Part 27

Among the low Irish it is believed that (as the nympholepts of old who had looked upon Pan, sealed an early doom), the paralytic is fairy-struck; and superstition has inspired them with a belief in the influence of the evil eye or glamourie, especially in the vicinity of Blackwater.

I remember, when our wanderings among the Wicklow mountains led us through the dark glen of the Dargle, the implicit faith of the Irish women in the charm of amulets and talismans. Like the fabled glance of the basilisk, the evil eye is bestowed on some unhappy beings from their very birth; nay, the spell infests the cabin in which they herd. To avert this fatal influence from the children, a charm is suspended around their necks, which when blessed by the priest is called a “gospel.”

When a happy or evil star shines at a birth, it is the eye of a cherub or a demon, smiling or frowning on the destiny of the babe; and when happiness or misery predominates in a life, it is a minister of good or ill that blesses or inflicts. There is one beautiful scrap of this mythology—the thrill of holy joy which the Irish mother feels when her infant smiles in its sleep; for she knows it is a holy angel whispering in its ear.

In our own island they are often celebrated as the very pinks of hospitality.

In Cornish history, we read how Anne Jeffries was fed for six months by the small green people. And in yonder forest of Dean, (as writeth Gervase, the Imperial Chancellor, in his “Otia Imperialia,”) “In a grovy lawn there is a little mount, rising in a point to the height of a man, on which knights and other hunters are used to ascend, when fatigued with heat and thirst, to seek some relief for their wants. The nature of the place and of the business is, however, such, that whoever ascends the mount must leave his companions and go quite alone. When alone, he was to say, as if speaking to some other person, ‘I thirst,’ and immediately there would appear a cup-bearer in an elegant dress, with a cheerful countenance, bearing in his outstretched hand a large horn, adorned with gold and gems, as was the custom among the most ancient English. In the cup, nectar of an unknown but most delicious flavour was presented; and when it was drunk, all heat and weariness fled from the glowing body, so that one would be thought ready to undertake toil, instead of having toiled. Moreover, when the nectar was taken, the servant presented a towel to the drinker to wipe his mouth with, and then, having performed his office, he waited neither for recompense for his services, nor for questions, nor inquiry.”

This frequent and daily action had, for a very long period, of old times taken place among the ancient people, till one day a knight of that city, when out hunting, went thither, and having called for drink, and gotten the horn, did not, as was the custom, and as in good manners he should have done, return it to the cup-bearer, but kept it for his own use. But the illustrious Earl of Gloucester, when he learned the truth of the matter, condemned the robber to death, and presented the horn to the most excellent king, Henry the Elder; lest he should be thought to have approved of such wickedness, if he had added the rapine of another to the store of his private property.

But the fairies might rue their kindness, if you frowned so darkly on them, Astrophel. They would fear the influence of your spells, for there is blight and mildew in that glance. At the banquet of the fairies, if the eye of the seer but look on them, the romance is instantly at an end: the nymphs of beauty are changed into withered carles and crones, and the splendour of Elfin-land is turned to dust and ashes.

IDA. As a set-off against the virtues of your fairies, Castaly, you forget there was a propensity to mischief. They were rather fond, like the Daoine Shi, of stealing unchristened babes, and of chopping and changing these innocents, thence called changelings. On this fable your own Shakspere has wrought the quarrel of Oberon and Titania:—

“A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king; She never had so sweet a changeling.”

I am willing, dearest, that the poet shall make a good market of these fictions; but superstitious ignorance may make a sad and cruel work of it, even among your romantic Irish peasantry.

A few months since, on the demesne of Heywood (as we learn from the “Tipperary Constitution”), the death of a child, six years old, was accomplished with a wantonness of purpose almost incredible. Little Mahony was afflicted with spinal disease, and, like many other deformed children, possessed the gift,—in this case the fatal gift,—of acute intellect. For this quality, it was decided that he was not the son of his reputed father, but a fairy changeling. After a solemn convocation, it was decreed that the elfin should be scared away: and the mode of effecting this was, by holding the child on a hot shovel, and then pumping cold water on his head! This had the effect of extorting a confession of his imposture, and a promise to send back the real Johnny Mahony; but ere he could return to elfland and perform this promise, he died. But who is he sitting at your ear, Castaly?

CAST. Sir, is this fair? You have played the eaves-dropper. Why come you here?

EV. To counsel you to silence on these mysteries, sweetest Castaly: remember the fate of Master Kirke, of Aberfoyle, for his dabbling in elfin matters, which you may read in Sir Walter’s “Demonology.” Yet I will not flout all your fayrie legends; there may be innocent illusions, that carry with them somewhat of morality and retribution,—seeing that there are good and bad spirits, which reward and punish mortality. But, in sooth, I never think of fairyland, without remembering that good Sir Walter, as sheriff of Selkirkshire, once took the deposition of a shepherd, who affirmed that he saw the good neighbours sitting under a hill-side: when, lo! it was proved that these were the puppets of a showman, stolen and left there by some Scotch mechanics. And, better still, the story of the Mermaid of Caithness, as related to Sir Humphrey Davy, and recorded in his “Salmonia;”—the mermaids, as I take it, being nearly allied to the Nereid, or Sea-fairy, and the reality of one about as true as that of the other.

Nature is wild and beautiful enough, without these false creations. Read her truth, fair lady, and leave the fables to the fairies. There is not a ripple or a stone that is not replete with scientific interest, and yields not a study that both ennobles and delights the mind.

The doublings, or horse-shoes, of this Wye, or Vaga as the Romans named it, within its circle of rocks, so exquisitely fringed with green and purple lichens (like the Danube, round the castle of Hayenbach in the gloomy gorge of Schlagen, or the Crook of Lune, in Westmoreland, and many others), illustrate at once the nature of the stratification on the earth’s surface; even the varied tints of these mountain streams may read the student a practic lesson in geology.

From the lime-rock springs the azure-blue, as the Glaslyn stream, at Beddgelert, the Rhone, and the Traun in Styria; from the chalk ripples the grey water of the Dee and the Arve; from the clay hills the stream comes down yellow, as “the Derwent’s amber wave;” and where the peat-mosses abound, especially in the autumnal flood, the stream is of a rich and dark sienna brown, as the Conway, and the Mawddach, in Merioneth; or even of transparent black, as the Elain, which flows down through the white schist rocks of Cardiganshire.

CAST. And is there wisdom, Evelyn, in thus

“Flying from Nature to study her laws, And dulling delight by exploring the cause?”

I do fear that this analytic study of nature destroys the romance of life which flings around us its rainbow beauty.

Oh, for those halcyon days of infancy, when every thought was a promise; when hope, the dream of waking men, was lost in its fulfilment; and even fear itself was a thrill of romance!

Behold yon silver moon! it is, to the poet’s eye, an orb of unsullied beauty, and the planets and their satellites glitter like diamond studs in the firmament. Yet shift but the lens of the star-gazer, and lo! dark and murky spots instantly shadow o’er its purity; nay, have I not read that one deep astronomer, Fraüenhofer, has discovered mountains and cities; and another, Sir John Herschell, the laying down of rail-roads in the moon? So the optics of Gulliver magnified the court beauties of Brobdignag into monsters, and the auburn tresses of a maid of honour into a coil of dusty ropes!

EV. A truce, fair Castaly. If science discovers defects, does it not unfold new beauties, a new world of animated atoms, endowed with faculties and passions as influential as our own? Nay, science has thrown even a poetry around the blue mould of a cheese-crust; and in the bloom of the peach the microscope has shown forth a treasury of flowers, and gigantic forests, in the depths of which the roving animalcule finds as secure an ambush as the lion and the tiger within the gloomy jungles of Hindostan. In a drop of liquid crystal the water-wolf chases his wounded victim, till it is changed to crimson with its blood. Ehrenberg has seen monads in fluid the 24,000th part of an inch in size; and in one drop of water 500,000,000 creatures—the population of the globe! I hope, Castaly, you will not, like the Brahmin, break your microscope, because it unfolds to you these wonders of the water.

Then, by the power of the telescope, we roam into other systems—

“World beyond world in infinite extent, Profusely scattered o’er the blue expanse,”

and orbs so remote as to reduce to a mere span the distance between us and the Georgium Sidus; and revel in all the gorgeous splendour of rings, and moons, and nebulæ, the poetry of heaven.

Is there not an exquisite romance in the closing of the barometrical blossoms; of the white convolvulus, and the anagallis or scarlet pimpernel; of the sun-flower, and the leaves of the Dionæa and mimosa?

Is there not poetry in the delicate nautilus, with its arms dropped for oars; in the velella and purple physalia expanding their membranous sails; and the beautiful fish-lizard, the Proteus of transparent alabaster, found in the wondrous cavern of Maddalena, among the Styrian mountains; and even in the Stalactytes of Antiparos, as glittering as the gems and crystal pillars of Aladdin’s palace? Are not these more beautiful because they are true, and better to be read than all the impersonations of mythology, or that voluptuous romance which would endow a flower with the fervour of sense and passion?

IDA. I have ever wondered that a scholar, like Darwin, should have so wasted time with his “Loves of the Plants.” For the study of nature and the discoveries of science are ever vain, if they lift not the heart in adoration. The insect, that fans the sunbeam with its golden wing, or even the flower that opes its dewy eyes to the light, are unconscious worshippers of the Divine Being.