Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/251

Rh century touch of an over-refined collector, for in all my experience I never knew a shanachie attribute the adventures of his hero to a dream. The other tale is called the "Stolen Bride," and is a story about the "kern of Querin," who saves a bride from the fairies on November Eve, but she will neither speak nor taste food. That day year he hears the fairies say that the way to cure her is to make her eat food off her father's table-cloth. She does this, and is cured. The trick which Gulleesh plays upon the Pope reminds us of the fifteenth century story of Dr. Faustus and his dealings with his Holiness.

[Cf. also the story of Michael Scott's journey to Rome, "Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition," Vol. I., p. 46. The disrespectful way in which the Pope is spoken of in these tales does not seem due to Protestantism, as is the case with the Faustus story, although, as I have pointed out, there are some curious points of contact between Michael Scott and Faustus. Guleesh seems to be an early Nationalist who thought more of his village and friend than of the head of his religion.—A.N.]

The description of the wedding is something like that in Crofton Croker's "Master and Man," only the scene in that story is laid at home.

The story of Gulleesh appears to be a very rare one. I have never been able to find a trace of it outside the locality (near where the counties of Sligo, Mayo, and Roscommon meet) in which I first heard it.

[It thus seems to be a very late working-up of certain old incidents with additions of new and incongruous ones.—A.N.]

Page 112. "The rose and the lily were fighting together in her face." This is a very common expression of the Irish bards. In one of Carolan's unpublished poems he says of Bridget Cruise, with whom he was in love in his youth:—"In her countenance there is the lily, the whitest and the brightest—a combat of the world—madly wrestling with the rose. Behold the conflict of the pair; the goal—the rose will not lose it of her will; victory—the lily cannot gain it; oh, God! is it not a hard struggle!" etc.

Page 115. "I call and cross (or consecrate) you to myself," says Gulleesh. This is a phrase in constant use with Irish speakers, and proceeds from an underlying idea that certain phenomena are caused by fairy agency. If a child falls, if a cow kicks when being milked, if an animal is restless, I have often heard a woman cry,, "I call and cross you," often abbreviated into , merely, i.e., "I call, I call." 14