Fairy Tales of Ireland

Fairy Tales of Ireland by WB Yeats, published by Young Lions, is a magical, lyrical collection of 20 stories chosen from those collected by the poet. Mostly they tell of fairies, giants and witches from the Otherworld, and the dealings they have with humans, with guile and cunning used on both sides. The juxtaposition of the mundane with the miraculous makes for some fine tension as the everyday world clashes with supernatural events and beings. I was going to say there's conflict between the real world and the world of imagination, but that would be wrong because Yeats firmly believed in the existence of fairies, and he relates these stories as if they were a matter of fact – and who is to say they are not.

Within the tales you will find joy and sorrow, fear and bravery, slapstick humour and moments of high emotion. Alongside the folk tales are others which owe their their origins to ancient Celtic poems and sagas. But they are all told in simple language, in a manner which demands to be read aloud to best enjoy the rhythms and nuances of Yeats' story-telling. And, after all, for many generations these traditional tales were not written down, but were recited aloud as the listeners sat around a fire, laughing and weeping with every change in fortune experienced by the heroes and heroines.

The book opens with his poem 'The Stolen Child', which I love, but with 'The Priest's Supper', the first fairy tale, I'm as lost in the writing as I was when I was a child, hooked on fairy stories, myths and legends, which is why I couldn't resist buying this book when I spotted it in a charity shop.

It is said by those who ought to understand such things, that the good people, or the fairies, are some of the angels who were turned out of heaven, and who landed on their feet in this world, while the rest of their companions, who had more sin to sink them, went down farther to a worse place. Be this as it may, there was a merry troop of the fairies, dancing and playing all manner of wild pranks, on a bright moonlight evening towards the end of September.

See what I mean about the mix of reality and the otherworld? The mention of the season is so very precise and seems to tie these fairies to a time and place – but the Catholic Church is never far away when this kind of trouble is afoot, and these non-Christian creatures are bested by pious Father Horrigan before any harm is done. But not all tales end happily - in one, an unmannerly hunchback ends up with a second hump.

And one, 'The Soul Cages', is spookily disturbing as Jack travels beneath the waves and meets Coomara, who sets traps (like lobster pots) to trap the souls of drowned sailors.

The Soul Cages: One of PJ Lynch's illustrations.

My favourites, perhaps because they are stories I have known, in various forms, since childhood, are 'A Legend of Knockmany', and 'The Twelve Wild Geese'. In the first Fin M'Coul's clever wife Oonagh devises a scheme to help him outwit the giant Cucullin, who can make a young earthquake or flatten a thunderbolt. It's a wonderful plan, as wily as anything dreamt up by Odysseus, and is wonderfully told. Just listen to what happens when Oonagh persuades Cucullin to turn the house around:

When Fin saw this, he felt a certain description of moisture, which shall be nameless, oozing out through every pore of his skin; but Oonagh, depending upon her woman's wit, felt not a whit daunted.

In 'The Twelve Wild Geese' a beautiful princess must spin bog-down into thread and knit it into shirts so her 12 brothers, who have been turned to geese, can be transformed back into men. As a young child the story I read and loved had the young men flying about the countryside as swans before they regain their natural shapes, thanks to wearing shirts woven from nettles by their sister.

Much later I came across the legend of the Children of Lir, where Lir's daughter and three sons are changed into swans and doomed to remain in that form for 900 years – then they are blessed by monk, become human once more but, since they are now almost 1,000 years old, they crumble to dust. I am not sure whether 'The Twelve Wild Geese' owes its origins to the Children of Lir, or whether it is one of those strange tales where a successful outcome is only possible if an impossible task is completed. Perhaps it is a mixture of them both, since folk tales are often drawn from many sources.


I am posting this on the Ireland Challenge 2012,  organised by CarrieK on this link. 

A Mad Mother and a 'Well Hidden' Family

Queen Victoria was on the throne of England when William Peacock married Miranda Mirova. The couple are very young, barely out of childhood, but he is the precociously talented editor of a literary magazine and she is the most famous ballet dancer of generation. All goes well until baby Clare is born, when Miranda no longer wishes to dance, and develops an aversion to noise and crowds. As she becomes more and more isolated her behaviour becomes more and more strange. “We are not well hidden,” she tells her husband. She hears 'them' following her (though who 'they' are we never discover) and wanders the house at night to check all is safe.

Two other children, Hector and Viola, and William moves his family from London to the 'deserted decrepitude' of Prince's Acre, where Miranda is happy for a time. But there is a terrifying night when, because 'we are not well hidden', she takes the children outside and tries to cram Viola into a rabbit hole. After this Miranda is taken away and dies. William withdraws into himself and rarely leaves his study, so Clare, aided by faithful housekeeper Mrs Humble cares for her brother and sister, who are both disabled. Eventually, however, visitors from the outside world penetrate the family's enclosed life, and events take a tragic turn.

That's an over simplification of Rumour of Heaven, written by actress Beatrix Lehmann (the sister of novelist Rosamond) in 1934. It is, apparently, considered to be something of a curiosity rather than a great literary work, but I really enjoyed it, although it's a bit like the curate's egg – good in parts. But let us rejoin the family when Clare is 17, devoting her life to the well-being of her emotionally shattered father; Hector, who is what we would now call a person with learning difficulties; and Viola, who suffers from an unspecified debilitating disease.

Her own peace of mind is broken when she meets charismatic Max Ralston, who has written a book about a mysterious island paradise which may really exist, or may be a figment of his imagination. Then there is troubled Paul Millard, on the run from a failing marriage, fashionable Bohemian London, and his memories of WWI. He hopes to write a biography of his friend Roger, a poet, who once visited Prince's Acre. But he finds the real Roger slips away as he tries to record his own memories and talk to others about the Roger they knew.

Clare and her family seem to find reality just as hard to pin down: their house is like something in a fairy tale, dusty, overgrown, something out of time, yet perfect as it is, despite its faults. The two younger children live in a world of their own, unable to grasp the realities of everyday life, while Clare and her father seem to live in a dream, and you feel you could wake them, if only you could reach out and shake them.

Over it all lies the ghost of poor, mad Miranda (is one still allowed to call people mad I wonder, or is it politically incorrect, even when referring to a character in a novel written before the term was coined) whose presence can still be felt, although she is there for such a short time. Under the rafters of the barn is a 'ghost of a room' for Clare, where old ballet-shoes, made for feet half the size of her own, dangle on frayed ribbons.

The trunks in the corner had been dusted, and one, made of wicker, displayed the name 'Mirova' on its bursting side; and all were open and their maws foamed with overflowing treasures. Yellowed ruffles of tarlatan that time and repeated packing had not quelled. Miranda's ballet frocks sprang upwards like frosted cabbage leaves when the lid of the trunk had been lifted.

There are music scores, photographs, and books – gifts from long ago admirers – all ravaged by moths and mice, mementos of a make-believe world played out in the spotlight, but now hidden in the dark. But Miranda leaves a less tangible legacy, for her husband and children are still hidden away 'safe, all safe', unable to move forward and leave the world she created. And the emotional impact of her illness on those she loved is incalculable.

Her death is glossed over , so much so that I kept thinking she was still alive, incarcerated in an institution, and would re-appear at some stage, fully restored to her old self, but, of course, she never does. The cause of her condition is never explained. Is it a form of post-natal depression? Or is she bi-polar? Or schizophrenic? But her strange behaviour is described so touchingly, and quite sensitively, so I could feel her fear and desolation. Indeed, the relationships between the Peacock family were very tenderly portrayed.

I found Max and Paul less sympathetic, while Mrs Humble and the various rural yokels never came to life at all: they were caricatures, straight out of one of those pastoral novels that were once so popular (Mary Webb perhaps). And they speak in dialect, which is always difficult to handle well, although this may be done for comic effect.

Beatrix Lehmann as a young woman.

In fact nature has a role to play here, with weather and landscape echoing plot and feelings, and there are some excellent descriptive passages describing the sea and the scenery. However, there are other passages which are much more overblown (Mary Webb again I fear – I only mention her because Simon T at Stuck in Book recently wrote the most scathing and funny review of 'Gone to Earth'). And there are times when the plot itself seems akin to something Webb might have written – then, as it gets back on track, you start to wonder if it's parody, like 'Cold Comfort Farm', but somehow I don't think it is.

The tone of the novel is variable, and there are all sorts of themes to be unpicked, but overall, I think 'Rumour of Heaven' reads like a fairy tale, with a brief 'once upon a time' period when things are happy (or at least different), followed by a section that is part Cinderella, part Sleeping Beauty. But there is no real awakening for the Peacocks who survive tragedy, although there is a happy ending of sorts, even if you feel it is somewhat unreal.

A Place where Lepers were Outcast...

We passed this sign whilst out walking during our Cumbrian holiday. It's the name of an area, like a hamlet, which is certainly not big enough to be a village, and is now part of Ulverston. According to a local information leaflet, it was once the place where lepers were sent – cast out from the community where they lived before. However, there are no further details, and I'm having problems trying to find anything out, so I may contact the tourist office and see if they can recommend a local historian who may be able to help.

Anyway, the sign reminded me of 'The de Lacy Inheritance', written by my friend Elizabeth Ashworth, which has one of the most chilling openings I have ever read, with words taken from The Mass of Separation, which excluded lepers from family, home, society and church.

I'd never heard of this particular custom, so I looked it up, and found the ritual spoken by a priest even more horrifying than Elizabeth made it sound, with a curious incantatory quality, which reads like an ancient curse. It is hard to imagine listeners remaining unmoved by the rite, which banned lepers from any form of normal human contact – even touching the rim or rope of a well was forbidden unless the sufferer was wearing gloves. It must have been such a lonely life, cut off from everyone they knew and loved, unable to make a living or indulge in any leisure pursuits, and denied even the comfort of the church (although some places of worship had a special window, so sufferers could stand outside and listen to a service).

It made me realise what a terrible disease leprosy was in the days before drugs were available to cure it (it was well into the 20th century before this happened – Victoria Hislop's novel 'The Island' shows how attitudes changed). I always think of lepers living in special hospitals, or lazar houses as they were known, where they were cared for by monks, but I may have gleaned this idea from Ellis Peters' excellent Cadfael books, and I'm not sure how true it was. I understand there were also 'colonies' which were not attached to religious institutions, where sufferers lived as normally as possible, totally isolated from the rest of the world. Additionally, may beggars became became beggars, travelling from town to town, ringing a bell which warned others to keep away, eating scraps left out for them, and maybe staying the occasional night at a lazar house. For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog at http://athomewithbooks.net/

Woods, Sea and Stars...

Woods etc. has a rather plain cover, so instead,
here is a picture in Seawood, at Bardsea, Cumbria.

I love Alice Oswald's 'Dart', and 'A Sleepwalk On The Severn', which are both long poems, but hadn't read any of her shorter work, so I was pleased when I spotted her collection Woods etc. in the library, just before we travelled up to the Furness Peninsula in Cumbria for a week's holiday in the campervan. It gave us a chance to enjoy the glorious countryside, and made us feel very close to nature, and Oswald is very much a nature poet. So I read the poems, two or three each day, curled up in bed in the early morning when the rest of the world was still asleep, and they seemed to fit the landscape.

Oswald has been compared to Ted Hughes, and I can see why, because she shows the natural world in its raw state, before it's been pruned and cultivated and tidied up, but there's a humanity there as well, and echoes of old legends and folk tales. The poems in this collection are reflective, about the elements, the moon, the stars, the sea, seabirds, birdsong, a wood, stones and flowers. There's a Lovesong for Three Children (her own, presumably), A Poem for Taking a Baby out of Hospital, and a Psalm to Sing in a Canoe.

When she's on form Oswald uses language in strange and unexpected ways, stringing words together like stray beads on a thread, making patterns and shapes that remain in the mind, even though the beads don't match. The poems in 'Woods etc' didn't grip my imagination in quite the same way as 'Dart' or 'A Sleepwalk On The Severn' which both have a curiously haunting quality, with hypnotic rhythms and evocative images. Possibly her style, with its lists and repetitions, is better suited to longer, more sustained work, But having said that, I enjoyed most of these poems very much indeed.

I particularly liked A Star Here And A Star There, where she writes

the first whisper of stars is a faint thing

a candle sound, too far away to read by

and she goes on to say

someone looks up, he sees his soul growing visible

in various shapes above the house

he sees his soul tilted above the house

all his opponent selves hanging and fluttering

out there in the taken for granted air

in various shapes above the house

star

I love the idea of the first whisper of a star, and the 'opponent selves' seems such a simple way of describing the many different aspects of personality that each of us has, and how beliefs and actions, and other people's view of us (and their expectations), and our own hopes and fears, can all fight against each other, but somehow we have to meld them together into a unified whole.

Seagulls, not flying (my camera is not good enough to snap
them aloft) but perched on a jetty railing.

And I thought Seabird's Blessing was wonderful, especially when read with the gulls wheeling and crying overhead, and I could imagine them calling on 'God the featherer' to lift them if they fall. The first stanza perfectly captures the way they move through the air:

We are crowds of seabirds,

makers of many angles,

workers that unpick a web

of the air's threads and tangles.

Then there's Sea Poem with:

water deep in its own world

steep shafts warm streams

cool salt cod weed

dispersed outflows and flytipping

and the sun and its refelexion

throwing two shadows

what is the beauty of water

sky is its beauty

Clouds reflected in one of the marshy pools at Bardsea, in Cumbria.

Lupins, Radishes, and Triangular Dances

August has come, and has clothed the hills with golden lupins, and filled the grassy banks with harebells. The yellow fields of lupins are so gorgeous on cloudless days that I have neglected the forests lately and drive in the open, so that I may revel in their scent while feasting my eyes on their beauty.

So opens Elizabeth von Arnim's chapter on August in her book The Solitary Summer, which is written in the form of a diary. And, as with some of the other flowers she describes, I suspect that these plants must be very different to the hybridised garden varieties we know today. Modern lupins come in a huge range of pinks and purples, but I cannot call their perfume to mind, so perhaps von Arnim's beautiful blooms were wild flowers.

And here, in her first 'entry' for the month, the writer who sought solitude seeks a companion with whom she can share the pleasure of the lupins. “I am frightened once more at the solitariness in which we each of us live,” she writes, and tells us that only one of her many friends has similar tastes – and that they almost fell out because this particular friend would not like to be a goose-girl! Von Arnim who, it has to be said, has a very romantic view of rural life and country folk, says: “For six months of the year I would be happier than any queen I ever heard of , minding the fat white things.” She would, she adds, keep one eye on the geese, and one on a volume of Wordsworth (overlooking the fact that goose-girls couldn't read, and were unable to return to 'civilised life' during the winter). But nevertheless, she does present a charming view of her imaginary rural idyll.

Visits to the 'middle class' seaside and the pleasures of food come under her scrutiny, but by August 16 she is still concerned with her garden, which should be beautiful from 'end to end'.

It makes one so healthy to live in a garden, so healthy in mind as well as body, and when I say moles and late frosts are my worst enemies, it only shows how I could not now if I tried sit down and brood over my own or my neighbour's sins, and how the breezes in my garden have blown away all those worries and vexations and bitternesses that are the lot of those who live in a crowd.

Her joy in nature, and her love of life, are so enthusiastic that I cannot help but smile with her, and sympathise when she recalls the pious missionary who told her off for being happy when we live in a 'vale of woe'. And I can only agree when she says that if she is miserable and discontented it will not help anyone else.

There's a charming interlude when she discusses naughty boys with the April, May and June babies, who persist in speaking in their usual mix of English and German, with only the occasional word of French. When von Arnim remonstrates with them, she is told that while Seraphines speak French to children, mothers do not (Seraphine is their nurse) and the conversation ends in tears – so she organises a 'ball' for them, where they dance in triangles round the pillar in the library, while she plays cheerful tunes on the piano, before they eat radishes for supper (which give them nightmares) and curtsey before they go to bed. It all sounded a bit a like the impromptu indoor picnics we used to organise for our daughters when they were small, and they ate a back-to-front meal (pudding first) and danced madly round the room while the Man Of The House played his own folk-style nursery rhymes on the guitar. My memories seemed to bring von Arnim closer, and I thought mothers and young children have not really changed all that much over the years.

Later she visits the mill, where the water is 'ablaze with the red reflection of the sky' and the pools are full of water-lilies and eels. This time she doesn't go boating, but she recalls how the miller is always uneasy when she goes punting, for he insists that 'people with petticoats' were never intended for punts and 'their only chance of safety lay in dry land and keeping quiet'. She is tired, so she sits quietly sipping tea and reading Goethe's 'Sorrows of Werther'.

Yellow water-lilies floating in the water.

Sitting there long after it was too dark to read, I thought of the old miller's words, and agreed with him that the best thing a woman can do in this world is to keep quiet... Keep quiet and say one's prayers – certainly not merely the best, but the only things to do if one would be truly happy; but ashamed of asking when I have received so much, the only form of prayer I would use would be a form of thanksgiving.

I don't know that keeping quiet is necessarily the kind of advice that would be welcomed by women in the 21st century, but perhaps counting one's blessings is not such a bad thing.