LA BEALTAINE [MAYDAY]
In the Irish folk calendar there are four festival days separated by intervals of three months, so dividing the year into four quarters.
Folklore
Priestly Power Again
But the powers of the priest of old were much greater than that, as Blind Jimmy McCreesh cud tell ye!
Take your wee house too!
Paddy and Bridget lived in a cottage high up on the far side of Slew Gullion and had few visitors. It was raining cats and dogs the day the parish priest came to call. He had one of them new-fangled umberella things to protect himself and he unfurled it to enter the narrow door of the house.
Once inside, he put it up again and left it on the hearth to dry.
Pahvees
The fame of the Dromintee Pahvees spread across the world. We’ll tell you more later. A home story first.
Pahvees were travelling cloth salesmen. The ‘rag’ man, colloquially, though he was much more than that! It was a way to make a living, when all other avenues were closed. Of course, little if anything of income was declared to the Revenue.
This pahvee anyway was going great guns, confident of making a decent sale to the woman whose house he called at. She just seemed slow when it came to handing over the money. He thought she was stalling, waiting for something, like the return of her husband, for example. It was at that point that the man noticed a policeman’s jacket hanging on a peg and a helmet beside it.
‘I just remembered’, says he, ‘that I’ve another urgent job to do’.
He was quickly gathering up the clothes and blankets he’d been showing to her.
‘Ah, take your time, there,’ says she, ‘you were in no hurry a minute ago. My husband will be home in a minute and he’s the man with the money.’
‘No, I’ve got to go’, he says, making signs to leave.
But she had seen that he’d spotted the police uniform. Her attitude changed.
‘You know’, says she, ‘if my husband were here, he’d take you!’
‘Oh it’s well I believe it,’ says he.
‘When he took you, he’d take anyone!’
Priest’s Power
The first of my two similar tales is from the long ago.
This poor wife had a terrible time, constantly suffering beatings at her husband’s hands.
But this was in the time when the priest still had enormous respect and influence in the community and was not to be crossed.
The curate was passing by one time when this devilish husband was battering his wife out in their garden, in full view of passers-by.
When he spotted the priest he paused;
then hitting her a final slap for good measure,
he cried out at her,
‘NOW will ye go to Mass on Sundays?’
My own remembered tale is a little happier. I recall this incident as if it was yesterday. I was weeding the garden as the Dominican priest walked past our home; he had just returned from paying a house visit and I wished him good evening.
It must have been a long time ago, and he must have been a Dominican, because he was walking!
I was just a youngster and unknown to him, so there was no reason to share a confidence with me.
I think he was feeling the strain and was delighted by my friendly greeting. Anyway, he started to explain without revealing any names.
He might as well have done, for the details betrayed the names, though he didn’t know it.
She was a convert, he revealed, and was married to a brute of a man who didn’t respect her and treated her very badly. Somehow she’d got it into her head that the Catholic priest still had great powers over all his flock. A visit would be enough to put her man in his place!
He (the priest) had tried verbal chastisement but the husband only laughed at his wife for her naivety, and at him too.
Priest he was, but he was a man too and he wasn’t going to be made a fool of.
He removed his ‘dog-collar’ and invited the husband outside to sort the matter out.
The residents of Derrybeg Drive never ever had such sport, either before or even ever since!
The priest was uncomfortable, boasting, but it was clear that he’d got the better of the fracas.
….
I had no idea how to react to the priest’s story. Alternatively I consoled; grinned; looked concerned; congratulated and wished well to all involved.
He walked on
– vindicated, I assumed.
Shaggy Bear Story
Most good folk stories of all traditions have a moral and that of the Newry Bear no less than any other.
Certainly there was a smallpox epidemic in February 1895 and it is probable there was a travelling circus in town, from which the Grizzly may, or may not have escaped. Fear of the latter, the proponents of the pragmatist interpretation allege, kept people’s minds off the former and united them in fear of the wild animal. Meanwhile the authorities more easily went about the business of confining people to quarantined locations, the populace was more willing than before to comply and the menace of smallpox was contained.
The majority of people today as then prefer the romantic story.
It was a very hard winter and the canal was frozen over for six weeks. Before the dual fright people were skating to their heart’s content though water-bound commercial traffic was brought to a halt.
The owners of the menagerie offered a reward for information leading to the re-capture of the escaped bear. Its roar was described as ‘more fearful than the storms that sweep the hills’ ………
Before long there are several sightings all over the area. This bear is covering a lot of ground, largely unseen. He is spotted by a resident close to Camlough Lake and fired upon with the owner’s Winchester rifle. The shot misses, the bear scales a six-foot fence, jumps into the lake and swims across to the opposite bank, from where he makes his way to Killeavy. He disappears again.
Mr M E Lockhart reports ‘two sheep killed and one badly injured’. William Henry laments the death of his retriever dog in suspicious circumstances. The domino effects kicks in as does a serious case of compensation!
The bear doubles back, skirts the lake and is next reported several miles away in Goraghwood. Constables McConnell and Smith of the RIC set off in pursuit, armed with Sniders. The hungry bear is now devouring dozens of geese, other poultry, lambs and assorted animals on the way. The next human sighting is by a breadman on the Dublin Road (yes, miles away again!). He quickly flees the scene. A sheriff’s posse with shotguns and graips sets out to the scene. The breadcart is found minus its pastry.
The whole country is alerted and excited. The local District Inspector receives a telegram from a Colonel of the Dragoon Guards at Newbridge, Co Kildare informing him of his imminent arrival with a hunting party to capture the bear. Would the recipient please arrange stabling for twenty horses?
The fearless bear strikes back by eating a donkey near Mullaghglass (yes, once again he has crossed the town!). The Board of Guardians of the Poor Union get wind (excuse me!) while assembled at their monthly meeting, that the bear has been spotted nearby in the pauper’s graveyard. Reinforced by a sizable number of townspeople, they adjourn there to surround the animal. He eludes them.
Next he is sighted in the town, but in the dead of night and from a distance. This hairdresser gives witness to her sighting in Newry’s Water Street ‘between 5.00 a.m. and 5.30 a.m. ‘to be exact”.
It’s not just the local newspapers that have a field-day, but even the Irish Times affords two columns to the story.
Two bargemen from Portadown eventually come upon the bear asleep on the canal’s towpath. Stealthily they creep up on him and secure his broken chain with a boat hook.
So ends the sensation of the Newry Bear.
Strangely neither they, nor the police, nor the newspapers produce photographic evidence of this happy conclusion.
The smallpox epidemic is contained.
As the newspaper magnate said, ‘When the story becomes a legend, print the legend.’
You got both!!
Bottle of Spirit
Ah, the power of the priest! There was a parish priest one time that lived in Dungooly but his church was in Urney.
Anyway in the course of his many duties, he had this once to perform an exorcism and he managed to isolate the evil spirit and trap him – as was the custom then – in a glass bottle. He secreted the bottle in a cupboard in the parochial house.
Anyway in the course of his many duties, he had this once to perform an exorcism and he managed to isolate the evil spirit and trap him – as was the custom then – in a glass bottle. He secreted the bottle in a cupboard in the parochial house.
Some years later he was transferred to Balbriggan and didn’t he forget about the spirit in the bottle. There was a young altar boy came one day and didn’t he take the bottle to play with? To make a long story short, he broke the bottle and the spirit escaped.
Well his parents knew what had happened and knew the danger. They sent for the new parish priest. The poor man had to sarch all through the fields to find the spirit and him praying all the time.
Despite all his powers it tuk him three hours to put that spirit back in the bottle, and the sweat running down his face the same as water flowing in a stream. This time the bottle was buried nearby in a very deep hole.
Pahvee: Value in Blankets
The Pahvee went on,
‘There was this woman, I sold her plenty of things times before and there was a long garden at the back of her house and I said to her,
‘Come down here a minute. I want to talk to you.’
Wren Boys and Mummers
We’d cover a townland a night, maybe thirty or forty houses.
The word would go round. They’d be watching you (expecting). We’d get a couple of bob a house. It was all walking – no bicycles! The craic on the road would be good. And we’d have our own music from the musicians.
The money was all put together and went to host the Mummers Dance. The Mummers themselves, the players, would get two or three bottles free at the dance. Nobody paid in.
You’d know your own rhyme but you’d pick up the others from listening to them.
Here comes I Doctor Brown
I’m the best wee doctor in the town
I cud cure all diseases that ever come out
The Hurdy-Gurdy and the Gout
I cud cure an oul’ woman wit’ her teeth hanging out
And if you don’t believe what I say
Here comes …. And he’ll clear the way.
Here comes I Diddley Doubt
The tail of me shirt is hanging out
I cud ate a pudding, I cud ate a pan
If I don’t get something I’ll ate a man
And if you…
Here comes I, the Last of the
I hope these wee fellas will not be forgot
We’ll have bottles of whiskey and barrels of beer
And we wish yous all a Happy Christmas
And a bright New Year.
Then the music ‘ud start, maybe an oul’ waltz. We’d pair off and dance around the kitchen floor. When we reached the dur, we’d dance out. Then it was the next pair.
‘I played Wee Dibbley Doubt,’ Peter McKeown of Dungooley explained. Though in his late eighties now he spoke easily of his mother and father as would one still in his youth.
‘There was nine or ten of us walking the roads. We’d be dressed in whatever garb we could find, hitched with straw ropes round the middle. If your face wasn’t blackened, you’d wear a false face. Sure I did it for years in me own house and devil the one knowed me. There was one time mammy had three cakes of bread cooling on the dresser. I lifted one and shoved it under me clothing.
Man, we had the grand feast down at the crossroads, and it still war-um!
I didn’t steal off none but me own, mind ye!
Then we might go into Cross(maglen) [about five-six miles away]. Takings was better there with more houses to visit. We might get