Analysis: Wonder tales transport the listener from the mundane world of day-to-day life to the marvellous sphere of the supernatural
In his book Passing the Time in Ballymenone: culture and history of an Ulster community, folklorist Henry Glassie writes that 'stories are narratives artfully ordered to do the serious work of entertainment, pleasing their listeners in the present, then carrying them into the future with something to think about'. As entertainment, stories feed and nurture us, offering a temporary escape from the humdrum of daily life and work routines, and creating a space in which belief can be suspended, and alternative ways of being imagined.
In Irish tradition, the entertainment value of a genre of stories known as scéalta iontais (wonder tales), or seanscéalta (old stories), was especially high, and these stories often held pride of place in the repertoire of the scéalaí (storyteller). A gifted member of the community, the scéalaí possessed the ability to perform these stories with requisite levels of skill and verbal artistry, to an audience who were themselves highly proficient in the art of listening to and scrutinising the traditional narratives handed down to them by their forebears.
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From RTÉ Archives, renowned storyteller Cáit 'An Bhab' Feiritéar from Dún Chaoin talks on Cúrsaí in March 1994 about her childhood, and growing up in a house where storytelling was the home entertainment of the day.
The Irish Folklore Commission was establised in 1935, and was reponsible for 'the collection, preservation, classification, study and exposition of all aspects of Irish folk traditions'. It was replaced by the Department of Irish Folklore in 1971 and incorporated into University College Dublin. The archives of the Irish Folklore Commission, including the Main Manuscript Collection and the Schools’ Collection, are now housed in the National Folklore Collection, an enormously important traditional archive currently being digitised as part of the Dúchas project.
Hundreds of wonder tales, in both Irish and in English, can be found in the ‘Tales of Magic’ section of the Folktale Index on Dúchas, where users can read and download scanned images of the original manuscripts in which the stories were recorded. It's an excellent place to start for anyone wishing to learn more about our storytelling tradition and the storytellers.
The index also provides an insight into the enormous popularity of wonder tales such as ‘The Dragon Slayer', 'The Youth Who Wanted to Learn what Fear Is’, and ‘Cinderella’ in Irish narrative tradition. Wonder tales transport the listener from the mundane world of day-to-day life to the marvellous sphere of the supernatural. Danish folklorist Bengt Holbek has said that the stories are 'escape fantasies in which wrongs were righted and the poor and powerless justly recognized for their true worth'.
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From RTÉ Archives, an elderly storyteller known as a seanchaí, tells the story of Jack Dinan from Fahy's Hill in County Clare whose young wife mysteriously disappeared. From a 1970 episode of Newsbeat
In these coming-of-age narratives, the trials and tribulations of puberty and the transition from childhood to adulthood are portrayed in symbolic form. The hero, acting as the listener’s representative within the storyworld, is faced with fearsome opponents and seemingly impossible tasks. He or she then gains success, which often takes the form of a beautiful suitor’s hand in marriage and enough material wealth to last them and their future children a lifetime.
The story usually ends with the promise of the happy and prosperous life (saol sona sócúlach) which lies ahead of the hero now that he or she has achieved independence as an adult, and affirmed his or her status as a legitimate member of the community. Many of these stories were popularised in Europe by the Grimm Brothers' Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales). Since first publication in Germany in 1812, the Grimms’ Fairy Tales have come to be regarded as the "classics" of this narrative genre, thanks in no small part to their reimagining in the animated films of Walt Disney from the 1920s on.
The contents of wonder tales are rooted in the living conditions of the storytellers and their audiences. Although many of them stem from international tale types, such as Cinderella, Snow White and The Dragon Slayer, they develop local characteristics when they are adapted into a particular community and cultural environment.
In an Irish context, the fairy godmother of Cinderella becomes a helpful animal such as a speckled bull (tarbh breac), a grey or black sheep (caora ghlas/dhubh), or a little grey cat (caitín gearra glas), who possesses magical qualities and who is usually identified as the hero's dead mother, in reincarnated form. It is not unusual in the Irish tradition for the central protagonist of 'Cinderella’ stories to be a young boy who escapes the cruel treatment of his leasmháthair (stepmother) and, with the magical assistance of the "speckled bull", becomes a valiant gaiscíoch (warrior) who performs awe-inspiring feats of prowess and gains the hand of a king or nobleman’s daughter in marriage.
In versions of Cinderella where a female hero plays the central role, storytellers often spin out the tale to greater length by incorporating episodes after the young woman's marriage, and challenges she must overcome after childbirth. A long and elaborate version entitled An Caitín Gearra Glas ('The Little Grey-Haired Cat’) was recorded from renowned Blasket Island storyteller Peig Sayers in 1932.
In the story, the hero, Móirín, gives birth to three children following her marriage to the king’s son. Móirín’s older sisters, however, motivated by their jealousy of Móirín’s happy marriage and her improved circumstances, throw each of her new-born children from a cliff and replace them with three young pups; they subsequently throw Móirín herself from the same cliff.
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From RTÉ Archives, Peig Sayers sings the traditional love song "Coinnleach Glas an Fhómhair" about a young man's sorrow when his sweetheart marries another man (1947)
The hero and her children are rescued by Móirín’s mother, who transformed herself into a cat many years previously, out of anger at her neglectful husband! Folklorist Patricia Lysaght notes that Peig’s devotion to, and feeling of loss for her own mother, are perhaps indicated in the concluding lines which state that the cat, on being disenchanted, ‘was a mother to Móirín for the rest of her life’.
In my own research, I am particularly interested in wonder tales such as An Caitín Gearra Glas which have been recorded from female storytellers in Gaeltacht areas in the northwest of Ireland. An interesting example from Donegal oral tradition is Leabhar, Mór agus Eibhlín, which is named after the three daughters of a king and queen who are forced to leave home following the death of their mother and the marriage of their father to a cruel stepmother.
An enchanted cat also features in this story, but the cat here is a king's son who Eibhlín, the hero, is tasked with disenchanting and whom she then marries. Following her marriage, Eibhlín’s jealous sisters attempt to kill her and her new-born baby by piercing their fingers with a biorán suain (sleeping pin). She and her baby are eventually revived by her husband’s new wife, whom he married when he believed Eibhlín and his child to be dead; the king’s son couldn’t bear to bury Eibhlín and her child following their apparent death, therefore he placed them upstairs in a cupboard which only he had access to.
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Ó RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta Sin an Saol, Nóra Frainc Chonaill ag cur síos ar mar a casadh a fear céile uirthi
Like Peig's story, Leabhar, Mór agus Eibhlín is a long and complex wonder tale in which themes and episodes from different stories are woven together to form an elaborate yet cohesive plot. It begins with the cruel stepmother episode, familiar to us from Cinderella. But it also has interesting parallels with a subtype of Snow White, which was distinct to Irish and Scottish tradition, where the young woman is rescued not by a "handsome prince", like in the Grimm’s Snow White, but by the second wife of her husband, who removes the sleeping pin from her finger and treats her with care and empathy following her resuscitation.
The story is particularly well known in the Ranafast Gaeltacht in Co Donegal, where it has been recorded on at least seven different occasions between 1936 and 2017. Some of the narrators were highly skilled female storytellers, such as Sorcha Mhic Grianna and Annie Bhán Mac Grianna, and contemporary storyteller Nóra Frainc Chonaill. These storytellers provide a rich, imaginative representation of Irish women’s experiences in their evocative and often emotional portrayal of the tale’s central characters and themes.
The wonder tales of Irish tradition are a worthwhile reminder that we have an enormous body of stories distinct to our own culture and language. These stories deserve to be read, told, and listened to and their possible significance and potential explored and reimagined by new generations of audiences.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
