Irish Gothic Fairy Stories Read online

  IRISH

  GOTHIC

  FAIRY STORIES

  Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize

  whatever prey the heart long for, and have no

  fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and

  the earth is only a little dust under our feet.

  William Butler Yeats

  IRISH

  GOTHIC

  FAIRY STORIES

  FROM THE 32 COUNTIES OF IRELAND

  STEVE LALLY & PAULA FLYNN LALLY

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO PAULA’S MOTHER AND STEVE’S FATHER, WHO ARE NO LONGER WITH US

  CAIT FLYNN

  (1947 – 2016)

  PATRICK LALLY

  (1945 – 1993)

  First published 2018

  The History Press Ireland

  6-9 Trinity Street

  Dublin 2

  D02 EY47

  Ireland

  www.thehistorypress.ie

  © Steve Lally & Paula Flynn Lally, 2018

  Illustrations © Steve Lally and James Patrick Ryan

  The right of Steve Lally & Paula Flynn Lally, to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 7509 9036 3

  Typesetting and origination by The History Press

  Printed and bound by TJ International Ltd

  eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

  CONTENTS

  About the Authors

  Foreword by Liz Weir

  Introduction

  ‘Fireside Tale’ by Steve Lally

  1 The Province of Ulster

  2 The Province of Leinster

  3 The Province of Munster

  4 The Province of Connacht

  How to Keep on the Right Side of the Sidhe

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PAULA FLYNN LALLY grew up in Forkhill, Co. Armagh. From a young age she would pack her small bag with a notebook and pencil and go through the fields and find a nice tree and sit under it and write for hours. Paula is a singer-songwriter who once upon a time had a hit with David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’. She is now back in the recording studio. She is a graduate from Dublin City University, and when leaving was awarded the Uaneen Fitzsimons Award. She worked for a spell in radio. Paula loves reading a good thriller, watching a scary movie and a decent BBC drama, and she loves nothing more than a good country song. She admires the work of Salvador Dali, Sean Hillen, David Shrigley, and Minton Sparks. She loves the poetry of Edna St Vincent Millay and Emily Dickinson and the music of The Carter Family, the Moldy Peaches, Gram Parsons and Nick Cave. The child inside her loves vintage doll’s houses and Blythe Dolls. She has a 7-year-old son called Woody who keeps her heart young. He is an aspiring writer who sells his books from a stand made by granddad Sean and uncle Micky Flynn at the front of the house. Paula loves her cats, going to the seaside, and spending time with Steve. She appreciates the darkness and the light and she believes in the fairies.

  STEVE LALLY was born in Sligo, the Kingdom of the Fairies; he later moved to Dublin and then settled in Rathcoffey, Co. Kildare. This is where his imagination flourished, fired by the landscape, ancient sites and stories. As a teenager he developed a love of gothic horror literature, music and film, spending the long, dark winter nights reading Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft and writing stories with the music of Bauhaus and The Sisters of Mercy filling the night air. He is a graduate of Limerick College of Art and Ulster University, and now resides in Ulster. Steve is an international storyteller and successful writer who has already written and illustrated three books on folklore. He loves classic horror movies. He enjoys the work of Arthur Rackham, Harry Clarke, Jean Michelle Basquait and Neil Gaiman. He admires the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh and Patrick Mac Gill and the music of Einstürzende Neubauten, David Bowie, Nick Cave and Planxty. He is kept on his toes by his 7-year-old daughter Isabella, who constantly asks him to tell her stories based on the wonderful characters that she creates. Like Paula, Steve appreciates the darkness and the light and he too has great respect for the ‘Good People’.

  FOREWORD

  Long before I became a storyteller I learned to have great respect for the ‘Good People’, those from the otherworld.

  I grew up in Co. Antrim listening to the story of how my eldest brother encountered a banshee the night before the death of his friend’s grandmother. I had to walk home from school past the very spot where it happened but I was always careful never to do it after dark. This was a tale he retold to me before his death some sixty years after the incident, and it was as vivid to him then as when it took place. How could I have any doubt?

  As a child I was brought up on stories of magic and enchantment. My favourite film was Darby O’Gill and the Little People, even though the pooka and banshee terrified me and the fairies were very tricky. Little did I know then that I would end up becoming a storyteller, based in the Glens of Antrim close to Tiveragh, a hill famous as a fairy stronghold. Folk in the Glens do not like to talk about the ‘other crowd’, as my friend Eddie Lenihan calls them, but they know better than to cut down a lone thorn tree or to give away milk or a light on May Eve. Although we live in a world where scepticism is rife, tales of fairies playing hurling still survive and those of us who live here are proud of the rich folklore of the area.

  As I travel throughout Ireland sharing stories, members of the public regularly tell me their own tales of magical encounters. There are many cautionary accounts about what happened to foolish people who cut down lone thorn trees. I have even been asked for advice about building a house on a site with a fairy tree and on one occasion how to deal with one that blew down in a storm. Even references to people who are ‘away with the fairies’ refer back to tales of changelings that were left when human babies were stolen from their mortal homes. So, even in our hi-tech world, stories of the otherworld are still being told.

  It is therefore very appropriate that we now have a collection of tales of the good folk gathered from every county in Ireland. This is no light-hearted Disney-like account of flittering winged creatures; these stories have been collected with respect by two people steeped in tradition. As an author and storyteller Steve Lally has proven his dedication to folklore, not simply by preserving the tales but by performing them to audiences of all ages. His co-author and wife Paula, a talented singer, grew up in the Ring of Gullion, an area of outstanding natural beauty, rich in mystery and fairy lore. By combining their talent and background knowledge they present a very readable collection, which will give a greater insight into the magical world of Irish fairies.

  Liz Weir

  Storyteller and Writer

  INTRODUCTION

  Over the centuries such folklorists and storytellers as Seamus MacManus, Francis McPolin, Joseph Campbell, Henry Glassie, Patrick Kennedy, William Butler Yeats, Sinead De Valera, Eileen O’Faolain, Ruth Sawyer, Michael J. Murphy, Sean O’Sullivan, William Carleton, Katherine Briggs and Eddie Lenihan (to name only a very few) have been like butterfly collectors searching for stories of Ireland’s mystical people, the ‘Sidhe’. Only they set them free again for others to go and find them fo
r themselves.

  As the storyteller Eddie Lenihan told me when I asked him about collecting stories:

  These stories are not yours or mine, they belong to the people who were kind enough to tell them to me while they were still able to. I in turn regard it as my duty to share them with others. Through this process, hopefully, the stories will live on.

  These enigmatic creatures go under many names, such as the good folk, the wee folk, the gentle people, the fey and even the other crowd. The term ‘fairies’ is merely an Anglicisation for something that cannot be defined or pigeon-holed, just like the Sidhe themselves.

  But the fairies of Ireland are not the magical or elaborate fairies that we know from stories such as Cinderella or Peter Pan, or the paintings created by the Victorian and Edwardian artists Richard Dadd and Edward Robert Hughes, or the photographs of the Cottingley Fairies fabricated by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths during the reign of King George V (1910–1936), nor are they the delicate sweet fairies we see in a Disney film.

  The Sidhe lend themselves more to the imaginings of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Harry Clarke, Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker, hence the title of the book Irish Gothic. In fact, Bram Stoker, an Irish man born in Clontarf, Co. Dublin, in 1847, listened to many strange and disturbing stories about the Great Famine of Ireland (1845–1849) and the good folk from his dear mother. It was such stories that helped create the literary landscape for Stoker’s 1897 masterpiece Dracula.

  In fact, it was believed that the Famine was indeed caused by the Sidhe. According to folklore historian Simon Young:

  There was the belief among some Irish potato growers that it was the fairies’ disfavour that brought down the blight on the land. Fairy battles in the sky – fairy tribes both fought and played hurling matches against each other – were interpreted as marking the onset of the famine: a victorious fairy army would curse the potatoes of the enemy’s territory.

  In Eamon Kelly’s beautiful fairy story ‘The Golden Ball’ there is a brief description of one of these fairy hurling matches.

  I grew up listening to my grandmother, from Co. Galway in the West of Ireland, tell me stories about the ‘good folk’, and she was also a huge fan of the Hammer Horror Franchise. This fascination with the sublime and the strange stayed with me throughout my life in the literature, film, visual arts and even music that I loved. As a teenager I was fascinated with the gothic rock sub-culture of the late 1970s and early ’80s with bands such as Bauhaus, who penned a song dedicated to the Sidhe entitled ‘Hollow Hills’. The Virgin Prunes from Dublin were an androgynous and bizarre otherworldly group that emulated the mystery, beauty and horror of the Sidhe, and then there was Siouxsie, who literally incorporated the Sidhe into her own realm with ‘The Banshees’.

  These artists, along with many others from the genre, were the soundtrack to my life at a time when I was living in a very remote and rural part of Co. Kildare, surrounded by ancient castles, forts and folklore. Their music still resonates with me today.

  I have written three books already on folklore: Down Folk Tales (2013), Kildare Folk Tales (2014) and Monaghan Folk Tales (2017). The research for these books gave me a great insight into folklore, folk tradition and, of course, the Sidhe. This is my first collaboration and I felt Paula was a good choice for she helped me research Monaghan Folk Tales and she comes from a magical place and is a true believer in the fairy folk.

  It was through storytelling that I and Paula first met; she has always had a keen interest in what lies beyond the ethereal wall that separates our world from theirs. Since Paula was a young child living beside the mountains she would sit and wait for the fairies to come and keep her company.

  Her brothers were older than her and, as she lived in an isolated area, there were no kids her own age to play with. As a result, her imagination was her playground. Paula had a powerful imagination from a young age and this helped her song writing in later years. She would sit in her garden wishing and hoping the fairies would come and visit her. Although she has never seen one, she felt a powerful connection and belief towards them. As she grew older her connection to the fairies did not fade and this caused many people to think she was herself ‘away with the fairies’!

  But she remained true to her belief and remained very much an individual. It quickly became apparent as she got older that not many share her belief in fairies, yet when she asked those people if they would cut down a fairy tree they would always reply, ‘No way!’

  Paula’s love of storytelling did not come out of nowhere for her cousin was the late great John Campbell (1933–2006), one of Ireland’s most celebrated storytellers. His son John Campbell Jnr was for a time Headmaster at Forkhill Primary School, where Paula was a pupil. She still has many happy memories of being taught by Mr Campbell, whom she states was one of the best teachers she ever had.

  When Paula and I met, we shared our belief in the Sidhe and this is a bond we feel is sometimes more powerful than ourselves. Writing this book has been a wonderful experience but has also had many drawbacks, for we feel the fairies interfered with our plans on several occasions and did not make this journey easy for us, both as story collectors or as a couple – testing our faith in both them and each other.

  During the writing of this book huge obstacles were put in our way to see if we would falter or give up. Initially we found it difficult to get people to share their experiences with us. We found this both interesting and disturbing, as many individuals today still talk of the Sidhe in hushed tones, for fear of being heard and quite possibly punished. It is for this reason that the Sidhe are often referred to as the ‘Good People’ or the ‘gentle people’, so that they will not take offence or umbrage if they hear mortals speaking of them. Some folk did not want to speak of them at all and it proved quite difficult to gather stories from each county.

  At two crucial stages in this process we lost all our work due to computer problems, we managed to recover most of it but some of the material had to be rewritten and re-documented. In the early stages all of Paula’s research was wiped from her iPad. The camera that I used to document my illustrations for the book completely packed in and a new one had to be purchased.

  Paula had lots of sleepless nights and bad dreams while writing this book, and a few times questioned if we should keep going. She felt for a time that maybe the fairies were telling us not to write the book, and that we were involving ourselves in something that we really do not understand.

  I had read and heard of accounts of individuals being sabotaged by the fairies whilst trying to get close to them, and I was beginning to think it was a bad idea myself. However, after consulting some people who are lucky enough to have met them, they assured us that the ‘fairy folk’ would want us to write this book so the people of Ireland know about them. It’s natural and important to fear them, but it’s much more important to respect them. It is also true that anything worthwhile is never easy.

  These are only a few examples of the struggles we faced while writing this book. We believe the fairies were testing our belief to see if we were serious, and maybe to see our motives for writing a book about them. We did not give up despite everything that was put in our way; we still believe in the fairies and each other – maybe even more than ever. Our belief in them and each other has become stronger as a result of writing this book.

  It has been a labour of love and part of the process in creating this book has been the artwork. It has indeed been exciting, trying to imagine the Sidhe and their world visually. My old Art College friend James Patrick Ryan has been a wonderful support throughout this project. His contribution has been instrumental in the layout of the artwork. He created a set of wonderful coats of arms, one for each county, and a series of ornate borders that pay tribute to the plates of the great master of fairy illustration, Arthur Rackham (1867–1939).

  James, a native of Co. Limerick, provided us with a chilling fairy story told to him by his grandmother. This story provides the chapter for C
o. Limerick and is complemented by his own illustration. He also created a beautiful and intricate illustration featuring all the characters featured in the book.

  The one question that I always ask while interviewing folk about the Sidhe is, ‘What do they look like?’

  Some people have told me the fairies are just ‘wee folk’, who seldom grow more than 3 feet tall, but resemble ordinary human beings in every other way. Their clothing is old-fashioned and their features plain, rather more ugly than handsome. Others have said that they look just like us and one could be standing beside you and you wouldn’t know it, but there is a strange look in their eyes that gives them away. Some have said that they are beautiful beyond belief and when you see them your life will never be the same. I have heard tell of them being terrible monsters and creatures from your wildest nightmares. Many believe that the fairies are fallen angels that had nowhere to go, for they could neither enter Heaven nor Hell, and some say we can’t see them at all.

  I have spoken with many people, old and young, who have experienced first-hand the mischievous ways of the fairy folk. Some have been trapped in fields for hours and days and some have been tormented after cutting a bush or a tree, but what I have found is that most people, whether they believe in fairies or not, both respect and fear them in equal measure and don’t tempt fate by interfering with what they feel is fairy property.

  According to Co. Down folklorist Francis McPolin (1897–1974), most of them lived in underground caves, having secret entrances into the fairy forts, which can still be seen in varying states of ruin and preservation on most of the hillsides in the surrounding countryside. It’s believed that there was a definite hierarchy or aristocracy among the fairies and these nobles lived in underground palaces that could only be entered via the larger forts that stood upon the higher hilltops.