Fairy Forts and Changelings

Episode 34- Fairy Forts and Changelings: How supernatural songs and stories stoke the soul
This Irish Music Stories episode aired October 8, 2019
https://shannonheatonmusic.com/episode-34-fairy-forts-and-changelings/

Transcript edited by Mark Johnson

Speakers, in order of appearance
>> Shannon Heaton: flute player, singer, composer, teacher, and host of Irish Music Stories 
>> Emily Smith: Multi award winning Scottish folk singer from Dumfries and Galloway
>> Martin Hayes: Acclaimed fiddle player from East County Clare who learned from his late father P. Joe Hayes 
>> Máirtín de Cógáin: Cork-born singer, dancer, bodhrán player, playwright, actor, and competition winning storyteller
>> Nigel Heaton: young announcer for Irish Music Stories, and co-producer of this story
>> Kathleen Cronie: Founder of Mostly Ghostly Tours in Dumfries & Galloway
>> John Hill: Co-host of Mostly Ghostly Tours in Dumfries & Galloway
>> Mary Wood: Co-host of Mostly Ghostly Tours in Dumfries & Galloway

_____

>> Shannon: Hi, Irish Music Stories listeners. It’s Shannon Heaton. THANK you for listening! This is the penultimate show for Season Three. And I hope to keep telling these big stories, through an Irish music and dance lens… 

… But I need your help. 

Because if you’re into traditional music and stories, chances are you have friends who are, too. If you could tell just ONE of those friends about this podcast, it would mean the world to me. Then I could get it out to a few more people. Donations also really help because the IMS production team is just me and my family. ANY support you can offer makes a big impact.

Thank you. And here’s to leaning on each other…. and NOT the fairies!

[ Music: “Edwin of the Lowlands Low,” from Tell You in Earnest

Artists: Matt & Shannon Heaton ]

The fairies. I’ve said it. And SOME people think it’s bad luck to call fairies by their name. They’ll say ‘the good people,’ or ‘the people of the hills.’

[ Music: “Waimea Rising” from Vignette
Artists/Composer: Maeve Gilchrist & Viktor Krauss ]

But whether you name them or not, the fairies, or the Sí are said to live in raths (circular dwellings or mounds made of dirt)…  or they live in cairns (mounds made of stone).

There are tons of interesting earthen mounds and structures in Ireland that people call ring forts or ‘fairy’ forts. There is both lighthearted and serious consideration of these sites… but the general consensus seems to be that meddling with them could lead to bad luck.

Fairy forts can be quite large (like 200 feet in diameter, maybe 16 feet high). And some are nestled deep inside the earth, with small ground-level entrances that can look a little like animal holes. So you imagine this cave with a small mouth, covered on the outside with brush and moss… you wouldn’t know what’s in there… unless you look inside. The superstitious would not look inside.

Year round, the superstitious tread carefully. Especially in the woods. And now as we come to big transitions, from one season to another, like May eve, or All Hallow’s Eve, the fairy-curious take special care and interest. 

This can bring a bit of fun—and maybe some magic—to kids, and the people around them.

When I was a kid, I saw a few creepy illustrations in old fairy tale books. But mostly, my view of the supernatural was of pretty little flying Tinkerbell.. and singing mermaids with sea creature band mates.

Same with Scotland-based singer Emily Smith:

>> Emily: I played with flower fairy dolls when I was little… that was my knowledge of fairies. They were the prettified. They do good. They live in the woodlands. It was only, um, when I went to study these ballads that you’re like, okay, there’s a different kind of Fairy.

There’s a lot of lore about these different kinds of fairies (these Leprechaun, or Luchrachaun, or wee people, or Sí).

And while there’s also plenty of modern analysis to explain away these tales, fiddle player Martin Hayes admits that beliefs about fairy folk still run deep:

>> Martin: I think that the fairies would be more than more of an academic curiosity now in terms of, like, the folklore and how people interacted with that. Although, you would still find a lot of resistance to running a road through what will be considered a fairy fort.

>> Shannon: My son Nigel knows about fairy forts. And it was he who noticed this unusual hole on the side of this rocky path in our local woods. Even though we were both sort of kidding (I mean, here we were in New England, thousands of miles away from Ireland), we still got the shivers when Nigel wondered, could our local hole in the woods be an entrance to a fairy fort.

I asked singer, storyteller, and Cork native Máirtín de Cógáin about it. 

>> Shannon: What if you’re walking along the woods? 

>> Máirtín: Yeah. 

>> Shannon: And you see this like, it’s a little round opening. …It doesn’t look like an animal den. I mean, could it go deeper in there?

>> Máirtín: It could. If you go to Rathcroghan in the county Roscommon, you would see the gates to the Underworld. And it’s exactly like you’re describing. That is where Halloween began.

>> Shannon: Hmm… okay. So, when I looked online at images of these archaeological sites in Roscommon that Máirtín had mentioned. I saw photos and videos of the opening to the Oweynagat, which means Cave of the Cats. It looked JUST like our local hole. 

This small entrance, on the side of a hill. There’s brush and moss all around it. You could imagine a little animal family scampering out of it to collect berries. You might assume it was just this small den.

But once you clear the opening to the Cave of the Cats, you’re in this stone great room. And off of that is a narrow tunnel: that’s the gateway to the underworld. 

Lore has it that the Cave of the Cats is particularly lively on the eve of Samhain AKA October 31st. Right around the corner.

Now, I’m not jumping to conclusions. I don’t think it’s likely that Ireland’s Gate to Hell has moved to my backyard in Medford, Massachusetts.

But since Máirtín mentioned it… and since I promise big stories in this podcast… and since I live in New England (where we DO have a history of witchcraft and Solstice reverence…) and since I have a brave and willing member of the Irish Music Stories team eager to co-produce an investigation, I’m going to try to learn whether there are any connections between fairy forts and neolithic monuments on Ireland’s Plains of Connacht and my own local Middlesex Fells Forest Preserve.

[ Music: “As the Crow Flies,” from Half Day Road

Artist/Composer: Liz Carroll ]

With my son Nigel by my side, and with stories and wisdom from Emily Smith, Máirtín de Cógáin, and Martin Hayes, I will (carefully) investigate stories, songs, and possible gateways to the Otherworld…

But before we delve into spectres and myths, Nigel and I want to thank this month’s very real sponsors:

>> Nigel: Thank you to Jonathan Duvick, Mark Haynes, Chris Murphy, David Vaughan, Brian Benscoter, Joe Garrett, Gerry Corr, and Art Costa

>> Shannon: Thank a lot folks. Now off we go. Out to examine the wilds of Bedford, MA. After this snack of graham crackers and milk

So, um, before we go out there in the woods, you know, fairies are also known as the “Good People”. That’s a good thing. They were one of the first tribes, apparently, to arrive in Ireland. A LOT of people have heard music and singing coming from fields where there are fairy forts. But they don’t see anybody singing. 

>> Nigel: Maybe the fairies are, like, hiding and singing.

>> Shannon: Hiding and singing in Ireland, maybe. I asked Nigel how they’d get over here.

>> Nigel: Maybe they have, like, large tunnels that go across the state…

>> Shannon: So you and I are gonna head into our local woods where we spotted what looks like a fairy fort. 

>> Nigel: Yep

>> Shannon: It’s small and it’s covered with, like, overgrown bushes, you know the one? It looks like a little den?

>> Nigel: Oh, yeah.

>> Shannon: Yeah. Here’s another thing: a fairy village is usually marked by a single tree, like a lone bush; I think it’s a hawthorne tree.

>> Nigel: What’s a hawthorne tree?

>> Shannon: Well, let’s google images of a hawthorne tree so we can see

>> Nigel: [says to google] “Pictures of hawthorne trees”

>> Shannon: Ooh, they’re pretty. Here, it says, hawthornes have dark-brown bark, flaking in scales typically grows to 10-20 feet in height, leaves are broad.

>> Nigel: Yeah

>> Shannon: So, if there’s a hawthorne tree near what we think is that fairy fort, do you have a wish you wanna make?

>> Nigel: Yeah

>> Shannon: Okay

[ Music: “Abbey Reel,” from Kitchen Session 2017

Artist: Matt Heaton ]

Shortly after planning my fairy-fort expedition with Nigel, fiddle player Martin Hayes was playing just down the road in Cambridge, Mass. I’ve heard Martin tell supernatural stories from County Clare, tales about tunes he plays and people he grew up with:

>> Martin: I have to admit here to not having personal knowledge of the fairies, not having encountered them myself. But… there were plenty of stories and people talking about it when I was growing up. And you know, there was talk of the Bean Si, there was talk of mysterious lights being seen at night when people died. Spells being cast and otherworldly reality that was out there in the pitch dark of night.

If you lived in the Irish countryside in winter, like you had very, very long, very, very dark nights. You might have to go out and close the hen house at nine o’clock. And it’s pitch black. 

>> Shannon: Yeah

>> Martin: And the hair is standing in the back of your head, you know, cause you’ve heard like 500 of these stories, you know, right.

[ Music: Tune: “Lilting Banshee,” from The Otherworld – Music And Song From The Irish Tradition

Artist: Robert Harvey ]

There was always a granule of truth mixed through them. Like some of the stories had like,some believable aspects of accurate, true elements. And then like, this fairy would be snuck in the side. And it was like absolutely terrorizing then, you know?

>> Shannon: So, entertainment?

>> Martin: That, and also allowing for some possibility around this. I mean on one hand that, you know, they’re going to, to mass, they’re going to church, they’re asked to believe in supernatural things already. And so why shouldn’t there be all the supernatural things. And uh, you know, maybe the supernatural world has all kinds of, uh, ways of manifesting itself. So people weren’t absolutely sure that there wasn’t another elemental side, you know, some people would have less faith in that possibility. But there, I think they were actually good many people who believed it, too.

>> Shannon: Hedging a little bit?

>> Martin: Hedging, yeah. You know, when you’re talking about leprechauns and the Pooka and the banshee and whatnot, you go God almighty, maybe some of this is actually true, you know? Well, you could be pretty sure none of it was true in the daylight hours. But when it got dark and you were alone on a country road, you might wonder. 

[ Music: “As I Roved Out,” from Crossroads

Artists: Máirtín O’Connor, Seamie O’Dowd & Cathal Hayden ]

>> Shannon: Yeah. So definitely a rural pursuit.

>> Martin: I think so. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

>> Shannon: And in the cities, would you have people believing these strange stories as much?

>> Martin: Uh, no. I suppose they probably had their haunted houses and whatnot. That kind of thing. 

>> Shannon: Right, you need to kind of up the ante if you’re in a bigger city?

>> Martin: You could definitely go for the haunted house there, you know.

>> Shannon: Higher production values? 

>> Martin: Yeah, many more of them available to be haunted.

>> Shannon: Yeah, right. Haha.

There are a lot of Irish people living in the states. Do you think the fairies exist here? have they come over along with Irish people? Has the lore?

>> Martin: I grew up not far from where Biddy Early came from, so people were very superstitious about otherworldly powers and witchcraft. I read some books over here and saw how she’s interpreted as a healing woman, as a herbalist, as a clairvoyant, as a positive force. …

>> Shannon: Biddy Early was an eccentric 19th-century hippie. She was really into herbal cures and holistic healing. And when she wasn’t sharing salves and potions with her neighbors, people said she “talked to the fairies.” The Catholic church thought she was weird and accused her of witchcraft. 

In the States there are bars and chicken wings named after her. But also, there’s reverence and support for Biddy Early. And the good she brought to the world.

>> Martin: I wouldn’t be fully aware of the kind of level of folklore that takes place in the Irish-American homes, but I’m sure there must be some bit of it, but when a society develops into a kind of a more modern, you know, kind of society where like people are less likely to sit around the fireplace story telling now. They’re much more likely to be, you know, browsing Facebook and doing Netflix and ordering pizza in, you know?

Some of the tunes I play are actually connected to some of these stories. And I tell these stories because… one has to become open and available to accept, um, inspired thoughts and ideas that are coming from an imaginative source that.. almost any creative artists can tell you, they don’t really know the source of it. And many a composer of tunes would say that the tune came to them. It’s not that different from saying I got the tune from the fairies. 

[ Music: “Port Na Bpucai,” from Live In Seattle

Artists: Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill ]

>> Shannon: So for Martin, maybe the fairies are a metaphor for the super-imaginitive world and also sharing these stories is one way one way that he invites people in and sets the stage for an audience, just like his mentors did for him:

>> Martin: The way I learned to play music was kind of like how my father learned, and how the people before him learned. And ,so, like, there were no workshops nor classes. There was no, um, there wasn’t even information on how to hold the bow or even tune the fiddle… and so you just did your best to imitate. But HOW you played the fiddle, how you got INSIDE it, that was… you were going to have to figure that out. 

But what was available of course… was lots of anecdotal information. ‘Cause tradition was really feeling, like it had very little to do with the kind of triplets you played or the technical elements of how you delivered it. It’s all to do with carrying that kind of spirit and feeling.

>> Shannon: Well and maybe when you’re learning Irish music, a way to feel and understand deep feeling might be through this story about a fairy?

>> Martin: That’s precisely what it was about, you know. It was about casting that mood. For example, Junior Crehan was a fiddle player that was all about mood and feeling. And his way of playing the Mist-Covered mountain. Like you could FEEL that mist. You could feel that low clouded day. That heathery mountain. You could, you could have a sense of what the feeling of that environment and experience was….

[ Music: “Mist Covered Mountain,” from Martin Hayes

Artist: Martin Hayes ]

>> Martin: The stories around those tunes and, and just the way of life of those people was indicative of something, you know?

>> Shannon: Hm. Indicative of being human? Of tapping into nature and vulnerability? Of expressing deep feeling without talking? Of being open to supernatural assistance. Or just a little more magic…

Of gazing OUT into the stars (or the unknown hole in your local forest preserve)?

[ Music: “The Wee Folks Thimble,” from Living Room

Composer: Tommy Peoples

Artists: Matt & Shannon Heaton ]

Fairy tales surrounded Martin as he learned his music. Supernatural stories primed his imagination, and gave his music context. Same with many musicians, including fiddle player and composer Tommy Peoples. This is his tune, the Wee Folks Thimble. Because even the Sí need to stitch their britches…

Singer Emily Smith comes from Dumfries and Galloway, on the West side of the bottom half of Scotland. Her region is also rich in ghostly songs and stories. 

>> Shannon: I think in this particular area there’s a lot of lore, there are a lot of songs.

>> Emily: Mm hm. Mythical, supernatural stuff.

>> Shannon: Why do you think all of these magical mystical themes resonated with people so much?

>> Emily: It’s hard to know. I think at the point of when they were written. I’d love, love to be able to travel back in time and see who did write them. And how did they come about? You know, back in those days there was a huge amount of superstition. And if you, if you didn’t fit in with the crowd, there was something about you….  and I guess I wonder if that was the starting point for a lot of these stories, that somebody just did something that was a little bit suspicious. Were they a witch? Were they a wizard? Were they, you know, summoning up dark forces. I don’t know. And then some of them were probably true stories relating to a murder that would happen. But then ghosts of those murdered people would come and revisit the living. And you know, I wonder if that was sort of the starting point.

[ Music: “Hometown Lullaby,” from Production Music Made for Irish Music Stories

Artist/Composer: Matt Heaton ]

>> Shannon: Another starting point for a creepy ballad? The murky forests and wooded paths in the Lowlands of Scotland. After just a few weeks of kicking around the Lowther Hills, I feel like I could write a fairy tale or two.

We’ve done some walking around castles and beautiful wood paths this week. And there are moments where little stone-surrounded holes…. I don’t know… I dunno that I would want to peer inside.

>> Emily: No, I think, yeah, I think there’s lots of different levels you can live in the world. And um, it’s easy to explain things away if you want to. But if you wanted to dig deeper, I have too vivid an imagination that I don’t like to go there personally. I like to read the songs, sing the songs. I don’t really want to be in a wood in the middle of the night just to wait and see if we can see some fairies.

[ Music: “The Quiet Glen,” from The Quiet Glen

Artist: Tommy Peoples ]

People walked for miles and miles a day and they would know the details of every roadside, every verge, every path across a field. And they would see the changes. If there was like a little fairy house or whatever, they would clock it. If something had changed in the landscape, which nowadays what? Maybe a gamekeeper, a farmer would be as in touch with the land and their surroundings? Most people are, I think, really detached.

>> Shannon: We don’t even always notice ominous weather coming.

>> Emily: Yeah. We’re just kind of living with our heads down a lot of the time these days, I think. But those days I think people just took their time. They had to see a number of things that had to happen in a day. And as I say, they walked for miles, miles. And they would have the time to ponder these stories, sing through them in their head, maybe tell them to a pal as they walked along. And, you know, keeping all these traditions alive.

[ MUSIC: “The Wife of Usher’s Well,” from Fairest Floo’er

Artist: Karine Polwart ]

You get sort of recurring themes through a lot of them, like “The Wife of Usher’s Well” where she’s visited by her three sons who have actually died. It’s her way of actually dealing with the grief.

… the symbol of the cock crowing in the morning. And there’s a bit where the “the channerin worm doth chide,” you know, the worm in the earth. You know, that was like a real symbol that these sons were dead, that they were ghosts.

>> Shannon: These are just a few verses of Karine Polwart’s version of “The Wife of Usher’s Well”. She recorded it on the 2007 album, “The Fairest Floo’er”.

>> Emily: I think there’s a lot to be taken from these songs. And often they are just stories sung. And you get the ones where they’ve gone into the sea as well. It’s a similar thing. The person on the land wants to claim them back. Or they’re visiting from the sea world, I guess, and they change form to come onto the land. And then they go back to that supernatural world. So that’s the sort of similar thing to being taken to the underworld of the fairies. 

[ Music: “Queen of the Fairies,” from Macmath: The Silent Page

Artist: The Macmath Collective ]

>> Shannon: How does it hit you, some of those supernatural stories?

>> Emily: On first read of the texts, you’d be like, all right, I get that story. But then there, there are lots of symbols that if you search back in history, that’s why that’s in there. 

>> Shannon: So symbols in the songs of things that had meaning for people at the time?

>> Emily: At the time, yeah.

>> Shannon: … as a way to offer comfort or explain why something strange is happening?

>> Emily: I guess so. If you think of the world that they had back then, you know, you didn’t have the Internet for starters. The printed page even. You know, people had a lot of stuff that they would just have to pluck out of the air to reason with. Why did things happen? What was happening? Did they know about the rest of the world? People didn’t travel that far. So just within communities they would have their own way of dealing with stuff, I suppose. And a lot of that went into song and stories and, you know, folk song.

>> Shannon: So why do you think some of those fears have died out? Because, of course, we still have those creepy moments in today.

>> Emily: We do. But I don’t think anywhere near what they would’ve had.

>> Shannon: Because of electricity?

>> Emily: We have electricity for one. Yeah, as soon as you’ve got light, you’re nowhere as half as scared of anything, are you? The explanation of so many things, why things occur. You know, the writing point of a lot of these old songs, they wouldn’t have had, you know, anywhere near the understanding of the world in general that we have now. 

But a lot of these songs were the songs of the people of the countryside. And you know, the living folk and how they passed their knowledge around. And I’m not belittling anything that they wrote. I think they would have a lot of really USEFUL knowledge that we no longer have. And I wish we had held onto a lot of those things.

>> Shannon: So do you remember as a child hearing any of this?

>> Emily: I played with flower fairy dolls when I was little. … That was my experience of Fairies.

>> Shannon: Yeah, so you’re not talking about Tinkerbell cute, little pretty, fairies…

>> Emily: No. These are sinister little beings. And I’m not sure they would necessarily be little either. They would be human size, I suppose. There’s a sinister side and a very mischievous side to them. 

>> Shannon: Emily sings a song called the Queen of the Fairies. And she got this version from William McMath, who collected songs around Dumfries and Galloway. In the song, a woman’s lover is stolen by the fairies.

>> Emily: So you get a lot of ballads where they’re taken to the fairy kingdom underground. And only every several years… I can’t remember if it’s like every seven years, or every… it’s a number of years…  he’ll return to the surface to our world, the earthly world. And she takes her chance to steal him back. So she’s advised. And she pulls him from his horse and she holds him tight while he changed to be a snake, to be something else, and then eventually he turns into manly flesh. And she’s won him back and she can take him home.

[ Music: “Queen of the Fairies,” from Macmath: The Silent Page

Artist: The Macmath Collective ]

>> Shannon: This is not the full song. The exciting conclusion is on the McMath Collectives album, “The Silent Page”. I wondered, as Emily takes songs like these and brings them from books back into singing circulation, what she thinks about the relationship with these older supernatural songs to religion? Like, are these pagan songs?

>> Emily: Yeah. I don’t know. I guess they probably would be. I wonder… whether they would sing these songs to put in place, explain away any sinister goings-on. It’s kind of easier maybe also to say, oh, it’s the fairies rather than it’s the devil, you know. That’s a kind of easier pill to swallow.

But people did used to believe that, you know. They had a belief in that sort of supernatural side of things. And some people still do I suppose, don’t they? Like today, a really successful group down here in Dumfries and Galloway, they’re called Mostly Ghostly, and they take you on tours and tell you old stories of what happened. We’ve got plenty of history around here and historical buildings. And it just brings it more to life I think if you can physically be in the place where that event happened.

>> Shannon: Of course we paused the recording immediately and made a reservation for a MOSTLY GHOSTLY TOUR the very next day. 

And once we’d booked our social calendar, made a cup of tea, and checked in our kids, who were in a post-playground coma watching Pokemon. Hmm… 

I wondered how.. or IF these old songs and stories still work for our kids today…

>> Emily: Maybe? I dunno, I mean, yeah I can imagine children, you know, before they didn’t have the telly, they didn’t have a radio. Or maybe you didn’t even have a book in the house. So their greatest delight might have been hearing these stories. Somebody singing them or telling them at the fireside to spark their imagination. Yeah, they probably were.

And also, you know, kids, they do love a bit of drama. So they would be giving them the full force of the story. They probably didn’t censor out and make it all pretty and put it in a pink book with some glittery fairy wings on the front, you know. They would… I don’t think people held back as much about scaring children. Because you needed to be taught about danger and dark things that can happen in the world. 

And I think nowadays we probably want to protect our children from that for as long as possible. But, as we know, that darkness is very much real. 

They love these stories! Don’t they? When there’s a bit more of a dubious subject matter in a story… Is the Easter bunny real mommy? But you know, they want to believe in these things. As you do as a child. You want to believe in magic. You want to believe in stuff that isn’t just your everyday black and white, you know, straightforward stuff. So it’d be nice cause I think it really sparks their imagination.

>> Shannon: Yeah. And maybe not just for kids. 

>> Emily: No. Yeah…

>> Shannon: Maybe we all want to believe in a bit of magic.

>> Emily:  It’d be nice. Yeah.

[ Music: “The Lone Bush,” from As it happened

Artists: Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh & Danny O Mahony]

>> Shannon: The next morning, it was bright and clear. Not murky and shadowy. Not rainy. Which was its own kind of incongruous creepy, since we were heading into a Mostly Ghostly tour of The Crichton, established as a psychiatric hospital in 1838 by Elizabeth Crichton

>> Kathleen: How are you, are you enjoying this fine day? 

>> Shannon: There were about 13 of us… a lucky coven of visitors, ready to tour the magnificent Crichton Hall. Our hosts, Kathleen and John, thought maybe Mrs. Crighton would be the best person to show us around… even though she died in 1862…

>> Kathleen: I don’t know if she would probably make an appearance for us today? 

>> John: I don’t think she’ll do that.

>> Kathleen: She might just.

But, ehm, it would be nice if she did. Should we maybe see if maybe by collectively asking whether Mrs. Crighton might appear for us?

>> John: It’s a bit of a long shot, that, I don’t think…

>> Kathleen: How exactly do we do this? Alright…

>> John: Are you serious?

>> Kathleen: Yeah, I’m serious, yeah. “Mrs Crighton are you here, right, 1234…”

>> All: Mrs Crichton are you here??

>> John: No. Huh? Who’s that?

>> Mary (on the side of the path, channeling Elizabeth Crichton): Who are you all?? I’m Elizabeth Crichton. And I was born in 1779.

[ Music: As I Roved Out reprise ]

>> Shannon: In addition to conjuring up the Elizabeth Crichton, who told us how she came to found The Crighton Royal Hospital, we also heard some eerie tales. Like the one about this guy Brian who had worked at Maxwell House on the Crighton estate.

>> Kathleen: “He had worked here, as a nurse, he trained in the late 60s. And he used to work upstairs. And when he was on his break, he would maybe, he would hear these footsteps. And it wouldn’a just be just once or twice. It would be regular. And then a CLICK, strange sort of clicking sound that would follow the footsteps. This really puzzled him.

>> Shannon: So this employee decides to sneak down to investigate the clicking:

>> Kathleen: And his heart just beat that little bit faster in his chest as he went down these stairs

>> Shannon: But downstairs there were no footsteps. There was no clicking. There was no one there. Curious. And frustrating for old Brian. So he dug a bit deeper. He spoke to the nursing staff, and he asked if anybody had any ideas. Several people mentioned a patient who had loved snooker: 

>> Kathleen: There was an older man used to enjoying playing down there. There was a big snooker table. And this patient loved snooker. He would be in there for hours, every day. Very skilled game, snooker, isn’t it? And that was his passion in life.

Could the footsteps have maybe been a sound of the past? Was the click the sound of the balls, maybe, knocking each other when being hit by the cue? You will all have your own ideas, folks. We’re not here to tell you that ghosts exist. But we certainly found it a lovely story. And it makes you wonder if some of these things can echo from the past.

>> Shannon: From sunny Scotland back home to Medford, Massachusetts, where it was chilly and drizzly. As Nigel and I grabbed our raincoats, I wondered: was it ridiculous for fairies from across the ocean to end up in our back yard? Only one way to find out.

So, off we went, into the mist, with a plastic bag over the handheld recorder.

[ Music: “As the Crow Flies,” from Half Day Road

Artist: Liz Carroll]

>> Shannon: How are we gonna know if it’s a fairy fort or not? See if there’s a tree nearby? Yeah, if there is one, are you gonna make a wish?

>> Nigel: Um, yeah! 

>> Shannon: Here we go! 

I think we’re close. 

We kept an eye out… we walked quite a ways. So I was wondering if we had missed it. Maybe it was just a little animal hole after all…

Look! There it is! 

>> Nigel: That’s NOT an animal den.

>> Shannon: We didn’t miss it. But we kept a respectful distance. 

A few days later I was in North Carolina and I told singer and storyteller Máirtín de Cuigan about the woods walk. What do we think about the fact that thunder began rolling as soon as we started our talk…

This is perfect. We’ve got a thunderstorm RAGING!

>> Maritin: There goes the swim

>> Shannon: Well, maybe not. Yeah, the rain is kicking up, the thunder is starting, just in time for our chat about ghostly songs… and fairy songs.

>> Máirtín: We’re here, ladies and gentlemen… at the Swannanoa Gathering Celtic Week in North Carolina. Just outside of Asheville.

>> Shannon: That’s right. Are there fairies in Asheville?

>> Máirtín: You betcha

>> Shannon: So do you think now these fairy folk, could they make their way to Boston?

>> Máirtín: Yeah, so, there was a big wind, January, 1833, they call The Big Wind and they say the Sí Gaoth is what the fairies move on. They move on this wind that comes without a cloud. It’s like a mini tornado that knocks people over.

And they reckon that they all left–or most of the fairies left–in The Big Wind of 1833. And that’s why the famine was so bad. Cause the fairies weren’t there to protect us. But I say they came back in The Big Wind January 6th, 2008? The big wind. It took the roof off Kent station, the train station in Cork. And I think the fairies are back to save us.

>> Shannon: So you think some of them maybe made their way over to New England? 

>> Máirtín: Yeah. 

>> Shannon: So if we encountered in Medford, Massachusetts, this old little hole… Well, my son discovered it and he and I are making this episode together to just kind of figure out..

>> Máirtín: Oh, fantastic!

>> Shannon: He has a theory that maybe the fairies could have tunneled through to get from Ireland.

>> Máirtín: It’d be a long walk, wouldn’t it?

>> Shannon: It would, but what’s the hurry?

>> Máirtín: What’s the hurry? 

>> Shannon: Yeah. 

>> Máirtín: Yeah. It’s very good. I like it. But sure, they’re magic. Why would they have to walk?

>> Shannon: There’s that. 

>> Máirtín: Yeah

>> Shannon: So the fairies… they can give you stuff. 

>> Máirtín: Yeah. 

>> Shannon: They can grant you wishes. 

>> Máirtín: Yeah. 

>> Shannon: And they can taketh away. 

>> Máirtín: Yeah. 

>> Shannon: So… what do you say? Are they good guys?

>> Máirtín: Well, I mean, there’s a lot of, this does a lot to be said about the, the si, the fairy folk, the wee people, the Leprechaun, the Luchrachaun, the Luchorpán, the small-bodied. Who believes in them? I dunno. 

BUT I will tell you this, during the height of the Celtic tiger, when Ireland was in a boom, there was no turning back from the amount of money that people were spending. The richest man in Ireland by the name Sean Quinn was worth 2 billion euro. 

>> Shannon: In fact, Nigel knows this story. Because unlike children from the past, who would walk miles every day, he has travelled the internet for Irish fairy lore. I asked him to share the Sean Quinn story around the dinner table one night:

>> Nigel: Yup, this one really rich dude, he was the richest person in Ireland…

>> Matt: Okay…

>> Nigel: … he had moved this tomb-looking fairy-fort thing

>> Shannon: It was 4000 years old, and he moved it.

>> Nigel: Yeah

>> Matt: Good, yeah, okay… obviously, he’s not seen “Poltergeist”

>> Nigel: Later… 

>> Matt: Yeah?

>> Shannon: Like just a few years later…

>> Nigel: He got bankrupt… he got bankrupt in 2012 but it was 2008 when he moved the 4000-year-old thing

>> Matt: So that’s REALLY recent

>> Shannon: Back in North Carolina, Máirtín told me another fairly recent tale:

>> Máirtín:  Another story for you. Right? 2004, things are going great. They’re building the Ennis Bypass, right? Just around Drummond Castle there. And Eddie Lenahan sees that they’re going to knock down a whitethorn tree and starts roaring about us. The New York Times put it on the paper. The world starts to talk. 

They say, well, what difference does it make with a whitethorn tree? 

He says, you knock that Whitethorn tree, there’ll be a lot of crashes on this road. 

Ah, go ‘way all that! 

He says, well, can you explain all the crashes on the road over in the west of Ireland where they knocked the other whitethorn tree on a straight road and they’re having lots of crashes? You explain that. 

Well, I tell you what, Shannon, in the modern era of Ireland, 2004, they turned the road about 60 yards. It costs 400,000 euro to turn it. And they saved the tree. Nobody believes in fairies… Believe it, if you like

>> Shannon: Are there fun fairy stories?

>> Máirtín: There are fun fairy stories. But uh, people should be very careful, cause they think that fairies are fun. But there was a great collector of fairy stories called Thomas Crafton Kroger who was an Antiquarian from Cork. 

So he went at the age of 14 in the early part of the 19th century collecting stories. Can you imagine that? Going off on his own? And uh, he wrote a lot of fairy lore that would have been stripped of Ireland from the famine. And he got a couple of good ones from my town of Carrigaline. Do you want me to tell you one, right?

>> Shannon: Sure…

>> Máirtín:  Well, there’s one… If you go to Cork now, Shannon, as you’re passing Monkstown going into Passage West, there just on the hillside is what’s called the Giant Steps. 

If you keep going up the river in towards Rochestown, there’s a big house there on the left-hand side of the road going in towards town, with “Ronan” on the chimney still today. And they had a boy who was seven years of age, Phillip Ronan, who was stolen away. On the missing list! How frightful is that for parents, right? Stolen away. Gone. Turns out he was stolen by the giant Mahon McMahon, who lived inside the hillside. He was a great blacksmith and he stole children–they were all seven years of age–and kept them as his servants. Page boys and apprentices for seven years. And then they had to try and make their escape. 

Well after seven years there, Shannon, there was a blacksmith in Carrigaline by the name of Robin Kelly. And he had a dream where Phillip Ronan came riding in on a horse and said, I’m Philip Ronan. I am from Rochestown, and you need to save me. I’m in Mahon McMahon’s castle, deep in the dungeon, working as a blacksmith for him. My time is up. And you must come and save me the next night of a full moon. If you go around to the giant steps at the stroke of midnight, an opening will be there, but only for a short time.

He says, is this a dream? And he got the horse to rear up and font him in the head with his hoof. And Robin woke up in the morning and tried to find a bit of a glass mirror. And he could see the imprint of the hoof for the horse fading from his crown. 

Well, the next night of a full moon, he got a friend to help him. They got a small boat. And they went out. They were waiting and waiting by the giant steps, for they knew where it was for it was all part of the local lore. And he said, ah, what was I doing bringing you out here on a boat? This is only a joke, for God’s sake. 

And the man said, well, ‘tis hardly midnight yet. We came out a bit early maybe. They were waiting a bit longer. And the boat man started to get impatient. Robin started to get impatient. And just as they were about to turn away, at the side of the hill, they saw light. They rowed up towards it. And he grabbed the crowbar, which he brought with him for protection. And walked in to the hillside. 

And as he walked in, down a narrow stone passageway, he saw an opening of light. And inside that was a stone table. And giants sitting around the table. And one of the giants at the top, his beard was after growing down so much that it had weaved into the concrete at the table. And he crept in a bit longer. And as he did, he stepped and made a sound. And the giant man Mahon McMahon woke. And with a big guffaw of laughter, his bead broke away from the table sending stone to every corner. 

“Hahaha. Who have we here?” 

And he said, I’m Robin Kelly, I’m here for the boy Phillip Ronan. His seven years’ apprenticeship is up and it’s my time to take him away.

“Come on in,” he said. “If you can pick him out, he’s yours.” Put out his hand and said ‘tis lovely to have you, you have my welcome. 

Now Robert Kelly saw the size of the hand. He was no fool. So he put the crowbar into the hand and if he did the giant crushed it liked it was a small bit of a twig from the forest. 

“Aha!”, said the giant, said, you’re a gas, man. Come on in here till I show you. And he brought him in and showed him the castle, and showed him the beautiful smith work that he was doing. And Robin, being a blacksmith, was able to compare his style to the giant’s. They got on fairly well. 

When they went down to the giant, there was hundreds of boys below there in dim light, all wearing the same clothes, all seven years of age. He said, pick out your Philip. But if you pick the wrong one, then you stay as well! 

So he had one choice to make, right? And it’s in that moment, whatever he said, he made the boys laugh. And all the boys laughed a big guffaw. But when they did, Phillip yelled out “Robin, I’m over here!”

And when the laughter died down, Robin went over to Phillip, put his hand to the shoulder, and said, this is the boy Ronan. And the giant let out a roar. Raised his hand in anger and said “Ah!!” 

And with that, it all went dark. And Robin found himself outside, with the sun shining. And young Phillip Ronan next to him. He brought him up to the house. And they were enamored to see a young boy come to the house again. And they checked the upper shoulder of his back to see was the birthmark on him. And there it was. Their Philip was returned. But he was gone for seven years. He still looked like a seven-year-old boy. 

No one in the parish really believed Robin, that he had found their child. That he was already fooling the rich people from the big house. But he knew. And the family knew. And Phillip knew.

>> Shannon: So a child who goes missing, or who dies… Maybe for the parents and the community, a story about an evil giant who’s outwitted… maybe it offers an explanation. Or it fills the gap. Or it offers some hope… or lightness.

>> Máirtín: Is there the sense of how do we deal with that by making their spirits still around with us? Is that what happens? Like, is there a lot of, kind of, infant mortality that, you know, in the minds of the parents, that that child still lives in another realm. Was he taken away? And there’s a lot of that, especially as you’re coming into the 18th, 19th century Ireland when infant mortality was high. That the fairies would steal away the child. The child was stolen away, right?

Going further with that again, sometimes the fairies would leave a child after them. A fairy child, a wizened child that won’t go strong, can’t look you in the eye, doesn’t know how to talk. But after hearing the uilleann pipes once can pick them up and play ‘em. Is that what we might call someone that might be on the high end of the spectrum today? You know what I mean?

There is a lot of stories, then, about the fertile woman stolen away by the fairies into the other realm. And leaving this woman who is, you know, not herself, can’t get on with life, sometimes wants to kill the child. Which might be seen as post-partum depression in the days of today.

You know, life is very difficult. And childbirth, you know yourself, is very trying. And both parents might be exhausted. You know. Post-partum depression happens to many women. That nobody wants to talk about. And if you don’t TALK about these things in society when it comes up that you don’t think it’s real, then you have to go into the unreal. 

>> Shannon: Fairy tale punchlines are often stark and have universal reach. And they’re usually much deeper AND simpler than you might grab at first.

[ Music: “The Wolf/The Duck,” from On the Offbeat

Artist/Composer: Liz Carroll]

>> Máirtín: Take the three little pigs, right? They’re the same person. They’re YOU, the child. Are you going to be the child that doesn’t put away their toys, just goes and plays at the next thing? When you come back, the room is a mess and you never get anything done. You don’t know where anything is. It’s just a mess. But you’re playing and is the playing any fun? Or are you going to be the child that half puts away your toys and half does your homework and goes away and plays, you know? And when you come back, you’re still only getting a C+ or a B. Or are you going to be the child that puts away all their toys, does all their homework, gets the A and buys their own house that their brothers live in?

That’s your choice in life with the three little pigs, you know. Cause either way the wolf is coming and the first two are not going to survive, you know? So as a child, if you can just work at the start and get your homework done and put your toys away, then you can play all you want after that. Right? 

Einstein said, if you want an intelligent child, tell them fairy stories. And if you want a very intelligent child, tell them MORE fairy stories. 

Well, the fairy stories, like, they talk about the impossible, you know, not of this realm. Like Star Trek had this flip phone that you could talk, face-time with the mothership, right? That’s a CRAZY idea in the 60s and 70s, and look at it today. My son says–he’s six–he has a question and I say, Oh, I don’t know the answer. He says, ask Siri!

>> Shannon: Siri might be a fairy!

>> Máirtín: There you were, You never know. 

>> Shannon: Sídhe…

>> Máirtín: Yeah, Sír E! WOW! Aos sídhe…

>> Shannon: Back to our own Si Folk project in Medford. Did we find a fairy fort? Or was it just an animal den?

[ Music: “As the Crow Flies,” from Half Day Road

Artist: Liz Carroll]

>> Shannon: See that tree over there? See that one over there? Against the water?

>> Nigel: Look, there’s a small path there!

>> Shannon: You take the small path. Careful with all the moss.

So Nigel leads the way. And the little path ends at this tree… with dark brown flaky bark… about 15 feet tall… with big brown leaves.

>> Nigel: So do I, like, kneel or something?

>> Shannon: Sure, why not, huh?

>> Nigel: Yep.

>> Shannon: Made your wish?

>> Nigel: Well?

>> Shannon: I think maybe we came upon a fairy fort.

>> Nigel: Prob’ly

>> Shannon: Yeah.

>> Nigel: That’s my guess

>> Shannon: Back at home, Nigel and I reported our adventures to Matt Heaton—father, husband, guitarist, and composer of Irish Music Stories production music:

>> Matt: Where’d you go this afternoon?

>> Nigel: We looked at a fairy fort.

>> Matt: What? Where?

>> Nigel: Mmm, at Wright’s Pond.

>> Matt: Really, just across the street in Medford?

>> Nigel: Yeah. It was, like, all overgrown, and if it WAS an animal den, it would be abandoned for, like, a long time. 

>> Shannon: There was a cool tree nearby.

>> Nigel: Um, I wished with it.

>> Matt: You made a wish with the tree?

>> Nigel: Yeah, I, like, kneeled down, closed my eyes, wished for it. And later, I actually GOT it. I got what I wished for.

>> Matt: You got your wish, like, the same day?

>> Nigel: Yeah! Just a couple of hours later!

>> Matt: Whoa

>> Shannon: So: wish granted. But for the record, we didn’t get too close. Just in case it was a small opening of a much larger cave, like the Cave of the Cats in County Roscommon. It’d be a real party foul to unleash triple-headed monsters, scary red birds, and evil pigs on Hallowe’en night, in all fairness.

Nope, for now, this story has a happy ending. 

But Hallowe’en is just around the corner…

[ Music: “Awakening,” from Raven

Artists: John Williams & Dean Magraw ]

 

Irish Music Stories was written and produced by me, Shannon Heaton. Special thanks to Nigel Heaton for co-producing this episode. Thank you to Matt Heaton for the production music and Carol Zall for script editing.

Thanks again to Jonathan Duvick, Mark Haynes, Chris Murphy, David Vaughan, Brian Benscoter, Joe Garrett, and Gerry Corr for underwriting this month’s show. 

If you can kick in, there’s a donate button at IrishMusicStories.org. Every little bit helps. And if you can share news of this podcast with a friend, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening, everybody!

OUTTAKE

>> Shannon: So… are the fairies real?

>> Máirtín: ‘Course nobody in Ireland believes in the fairies… but we all know they’re there…

>> Shannon: So… are the fairies real?

>> Emily: Well, who am I to, to say? I’ve never seen any evidence of any. But sometimes things happen and you don’t know…

>> Shannon: So… are the fairies real?

>> Martin: That’s a good question, I mean, I don’t have direct immediate experience and I cannot verify personally, it’s just a question of faith…