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Yeats' The Celtic Twilight THE QUEEN AND THE FOOL I have heard one Hearne, a
witch-doctor, who is on the border of Clare and
Galway, say that in 'every household' of faery 'there is a queen and a fool,'
and that if you are 'touched' by either you never recover, though you may from
the touch of any other in faery. He said of the fool that he was 'maybe the
wisest of all,' and spoke of him as dressed like one of the 'mummers that used
to be going about the country.' Since then a friend has gathered me some few
stories of him, and I have heard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I
remember seeing a long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage of
an old miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told that he was a
fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has gathered that he is
believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether he becomes an
Amadán-na-Breena, a fool of the forth, and is attached to
a household there, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that
I know well, and who has been in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said,
'There are fools amongst them, and the fools we see, like that Amadán of
Ballylee, go away with them at night, and so do the woman fools that we call
Oinseachs (apes).' A woman who is related to the witch-doctor on the
border of Clare, and who can Cure people and cattle by spells, said, 'There are
some cures I can't do. I can't help any one that has got a stroke from the queen
or the fool of the forth. I knew of a woman that saw the queen one time, and she
looked like any Christian. I never heard of any that saw the fool but one woman
that was walking near Gort, and she called out, 'There's the fool of the forth
coming after me.' So her friends that were with her called out, though they
could see nothing, and I suppose he went away at that, for she got no harm. He
was like a big strong man, she said, and half naked, and that is all she said about him. I have
never seen any myself, but I am a cousin of Hearne, and my uncle was away
twenty-one years.' The wife of the old miller said, 'It is said they are mostly
good neighbours, but the stroke of the fool is what there is no cure for; any
one that gets that is gone. The Amadán-na-Breena we call him!' And an old
woman who lives in the Bog of Kiltartan, and is very poor, said, 'It is true
enough, there is no cure for the stroke of the Amadán-na-Breena. There
was an old man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell what diseases
you had with measuring you; and he knew many things. And he said to me one time,
'What month of the year is the worst?' and I said, 'The month of May, of
course.' 'It is not,' he said; 'but the month of June, for that's the month that
the Amadán gives his stroke!' They say he looks like any other man, but
he's leathan (wide), and not smart. I knew a boy one time got a great fright, for a lamb looked
over the wall at him with a beard on it, and he knew it was the Amadán,
for it was the month of June. And they brought him to that man I was telling
about, that had the tape, and when he saw him he said, 'Send for the priest, and
get a Mass said over him.' And so they did, and what would you say but he's
living yet and has a family! A certain Regan said, 'They, the other sort of
people, might be passing you close here and they might touch you. But any that
gets the touch of the Amadán-na-Breena is done for.' It's true enough
that it's in the month of June he's most likely to give the touch. I knew one
that got it, and he told me about it himself. He was a boy I knew well, and he
told me that one night a gentleman came to him, that had been his landlord, and
that was dead. And he told him to come along with him, for he wanted him to
fight another man. And when he went he found two great troops of them, and
the other troop had a living man
with them too, and he was put to fight him. And they had a great fight, and he
got the better of the other man, and then the troop on his side gave a great
shout, and he was left home again. But about three years after that he was
cutting bushes in a wood and he saw the Amadán coming at him. He had a
big vessel in his arms, and it was shining, so that the boy could see nothing
else; but he put it behind his back then and came running, and the boy said he
looked wild and wide, like the side of the hill. And the boy ran, and he threw
the vessel after him, and it broke with a great noise, and whatever came out of
it, his head was gone there and then. He lived for a while after, and used to
tell us many things, but his wits were gone. He thought they mightn't have liked
him to beat the other man, and he used to be afraid something would come on
him.' And an old woman in a Galway workhouse, who had some little knowledge of Queen
Maive, said the
other day, 'The Amadán-na-Breena changes his shape every two days.
Sometimes he comes like a youngster, and then he'll come like the worst of
beasts, trying to give the touch he used to be. I heard it said of late he was
shot, but I think myself it would be hard to shoot him.' 1901. |
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