Irish Fairy Tales Read Online

He was so genuinely an artist that he could not do the thing ill. Any one of these stories will prove his capacity: the first, for instance, about that princess on the “bare, brown, lonely moor” who was “as sweet and as fresh as an opening rosebud, and her voice was as musical as the whisper of a stream in the woods in the hot days of summer.” There is not a flaw in it. It is so filled with simple beauty and tenderness, and there is so much of the genuine word-magic in its language, that one is carried away as by the spell of natural oratory. It has, too, that intimate sympathy with nature which is another racial note in these stories. The enchanted moor, with its silence, where no sound is heard––the wind which shouted beyond the mountains, “when it sped across the moor it lost its voice, and passed as silently as the dead”––is affected by the fortune of the tale equally with its human and its elfin personages. When the knight arrives at last, “wherever his horse’s hoofs struck the ground, grass and flowers sprang up, and great trees with leafy branches rose on every side.... As they rode on beneath the leafy trees from every tree the birds sang out, for the spell of silence over the lonely moor was broken for ever.” This unpretentious story, a child’s story, is as engaging as a gem. And so, I think, are most of the others. One more example to illustrate the quality of Leamy’s style––say, the description of the contest of the bards before the High King at the Feis of Tara in the story called “The Huntsman’s Son.” The King gives the signal, the chief bard of Erin ascends the mound in front of the royal enclosure, and is greeted with a roar of cheers; but at the first note of his harp there is silence like that of night.

“As he moved his fingers softly over the strings every heart was hushed, filled with a sense of balmy rest. The lark, soaring and singing above his head, paused mute and motionless in the still air, and no sound was heard over the spacious plain save the dreamy music. Then the bard struck another key, and a gentle sorrow possessed the hearts of his hearers, and unbidden tears gathered to their eyes. Then, with bolder hand, he swept his fingers across his lyre, and all hearts were moved to joy and pleasant laughter, and eyes that had been dimmed by tears sparkled as brightly as running waters dancing in the sun. When the last notes had died away a cheer arose, loud as the voice of the storm in the glen when the live thunder is revelling on the mountain tops.”

As soon as the bard descends the mound the Skald from the northern lands takes his place, amid shouts of welcome.

“He touched his harp, and in the perfect silence was heard the strains of the mermaid’s song, and through it the pleasant ripple of summer waters on the pebbly beach. Then the theme was changed, and on the air was borne the measured sweep of countless oars and the swish of waters around the prows of contending galleys, and the breezy voices of the sailors and the sea-bird’s cry. Then his theme was changed to the mirth and laughter of the banquet hall, the clang of meeting drinking-horns and songs of battle. When the last strain ended, from the mighty host a great shout went up loud as the roar of winter billows breaking in the hollows of the shore.”

Then comes the hero of the tale, Fergus, the huntsman’s son.

“He touched his harp with gentle fingers, and a sound, low and soft as a faint summer breeze passing through forest trees, stole out, and then was heard the rustle of birds through the branches, and the dreamy murmur of waters lost in deepest woods, and all the fairy echoes whispering when the leaves are motionless in the noonday heat; then followed notes, cool and soft as the drip of summer showers on the parched grass, and then the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of the evening, and then in one sweet jocund burst the multitudinous voices that hail the breaking of the morn. And the lark, singing and soaring above the minstrel, sank mute and motionless upon his shoulder, and from all the leafy woods the birds came thronging out and formed a fluttering canopy above his head.

“When the bard ceased playing no shout arose from the mighty multitude, for the strains of his harp, long after its chords were stilled, held their hearts spell-bound.”

This passage reveals the poetry of the author’s style, and it shows how charged it is with qualities that are peculiar to the Celtic temperament: a style in which expressions like “the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of the evening,” or “she answered his salute by a wave of her little hand, that was as white as a wild rose in the hedges in June,” spring up naturally, like daisies in the grass, at every turn. I have said enough, too, to indicate the type of Celtic temperament to which Leamy’s belonged. His habitual mood was the exquisitely sensitive, the tender, playful, reverent mood. He was, in this, the antithesis of the “cloudy and lightning” Standish O’Grady, whose temperament, equally Gaelic, is that of the fighting bard, delighting in battle, fierce, fuliginous, aristocratic, pagan, with the roll of Homeric hexameters in his martial style. If O’Grady recalls the Oisin who contended with Patrick and longed to be slaying with the Fianna, even though they were in hell, Leamy, anima naturaliter Christiana, reminds one rather of the Irish monk in a distant land moved to write lyrics in his missal by the song of the bird that makes him think of Erin, or Marban, the hermit, rejoicing to his brother, the king, in his “sheiling in the wood,” his

It may not be amiss, in concluding this note, to add a word about the author other than as he appears in this book. These stories exhibit only one aspect of his gifts. They happen to be one of the things he wrote down. Most of the coinage of his mind, and I think the best of it, came forth in a form which does not permit of its being recalled, the form of the spoken and unrecorded word. He was by nature an improvisor. In the inclusive sense of the term, the sense which includes poetry, story-telling, description as well as pleading and exhortation, he was a born orator; and he was at his best when in the glow of pure improvisation. It thus happened that it was often a group of friends around a fireside, or a casual audience, who were the witnesses of the most brilliant play of his genius. He had a most observant and seeing eye. A walk in the street was fraught with surprise, and he would come back delighted with his adventures. Every little common incident––three little boys with their backs to a wall looking up at a church tower: he would catch snatches of their talk, speculations about deep things and strange; he would note that an old Irish apple-woman in a grimy English town left her basket, with all her stock-in-trade, outside in the street while she went into a church to commune with her heavenly friends; the conversation between a sapient publican, a friendly constable and a group of dubious bona fide travellers––such things were materials for his insight or his fancy or his delightful humour.