West Irish folk-tales and romances/14
GILLA OF THE ENCHANTMENTS.
Narrator, P. M'Grale, Dugort, Achill co. Mayo.
THERE was a king in Ireland and his wife, and they had but one daughter, whose name was Gilla of the Enchantments, and she had a magic coat that her mother left her when she died. And there was a man courting her whose name was George na Riell, and the two were courting.
When her mother died the king made a fair and beautiful greenawn for his three sons on an island in the midst of the sea, and there he put them to live; and he sent his daughter to them with food every evening.
It was not long after that till he married another wife, and by this wife he had three daughters. She was one day walking in the garden, and she got the corner of her apron under her foot and she fell.
“May neither God nor Mary be with you,” said the hen-wife.
“Why do you say that?” said the queen.
“Because the wife that was here before was better than you.”
“Was there a wife before me?”
“There was; and that one is her daughter, and there are three sons also in an island in the sea, and the daughter goes every night to them with food.”
“What shall I do with the three of them, to put them to death?”
“I'll tell you,” said the hen-wife, “if you will do what I advise you.”
“I will do it,” said she.
“Promise a dowry to your eldest daughter if she will follow the (other) daughter out when she is going with food to her brothers.”
And she sent her daughter after the one who was going with food; but she looked behind her and saw the other coming, and she made a bog and a lake between them, so big that she went astray. She came to her mother, and told her she was wandering all the night, and the mother went to the hen-wife again and told her that her daughter had not made her way to the men; and the hen-wife said to her, “Promise a dowry to your second daughter.”
And she did this, and the second daughter followed as the first did, and fared in the same way, and she came and told her mother. And the mother went again to the hen-wife, and told her, and asked what she ought to do, and the hen-wife said, “Promise the dowry to your third daughter.”
And the third daughter followed Gilla of the Enchantments when she was going with the food; and she did not look behind her till she came to the house; and she put a pot of water down, and cut off the heads of her three brothers, and washed them, and put them on their shoulders again. And the half-sister was at the window looking on at everything she did, and she went home through the sea, before the sea returned together; and when they ate their supper, her sister came home.
The mother went in the morning to the hen-wife and told her the third woman had succeeded, and had learned everything. And she asked her what she should do.
“Say, now, that your daughter is going to be married, and ask Gilla for the loan of the coat. She will not know that the power of the coat will be gone if she gives it away. So long as she keeps the coat herself she can do everything; there are spells on the coat that the sea must open before it, without closing after it; but she does not know that the spell of the coat will be lost.”
She gave the loan of the coat to her half-sister, but instead of going to be married this is what she did. When night came she put the coat on and went to the house of her half-brothers, knocked at the door, and asked them to open it. And one of the brothers said, “That is not my sister.” But another looked out of the window and saw the coat and recognised it, and he opened the door and let her in. She cut the three heads off, and took them three quarters of a mile and put them into a hole in the ground, and went back to her mother and told her she had killed the three. She gave the coat back to Gilla of the Enchantments, and Gilla went in the evening to her brothers with food, and whatever sort of fastening the other one put on the door she could not open it, but had to go in by the window, and she found her three brothers dead.
She wept and she screamed and pulled the hair from her head in her lamentations, till the whiteness of the day came upon the morrow. She had not one head of the heads to get; but she followed the trace of the blood, and three quarters of a mile from the house were they in the place where they were buried. She dug them up, and took them to her, and washed and cleaned them, as was her wont, and put them on the bodies, but down they fell. She had to take them up at last, and cry to God to do something to them, that she might see them alive. And there were made of them three water-dogs (? otters) and she made another of herself. They were going in that way for a time, and then they made themselves into three doves, and she made of herself another dove. They were going forward and she was following, and the four came and settled on the gable of the house, and in the morning the man said to his wife,—
“There is a barrel of water. Let it be wine with you in the evening.”
(He had a thought that it was not the right woman he had got.)
Then said one of the brothers to the sister,—
“Go in, and do good in return for evil, and make wine of the water.”
She went down, and when she got in, and she in the shape of a dove, the old blind wise man, who was lying on the bed under the window, got his sight, and he saw her dipping her finger in the water and making of it wine cold and wholesome.
And in the morning the man said to his wife,—
“Here is a barrel of water. Let it be wine with you in the evening.”
And the second brother said to his sister,—
“Go in, and do good in return for evil, and make wine of the water.”
She went down, and when she went in at the window, and she in the shape of a dove, the old wise blind man, who was lying on the bed under the window, got his sight, and saw her dipping her finger in the water and making it wine cold and wholesome.
And in the morning on the third day the wise old man spoke to the king, and said to him that he had seen a beautiful woman come in by the window on two days, and that he got his sight when she came in and lost it when she went out; and (said he) “Stretch yourself here to-day, and when she comes in and makes wine of the water, catch her as she is going out.”
And he did so, and the third brother said to his sister,—
“Go down to-day, and do good in return for evil, and make the wine.”
And she did this; and as she was going out the man caught her. And when her brothers heard that she was caught they went away. And she asked him to give her leave to take just one look at her brothers.
“Here's the corner of my apron.”
And he took hold of the corner of her apron, and she left him the apron and went away after her brothers. When they saw her coming again they waited for her, and she asked them if there was anything at all in the world that would make them alive again; and they said there was one thing only and that hard it was to do.
“What is it?” said she, “and I will try it.”
“To make three shirts of the ivy-leaves in a day and a year, without uttering a word of speech or shedding a single tear, for if you weep[1] we shall lose one member of our members.”
And she said to them to make a little hut for her in the wood, and they made the hut and went away and left her there. She was not long till she began to get material for the shirts, and she began to make them; and she was not long in the house when George nă Riell came to her, and he was with her till she had a child to him.
A young man was in the wood one day and a dog with him, and the dog took him to the place where the woman was; and the man saw the woman and the child there, and he went home and told the queen that there was a beautiful woman in the wood. And she went and took the dog with her, as if the dog was with George na Riell. She went in and found the woman and the babe, and she killed the babe and caught some of the blood, and mixed the blood and ashes up together and made a cake, and she sought to put a piece of the bread into the woman's mouth. And the woman dropped one tear from her eye; but the other went away home to her wedded husband, and she said to him that great was the shame for him to have children by that woman, and that she had had to kill her own child and eat it.
“It is not possible,” said he, “that she has killed my babe.”
“She killed and she ate.”
He went to her and found the child dead; but she did not speak a word to him. He said then he would burn her at twelve o'clock on the next day, and that he would put a tree of one foot and hang her on it. He commanded that every one should come in the morning with sods of turf and sheets of paper and everything to make a fire. And he put the tree standing, and she was brought and put up on the top of the tree; and she was sewing during this time. When it was twelve o'clock, sign was given she should be hung, and an old man in the crowd asked them to give her another hour by the clock; and when the hour was passed he asked again that they should give her a half-hour; the woman in it (he said) was under gassa. “You see that it is not her life that is troubling her, but that she is always sewing.”
It was not long till they saw a black cloud coming through the air, and they saw three things in the cloud coming.
“Well,” said the old man, “there are three angels from heaven, or three devils from hell, coming for her soul.”
There were three black ravens coming, and their mouths open, and as it were fire out of their mouths, till the three black ravens came and lay in their sister's bosom, and she on the top of the tree, and she put the three shirts on them, and said,—
“Finn, Inn, and Brown Glegil, show that I am your sister, for in pain am I to-day.”
They took hold of her and lifted her down from the tree, and the brothers told George nă Riell everything that the half-sister had done, first that she killed the three of them, and afterwards that it was she that killed their sister's child.
Then she was put up on the tree, and she was hung, and then thrown into the fire. And they went home, and George nă Riell married Gilla of the Enchantments and took her into his own house, and they spent the rest of their life as is right.
I don't know what happened to them since then.
- ↑ The narrator knew his story imperfectly as regards this point, for she did shed one tear; but whether the brothers lost an eye in consequence he was not sure.