yourself here today, and when she comes in and makes wine of the water, catch her as she is going out.”

                And he did so, and the third brother said to his sister, “Go in, and do good in return for evil, and make the wine.” And she did this; and as she was going out the man caught her. And when her brothers heard that she was caught they went away. And she asked the king to to give her leave to take just one look at her brothers. “Here’s the corner of my apron.”

                So he took hold of the corner of her apron, and she slipped out of it and left it with him and went away after her brothers.  When they saw her coming they waited for her, and she asked them if there was anything at all in the world that would make them come alive again; and they said there was one thing only, and that hard it was to do it.

                “What is it?” said she, “and I will try it.”

                “To make three shirts of the ivy-leaves in a day and a year, without uttering a word of speech or shedding a single tear, for if you weep we shall lose a part of ourselves.”

                And she said to them to make a little hut for her in the wood, and they made her the hut and went away and left her there. She was not long before she began to get material for the shirts, and she began to make them.

Now the queen’s daughter had her dowry. And she thought the king’s sons and the king’s daughter were dead, and she married George nă Riell, and her mother died and her father, and now she was queen.  But Gilla of the Enchantments was not long in the house in the wood, till George nă Riell found her, and she did not speak a word to him, but he was with her till she had a child to him.

                A young man was in the wood one day and a dog with him, and the dog took him to the place where the woman was, and the man saw the woman and the child there, and he went home and told the queen there was a beautiful woman in the wood. And the queen went and found the woman and the babe, and she killed the babe and caught up some of the blood and mixed the blood and ashes together and made a cake and she sought to put a piece of the cake in the woman’s mouth. And Gilla dropped one tear from her eye; but the queen who was her half-sister went back to her husband and said to him that great was the shame of him to have children by that woman, and that Gilla had killed her own child and eaten it.

                “It is not possible,” said he, “that she has killed my child.”

                “She killed and she ate.”

                He went to her and found the child dead; but Gilla did not speak a word to him. He said then that he would burn her at twelve o’ clock of the next day. He commanded that every one should come in the morning with sods of turf and sheets of paper, and everything to make a fire. And she was brought and put there, and she was still sewing. When it was twelve o’ clock, the sign was given to light the fire, but an old man in the crowd asked them to give her another hour by the clock, and when that hour was passed he asked them to give her a half-hour; the woman in it (he said) was under geasa. “You see that it is not her life that is troubling her, but that she is always sewing.”

                It was not long before they saw a black cloud coming through the air, and they saw three things in the cloud coming. “Well,” said the old man, “there are three angels from heaven, or three devils from hell, coming for her soul.”

                There were three black ravens coming, and their mouths open, and as it were fire coming out of their mouths, till the three black ravens came and lay in their sister’s bosom, and she on top of the pyre, and she put the three shirts on them and said, –

                “Finn, Inn and Brown Glegil, show that I am your sister, for in pain I am today.”

                They took hold of her and lifted her down from the pyre, and the brothers told George nă Riell everything that the half-sister had done, first that she had killed the three of them, and afterwards that it was she that killed their sister’s child.

                So the half-sister was thrown into the fire. And they went home, and George nă Riell married Gilla of the Enchantments, and they spent the rest of their lives as is right.

 NB: since Gilla sheds one tear, it's possible that one of her brothers lacks an eye, but the narrator does not say so.


More on fairy tales and folklore in my book "Seven Miles of Steel Thistles" available from Amazon here and here.

Picture credit: 
The Ravens of Wotan, Arthur Rackham