|
Yeats' FAIRY AND FOLK
TALES OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY
SAINTS, PRIESTS
Everywhere in Ireland are the holy
wells. People as they pray by them make
little piles of stones, that will be counted at the last day and the prayers
reckoned up. Sometimes they tell stories. These following are their stories.
They deal with the old times, whereof King Alfred of Northumberland wrote--
"I found in Innisfail the fair,
In Ireland, while in exile
there,
Women of worth, both grave and gay men,
Many clericks and many
laymen.
Gold and silver I found, and money,
Plenty of wheat, and plenty of
honey;
I found God's people rich in pity,
Found many a feast, and many a
city."
There are no martyrs in the stories. That ancient chronicler Giraldus taunted
the Archbishop of Cashel because no one in Ireland had received the crown of
martyrdom. "Our people may be barbarous," the prelate answered, "but they have
never lifted their hands against God's saints; but now that a people have come
amongst us who know how to make than (it was just after the English invasion),
we shall have martyrs plentifully."
The bodies of saints are fastidious things. At a place called
Four-mile-Water, in Wexford, there is an old graveyard full, of saints. Once it
was on the other side of the river, but they buried a rogue there, and the whole
graveyard moved across in the night, leaving the rogue-corpse in solitude. It
would have been easier to move merely the rogue-corpse, but they were saints,
and had to do things in style.
|
![Aran Islanders, J. Synge [1898] (public domain photograph)](irishwmn.jpg) |
