SOME WEST OF IRELAND SUPERSTITIONS.
AN account of a few of the superstitions still lingering on in parts of the extreme West of Ireland may be of interest to some of the readers of the Spectator. It has been the writer's happy lot that his work has brought him amongst the people of the West; and the superstitions or superstitious customs described have, for the most part, been directly observed within the past ten years.
A few years ago the parish priest of one of the larger islands off the Galway coast invited the writer to walk with
him to a cabin at the extreme end of the island. Here an involved dispute about boundaries of holdings was arbitrated on and amicably settled,—no light matter ; advice was given as to the steps to be taken in order to recover the value of a few one-pound bank-notes which had been by accident partly burnt; and, last of all, a child was brought up to his Rever- ence suffering from some external disorder of the throat, apparently scrofula. The priest sternly rebuked the mother for not having brought the child to the doctor for proper treatment long ago. She replied : " Arrab, Father, I thought I would not mind the doctor, but just get a noteen [i.e., little note) from yourself to the nuns in — Convent. They tell me they have a little sup of the King's blood in a bottle there, and if the child's neck is touched with that it's a certain cure for ever and always!" This poor woman's belief was, of course, a ramification of the ancient superstition of healing by the Royal touch.
In this island the fishermen never talk of rats as such,, but when those animals are spoken of the name used is " cold iron." They believe that rats can understand human speech, and that they dislike being gossipped about, and are apt to take revenge upon any one speaking of them by gnawing their fishing-gear, sea-boots, &c. ; but all is safe if " cold iron " is the name used. Here again rabbits are considered most unlucky, and if by chance one gets entangled in a train of fishing-nets spread out on the land to dry, that particular net is carefully removed from the train. One must be careful never to carry rabbits, which may have been shot, aboard a fishing-boat ; for although the people might not object openly, on account of their natural politeness, they strongly resent any such daring provocation of the malign influences, and if any ill-luck were to happen to themselves or to the boat subsequently, it would be attributed to that foolhardy action.
Superstitions as to its being most unlucky to meet a woman when setting out to fish, or upon any journey by sea, are not uncommon. From a headland on the Donegal coast the writer was one day anxiously watching a small smack beating across the bay against a heavy sea and stiff breeze, which had suddenly sprung up. After a long and bard fight for it, the little craft made the pier in safety, and upon condolences being offered the skipper on his recent hardships, he said : "Sure, what better luck could I have ? Didn't I meet a red- headed woman in Sligo this morning the moment I left my lodging to walk down to the boat ! " In this case the colour of the woman's hair, and the fact of her being the first person met with after the man left his house, seemed to be the deter- mining factors in the day's luck. But in other places the objection to such an encounter embraces hair of all shades and any hour of the day, it being amply sufficient to bring the ill-luck that any woman should pass you by just as you are walking down to the boat. Only a few weeks ago the writer visited a small fishing village on the Galway coast, and just before getting on his car to return home was chatting to the landlady of the little inn. A strapping young fisherman, who was walking down the road towards the harbour, suddenly stopped, climbed over the fence, and made his way to his boat across the fields. The writer observed to his hostess that the young fellow must have mistaken him for a process-server with a writ for him. She laughed rather derisively, and said : " It's not you at all, Sir, he's afraid of, but me ! He's just going fishing, and would not pass me by if you gave him the fill of his hat of gold!" She said that his action was not exceptional, and that any of the other men would have done the same thing. It seemed curious, as nothing could have appeared less sinister than the rosy-cheeked, plump, jolly- looking woman herself.
The peasantry in North-West Mayo are most superstitious; but unless the person inquiring into their beliefs is known to them, and they feel sure of not being laughed at, it is very difficult to get the least information regarding them.
The custom of lighting " bal fires " is kept up in this district to the present day, and in June, 1898, the writer and a friend upon the eve of St. John's Day counted upwards of forty blazing upon the bills round the principal little town where there was a huge "bal fire" in the market-place. When the fire in the town was burning low the people ran through it, and some boys made heroic efforts to drive some donkeys through it as well; but as they themselves expressed it, " it failed them to do it! " Burning embers from the 'fire were carried into most of the houses and placed on the hearths. When questioned about these fires, the people said they were lit because it was St. John's Eve, but they did not know why they were called "bal fires " ; they said it was lucky to bring in some of the fire, as you would then be sure that the hearth would never be without a fire until the next St. John's Eve. St. John's Eve synchronises with the summer solstice, and it is said that the "bal fires" were originally connected with the worship of Baal. If this be so, the custom shows a curious incorporation of the pagan rites of sun-worship and Baal- worship into the Christian faith.
In an island off this North-West Mayo coast there is a spring well, reputed to be so very " holy " that no woman dare draw water therefrom under penalty of the well becoming filled with blood, snakes, and other horrible things. Full particu- lars as to this well, and other interesting matters in this district, may be found in a somewhat scarce book called "Sketches in Erris and Tyrawly," which was written by a clergyman of the Church of Ireland, and published in 1841. The writer possesses a copy, and wishing to test whether the story of this well was still a living tradition, said to his boat- man, Dinny K—. "I'm told that once a woman did draw water from it, and that all these horrible things happened; but as the well is all right now, what I want to know, Dinny, is how it was got back again to water." Dinny replied: " The people brought out a monk from the continent [i.e., main- land], a holy man entirely he was, and he spent seven days and seven nights praying on his bare knees on the hard rock beside the well, an bit nor sup never crossed his lips until he got it back again!" Then, after a pause and in a whisper : "an' tight enough it went wid him that he ever got it back at all!"
The use of the "love spancel" no longer obtains in this district, and the people vehemently repudiate the custom if asked about it. An ordinary spancel is a loop of rope used for hobbling cattle, sheep, or horses to prevent them straying; but the "love spancel" was different. It was used as a ()harm by any woman who desired to be beloved of any particular man, and it was only necessary for her in order to attain her desire that she should wrap the man in the "spancel" whilst he was sleeping. If she woke him, the man died within the year ; but if not, all was well, and she gained his devoted love for life. The "love spancel" had to be stripped from the corpse of a man; the holier the man the more potent was his " spancel." To quote from the book just mentioned, the "love spancel" "consists of a continuous band of skin taken from round the length of the body,—viz., from the sole of one foot, up the outside of the leg and side, over the head and down the other side to the sole of the other foot, up the inside of that leg and down the inside of the other, until the stripe meets where it first set out." The author states that the custom was then believed in, and occasionally practised, even by persona " above the common sort."
Instances of belief in the power of the " evil eye " and in the ability of fairies to masquerade in the bodies of persons who have fallen under their spells are not uncommon in Ireland. Nearly every lake holds its " big eel " or " wurrum" (worm), supposed by the people to have been dragons that once roamed the country until St. Patrick's time. He, being either unwilling or unable to destroy them, like the snakes, did the best he could for the people, and consigned each one to the depths of a lake until the Day of Judgment. In West Mayo some years ago a railway was under construction, one of the embankments of which caused the engineers much anxiety by sinking into the ground almost as rapidly as it could be made up. The difficulty was at length overcome, and an old night watchman informed the writer that the whole of the trouble wits due to a " wurrum." He said : " Shure, the place ye put the bank in was an ould lake filled up wid the bog, and the wurrum was below all the time unknownst to ye. Whin ye began filling in the stuff, and throwing the weight on him, he kept turning and twishting and shcattering the bank below until ye had him shmothered entirely. Shure, I used to hear the groans of him myself every night until ye had him killed ; an' mind ye, every time he'd let a roar out of him a light would shine out of the chapel window!" The Roman Catholic church was upon a hill close to the place.
Only the summer before last upon an island off South-West Cork where there is a lake, which, of course, holds a" wurrum," the writer and a colleague were startled by being told that Mickey —, a youth of fourteen, greatly daring, bad attempted to bathe in the lake, and had been attacked by the " wurrum." Not content with merely attacking the boy in the lake, the story ran that the monster bad chased poor Mickey from the lake into his own cabin about five hundred yards off. The writer and his colleague lost no time in getting to the cabin so as to secure a first-hand description of a " wurrum," and found Mickey there, show- ing every symptom of recent extreme terror. After all possible sympathy had been shown him, Mickey was asked to describe the appearance of the beast as well as he could, when he screamed out rapidly, in high falsetto : " Yer annex ! it took the forrum [form] of an ass !" Investigation revealed the fact that a jackass had been grazing along the shore of the lake, near the place where Mickey stripped himself to bathe. The jackass must have mistaken the slim, white, naked figure of the boy for something " unlucky," and charged at it then and there. Poor Mickey, with his mind full of dread at the risk he was running of the " wurrum," had barely put his foot in the water before he heard the rushing and snorting behind him, and without looking back for an instant ran as he was like a hare to his cabin, with the jackass full stretch in pursuit. When the cabin-door had been banged and bolted against the "wurrum," Mickey took courage to look out of the window, and saw his enemy trotting down the boreen back to his pasture by the lake. Hence the description ; but, needless to say, the writer and his friend recognised the impossibility of ever getting Mickey to accept any such humdrum explanation, and so, as the people say, "we left it with him !"
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