Irish Wonders: Wives, Widows and Old Maids

Irish Wonders: Widows and Old Maids

I was curious that the subtitle of Irish Wonders included widows and old maids. What is so strange about single women? The truth is, many of the tales in Irish Wonders are misogynistic. Oddly, the tale of the widows has more illustrations than any other tale in the volume as if it’s the most interesting. But the modern reader cringes over the attitudes of the storytellers. 

A Doomed Love Story

Irish Wonders includes a few of the more traditional love tales mixed with a bit of ghostly grimness such as “The Sexton of Cashel.” The story begins with the author asking his car man why churches and graveyards all over Ireland are left to ruin. “While all over the graves, alike of the high born and of the lowly, the weeds and nettles grow.” The car man replies to the author that there’s no sexton and the people have to dig the graves themselves. Eventually he says, “It is n’t every owld church that has a caretaker like him of Cashel.” And then we get the story.

In County Clare, a good-looking young lad named Paddy O’Sullivan has all the girls after him. He falls in love with Nora O’Moore, whose face is pale and whose hair is black. She is clever and reserved. The two play out their games, pretending not to care for one another, but finally declaring their love. 

A Greedy Father

The usual trouble starts with Nora’s father. “Sure he was the divil entirely at home, an’ niver left off wid the crassness that was in him.” He gambles, has a bad temper, and beats Nora and her mother. When Nora’s parents hear of her match with Paddy, her mother approves, but her father doesn’t because Paddy is “poor as a fiddler.” Instead Nora’s father arranges to marry her off to a boy whose father owns a great deal of land as well as numerous sheep, but who is “as shtupid as a donkey.”  

Graveyard Happiness

Nora’s father lies to her about going to the fair and takes her away to marry the boy. When Nora learns the truth, she is determined to die. The pair take a wrong turn on the road to Tipperary and wind up in Cashel. Nora gives her father the slip and though he chases her down, they end up drowning when the bank of the stream falls in. They are buried in Cashel and people far and wide come to praise the angelic Nora.

When Paddy learns the news, he is distraught. He begins hearing Nora calling to him to come to Cashel and so he does. He spends sixty years looking after the graveyard. When he gets old, he can see into the next world, and Nora comes to him every night, bringing the spirits of kings and bishops. They all walk and talk in Cormac’s Chapel until one day, Paddy is found on Nora’s grave, cold and still. The locals bury him beside her. “They said he was only a poor owld innocent, but all is aqulized, an’ thim that’s despised sometimes have betther comp’ny among the angels than that of mortials.” 

A Better Afterlife

Even though the narrator praises the angelic and self-effacing Nora, a girl who never missed church and didn’t complain about her beatings–dutiful until she escaped her marriage through death–he still adds digs at the average woman and the plight of the married man. “Och, the tongues that wimmin have! Sure they’re sharper nor a draggin’s tooth. Faith, I know that too well, for I married two o’ them an’ larned a deal too afther doin’ it, an’ axin’ yer pardon, it’s my belafe that if min knewn as much as before marryin’ as afther, bedad, the owld maid population ‘ud be greatly increased.”

Irish Wonders: Wives and the Gray Man

This is more the general tone than is the love story of Nora and Paddy. Even the story of the Gray Man, the lonely inhabitant of the “Gray Man’s Isle” near the Giant’s Causeway is titled “The Henpecked Giant.”

Prior to marriage, the Gray Man, whose name is Finn O’Goolighan, says, “‘Wimmin is like angels . . .. There’s two kinds av ‘em, an’ the wan that shmiles like a dhrame o’ heaven afore she’s marr’d, is the wan that gits to be a tarin’ divil afther her market’s made an’ she’s got a husband.”

Finn, The Gray Man, picks a pathway through the mountains so his wife can easily walk to church.

When Finn decides to marry a pretty little barmaid–black eyes and hair and cherry red lips–rather than the giantess his mother has picked out for him, he ends up with a devil woman. She becomes ugly and “she was the woman for to talk an’ schold an’ clack away till ye’d want to die to be rid of her.” She henpecks Finn until he gets a pick and spade and carves a path through the mountains so she can go to church without climbing up and down the slopes. And that’s how the Gray Man’s Path was made. The story ends with this “bit av poethry:”

The first rib did bring in ruin

As the rest have since been doin’;

Some be wan way, some another.

Woman shtill is mischief’s mother.

Be she good or be she avil,

Be she saint or be she divil,

Shtill unaisey is his life

That is marr’d wid a wife.

Wives, Widows and Old Maids All at Once

The final tale of the volume, “The Defeat of the Widows,” has seven of its own illustrations. The title pretty much tells the story: three widows all have their sights set on one Mr. Dooley, who visits them all. When he decides to marry an old maid, they take him to court and want to see him hang. But the judge allows him to choose. After picking the old maid, Dooley has to compensate each of the three widows for misleading them. The story ends with Dooley giving this advice:

“Whin ye marry, get you an owld maid, if there’ wan to be had in the counthry. Gurruls is flighty an’ axpectin’ too much av ye, an’ widdys is greedy buzzards . . .but owld maids is humble, an’ thankful for gettin’ a husband at all, God bless ‘em, so they shtrive to plaze an’ do as ye bid them widout grumblin’ or axin’ throublesome questions.”

According to the author of Irish Wonders, the narratives are in the words of local storytellers from throughout the island. It’s sad to think this is the general view of women. Then again, the book was originally published in 1888. So storytellers have had 135 years to make their way to truer tales of women.

Next Up: Irish Wonders Turn to Irish Myths

For now, I’m done with the old weeded library books although I later plan to go back to them later and look at some specific mythological characters like Finn McCool. I’m currently reading a newer and more academic book, Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myths by Mark Williams. It doesn’t focus on fairies and leprechauns, but rather on the changing myths of ancient gods of Ireland and how the advent of Christianity influenced the telling of their tales. I’m also listening to some audiobooks (novels) about mythological demons, monsters, and ghosts in modern, ordinary lives.