The Soul Cages

O sing your funky matin, my Galahad, son of that philandering blue knight with his peckerwood lance: Play that big night vatic vocalissumus enraged by the roiling sea, huge awfulness just inside behind my every questing sense: Reveal to us the darkness beyond every bright door, the Grail with its appalling blood, more brine than wine, poured from the greater half of heart ...

(Yes but in that darkness there is fear, or my fear of its greatness ... my wife left before 6 a.m. to drive up to Jax with her sister to Mayo Clinic for a second opinion on surgery to remove a huge cyst on one of her ovaries ()that wonderful reproductive plumbing which is the prime turbine of the matriarch, o so afflicted with nature ...) ) ... as I feed Red on the back porch (he with his furry face mashed in the bowl, there’s a faint white fluff further out in the yard, corpse of a big white dove he and Blue killed the other day, assholes, bastards of brute nature ... And as I leave for work myself, out beyond the garden ((littered with many palm fronds fallen from the passover of Wilma)), there’s a big dog running about, sniffing the air, leaping up and then running off into the dark, and I think of our stray cats whom we love to death, just little fellas compared to big dogs like that, those jaws, canines ... And I pray God protect all I love, with that fragile fearful faith of a child in need of protective father; and I pray to that god to grant me courage to face what is and what is to come with great heart and gusto and compassion ... my Grail God and god, front and back faces of a divine thrall, upper and lower ones maybe, I dunno, merging in my dark morning praises of the wild abyss --




BLACK ANGUS

2004

Seal-man sea-ape fixed against the
Tiding light, you rose from brine to
Block the shore where Saint Columba
Walked, cursing the man in rich fine
Gaelic -- a blue-salted brogue heaved
Hard against the flood of high light.
You could not be converted, much
Less shut up; and so the Saint wove
A tale of ancient sin around
Your fish-slick sides, of how you once
Lured a good girl into the tide
And sexed her into the sea-witch
Who buoys every man’s bad dream.
You’d lost her too: But still you laughed
And leapt back in her blackened bath.

Frank MacEowen wells the following rather soaked perspective on the Oran-Columba story in “Odhrain: Patron Saint of the Lower World” -- amen and amen --

“Liminal space is of paramount importance in Celtic spiritual traditions. This derives, ultimately from the fact that we descend from an ancient tribal context which lived day in and day out with an awareness of the ‘in between’ times and places.

“An emphasis has always been placed upon both those times and places which are betwixt and between. Whether it is the Time of Samhuinn (when the veil which separates us from the Otherworld of the ancestors and spirits is removed), or holy sites which hold the energy of these ‘in between’ places, such as a grove, holy well or where forest meets shore and stream, Celtic spiritual consciousness is steeped in an awareness of and a longing for the liminality of things.

“Indeed, it is believed that certain kinds of information are available to us in these ‘in between’ times and places; a realm called the Threshold (stairnseach in Scottish Gaelic). The time of Twilight, at dusk and dawn, the subtle shifting of the seasons, the sudden onset of a storm, or even the process of passing from everyday consciousness into sleep, trance, or meditation and back again, are all expressions of the liminal time and space that the Celtic soul thrives on.
...

“Columcille began the process of building the monastery at Iona, the heart of the Celtic Church in the North. He gathered together a large group of people as workers and builders, but for all their efforts, all that was built during the day would lay crumbled on the earth by next morning.

“At this point, Columcille set a watch in the middle of the night, hoping to secure knowledge of these strange events. However, akin to the falling of the built structure every morning, Columcille and his workers discovered that with each passing night, the people placed at the watch were found dead.

“Columcille, determined to go on, decided to take a night vigil upon himself and sat in wait for the knowledge of the delay. It is said that in the middle of the night a great being came to Columba from the surrounding waters and that the being was part-woman, part-fish, and struck great fear in the hearts of the men. Columcille unflinchingly inquired as to what was continually throwing down his efforts to build Iona.

“The water-spirit-being replied, “I do not know what casts the stones of your walls to the earth, nor what takes the lives of your brothers, but it will continue to be so until you have made the proper sacrifices.” Columcille was instructed that a man would have to be willing to offer himself to the ground, that he would have to be buried alive, but if this were done the likes of her would disappear and Iona would flourish undisturbed by spirits.

“The day following this visitation [vision?] Columcille approached the workers who were there to build the monastery at Iona. He told them of the previous night’s events but none of them was willing to go into the grave alive. Odhran, by some accounts Columcille’s cousin and by others his brother, came forward and is said to have stood with him. Odhran declared that he would be the one to offer himself in the sacrifice for the sake of Columcille’s work. Columcille accepted Odhran’s declaration and pledged that Odhran would forever have a place on Iona.

“The grave was made and Odhran’s only request was that Columcille make the grave deep enough for a man to walk around in, with a stone roof. Columcille agreed to these conditions and Odhran entered the grave, remaining standing within.

“Twenty days passed. The work of building the monastery at Iona moved forward, quickly, undisturbed. Columcille was very pleased. At the end of twenty days, Columcille declared that things were stable at Iona and they should all check on Odhran, to determine what had fallen his brother. When the roof of the nine foot grave was removed, it is said that Odhran was still walking around in the grave. Upon seeing the lifting of the stone slab from the grave, Odhran leapt from the hole and began to speak. Odhran reports to us:

“I have been below the earth. I have journeyed down there. I have been below the ground, to the world below this one. I have seen things, . . . glorious things. The place, what we call Hell, is not as bad as it is reported!”

“At this Columcille yells, “Clay! Clay! Upon Odhran’s eyes before he should see any further the world of mortal man. Odhran was returned to the grave, the stone slab returned securely over the hole. The building of Iona continued.

“... Although the original chapel was burned by Vikings in the late 9th century the current structure was re-built by Benedictines in the 12th century and is a testament to the ancient Celtic past. Relig Odhran, Odhran’s Chapel, also still stands today as a working chapel, meditation chamber, a protector grave for the graves of the various kings buried on the isle, as well as a pilgrimage site for many Celtic Christians and even a few modern shamanic practitioners who consider Odhran to be the ‘patron saint of Lowerworld journeys.’ “





ORAN’s VOYAGE TO THE NORTH

-- From Iona, Fiona McCleod (William Sharp), London: William Heinemann, 1912

It is commonly said that the People of the Sìdhe dwell within the hills, or in the underworld. In some of the isles their home, now, is spoken of as Tir-na-thonn, the Land of the Wave, or Tir-fo-Tuinn, the Land under the Sea.

But from a friend, an Islander of Iona, I have learned many things, and among them, that the Shee no longer dwell within the inland hills, and that though many of them inhabit the lonelier isles of the west, and in particular The Seven Hunters, their Kingdom is in the North.

Some say it is among the pathless mountains of Iceland. But my friend spoke to an Iceland man, and he said he had never seen them. There were Secret People there, but not the Gaelic Sìdhe.

Their Kingdom is in the North, under the Fir-Chlisneach, the Dancing Men, as the Hebrideans call the polar aurora. They are always young there. Their bodies are white as the wild swan, their hair yellow as honey, their eyes blue as ice. Their feet leave no mark on the snow. The women are white as milk, with eyes like sloes, and lips like red rowans. They fight with shadows, and are glad; but the shadows are not shadows to them. The Shee slay great numbers at the full moon, but never hunt on moonless nights, or at the rising of the moon, or when the dew is falling. Their lances are made of reeds that glitter like shafts of ice, and it is ill for a mortal to find one of these lances, for it is tipped with the salt of a wave that no living thing has touched, neither the wailing mew nor the finned sgAdan nor his tribe, nor the narwhal. There are no men of the human clans there, and no shores, and the tides are forbidden.

Long ago one of the monks of Columba sailed there. He sailed for thrice seven days till he lost the rocks of the north; and for thrice thirty days, till Iceland in the south was like a small bluebell in a great grey plain; and for thrice three years among bergs. For the first three years the finned things of the sea brought him food; for the second three years he knew the kindness of the creatures of the air; in the last three years angels fed him. He lived among the Sidhe for three hundred years. When he came back to Iona, he was asked where he had been all that long night since evensong to matins. The monks had sought him everywhere, and at dawn had found him lying in the hollow of the long wave that washes Iona on the north. He laughed at that, and said he had been on the tops of the billows for nine years and three months and twenty-one days, and for three hundred years had lived among a deathless people. He had drunk sweet ale every day, and every day had known love among flowers and green bushes, and at dusk had sung old beautiful forgotten songs, and with star-flame had lit strange fires, and at the full of the moon had gone forth laughing to slay. It was heaven, there, under the Lights of the North. When he was asked how that people might be known, he said that away from there they had a cold, cold hand, a cold, still voice, and cold ice-blue eyes. They had four cities at the four ends of the green diamond that is the world. That in the north was made of earth; that in the east, of air; that in the south, of fire; that in the west, of water. In the middle of the green diamond that is the world is the Glen of Precious Stones. It is in the shape of a heart, and glows like a ruby, though all stones and gems are there. It is there the Sìdhe go to refresh their deathless life.

The holy monks said that this kingdom was certainly Ifurin, the Gaelic Hell. So they put their comrade alive in a grave in the sand, and stamped the sand down upon his head, and sang hymns so that mayhap even yet his soul might be saved, or, at least, that when he went back to that place he might remember other songs than those sung by the milk-white women with eyes like sloes and lips red as rowans. "Tell that honey-mouthed cruel people they are in Hell," said the abbot, and give them my ban and my curse unless they will cease laughing and loving sinfully and slaying with bright lances, and will come out of their secret places and be baptized."

They have not yet come.

This adventurer of the dreaming mind is another Oran, that fabulous Oran of whom the later Columban legends tell. I think that other Orans go out, even yet, to the Country of the Sidhe. But few come again. It must be hard to find that glen at the heart of the green diamond that is the world; but, when found, harder to return by the way one came.


BONES OF FIRE

2004

How many regions in space
that have already been
Inside me. There are winds
that seem like my
wandering son.

-- Rilke Sonnets To Orpheus

And Manannan heard the man say:
“I will give you love and home and
peace.” The sea-woman listened to
that, and said: “And I will bring you
the homelessness of the sea, and
the peace of the restless wave, and
love like the wandering wind.”

-- Fiona MacLeod, “The Children of the Water”

Wind and wave both stir
the lyre you house in me
with fates from distant
shores. Through this
opened window float
those voices as if rising
from some outermost
inside, washing through
the maples in the front yard
with a high soft chant.
Surely it was ferried here
on the backs of whales
as they hauled between
the iceberg and the gale,
lamped only the burning
wings of northern lights,
their booming spume
and diving drone
intoning the angelic
northernmost
Hyperborean name of God.
Let me render back
that cold driven wilderness:
and ride here those foaming steppes,
a million-mile prairie
bordered only by an
infinite sky and miles
of brine below. Let Thor
hurl all his hammers
and Manannan reach
from the towering wave
to hand me his silver cup
from which all oceans
and ocean loves have poured.
Let shore-strewn stones reveal
their polar hearts,
still glowing with the
lucence of that drowned
constellation where we
coiled and plunged
through all the primal
names and woke up
alone to wander
on, like wind and wave,
between the ache of night
and waking dawn,
singing all the shores
that icy distant fire were
written on, bone
by noctilucent bone.





ORAN'S SINK

Taurus dracomen genuit
et taurum draco

“The bull is father to the snake
and the snake to the bull”
— Cretan symbolon

Coin the motions
I bell here a
Doubloon: On one
face blue Oran,
that dark raveller,
his mouth welling
antiphons of primal
cold: Turn the
coin over and you’ll
see me in this white
writing chair atop
a treelike esplumoir,
his dark book in one
hand, a gold pen in
the other, writing
down Oran’s slither
round and tween
the lines.
I found and fathered
him on this page,
though it is his
words which
engendered all of
mine — “The way
you think it is is
not the way it is at
all!” — a truth which
by its unknowableness
is by nature recessional,
bidding all who seek
to travel further down
and cross the page,
island to island,
poem to poem.
I have written down
what I found,
and what I found
has forged this song,
mortaring poem
by poem this
singing house
in buried blue.
The mystery is
as simple two
halves of symbolon,
a knucklebone
split in two and
shared by two parties.
One half is shaped by
lines on paper down
to here: The other
half is what lies
inside those lines,
or what comes after
them in a sheer
drop of white space
off the page — what
I’ll never know fully
upside down,
though each next poem
I surely try. Each
day I flip the coin
and watch it rise
then splash and
tumble down in
gold and black
revolvings, articulate
and not, tumbling
line by line down
the shelves of
ancient dark
til it disappears
from sight, surely
to rest at last
in Oran’s skull,
atop a pile of
prior poems. That
bowl of bone is coffer
to these coigns which
have no vantage but
their salt surrender,
at home and free to
whirl the sea-god’s
sky which only
seems a wetter darker
blue. Suburban
angel of that
winged descent, I
ride this writing
chair astride the
white flanks of a
dolphin with a dragon’s
tail and hooves of
raging bull: A modern
man troping
an ancient rage,
illuminating a black
page which only seems
as pale as bone. I
count my words carefully
into that lost half
buried purse at the
bottom of a wishing
well no one may drink:
For every breath
I squander here
here fresh bubbles
rise from Oran’s
cathedral sink.


***


DOWN ABYSMS HOME

From Kay Murh’s “Water Imagery in Early Irish,” Celtica 23, 196-7


Watery approaches to the otherworld are common in the early literature, down wells or under lakes or under or across the sea ... either well or sea can represent “the hazardous water through which the hero must pass to reach his Otherworld destination.

Different manifestations are functionally connected. A triad groups a well, the sea and new ale as “three cold things that seethe.”

The young poet Nede in “Immacallam in da Thuardid” finds his revelation on the brink of the sea,” and murbrath “sea-doom” is used of the eruption of the well that became Lough Neagh. A well on the side of Slaibh Gamh was thought to ebb and flow with the sea, and sid Nenta “the Otherworld dwelling of Nenta” has an epithet which varies between fo uisce and iar n-uisce “under” or “beyond the water”





CALL ME

2003

Call me Ishmael, call me
Lucius, call me Saint
Columb’s dream of Oran
boating toward news of
God across the badassed blue.
Call me foolish in this
landless enquiry, high up
the totem mast with endless
marge to view. -- What news
of heaven can be found
in such boneless toil?
Call me Columbanus
the stowaway who froze
in the wheelwell of
Air Eire and fell a mile
from Orlando International,
my bones heaped in
a wetland brake slowly
being drained by those
who would live here til
the tap runs dry.
Call me the little
girl in the fluorescent
green princess tutu who
toddered up to our door
last night so uncertainly,
spooked by the votive
bags with pumpkin faces
lining the driveway
and sidewalk, hesitant
to knock, too fired
by sugar dreams to flee.
Call me Mamacita the black
mother stray on the
guest room bed wanting
Out as she dozes, her tail
twitching at remembered
strikes at terrified squirrels.
Call me Cormac in
Manannan’s house, drinking
from a golden cup poured from
the sweetest well of all.
Call me Whoosis who is
sleeping off the Jack and
coke sprawled round a
French Maid still wearing
her garters and one shoe.
Call the the dark in
the window of this 5 a.m.,
faintly cool and very quiet,
voided of those graveyard
mouths who clamored so
to be heard -- a dark
harrowed now of hallows,
the rook and heath almost
icy in the late light of
a bent half-moon, nothing
stirring but this hand
whose oar and billows
I must be, author of the
selves inside the errant
elves who had their way
last night, or a part, carving
one night like a pumpkin’s
tomb. Call me Jack,
call me Freddy, call me
Nuckelavee the bog boor
who roams the shore
between vespers and
matins, an unquiet spoor
of the well that has lost
its door -- a spillage
greater than the sea’s,
a motion flowing all the way
to this moment’s late,
late lees. -- Call me the
lighthouse keeper in his
high stone chair, the eye
that roams the waves which
crash somewhere like
mountains of salt brutality.
Call me the jester in
the court of brine
immensity, the fool in
the chair whose pen
alone will dare what heart
and cock and brain cannot.
Call me old man Yorick
dozing down and down below,
grateful at last to let
this fizzing frenzy go
which only gods and gorgons
throne and thrall and
in full plumage show
who alone may cup
what’s here welling up.
Call me what you will,
I’m just the scribe
who got down the strange
sound of this quiet dawn
the day after Halloween
2003 -- And now that
work sights shore, call me
the guy who heads back
upstairs to bed to the actual
waking of the real life,
the one you’ll never find
though each page here
seems close enough --
ah, so infinitely close
and yet so far.


***


THE SOUL FISH

2005

... The soul is ambitious
for what is invisible. Hungers for a sacrament
that is both spirit and flesh. And neither.
-- Jack Gilbert, “A Walk Blossoming”

Wisdom consists in keeping the soul
liquid. There must be the Abyss, Nyx,
and Chaos, out of which all things come,
and they must never be far off. Cut off
the connection between any of your works
and this dread origin, and the work is shallow
and unsatisfying.
— Emerson, Journal (1842)

In rural Ireland -- where the men who
remain often fail to marry and then
go mad -- there is a stubborn folk belief
that the soul is a fish located under
the arm. It’s a slippery, untrustworthy
presence, this scaly soul, prone to
errant nonsense, whispering all night
from those men’s ancient pillows
to sell the farm and seeking love
across the banished oceans
of the earth. Pure foolishness, that
a fish would swim that far, just to
expire between some cuspate thighs,
when pints and pipesmoke are
almost enough tamp the grieving down.
Still, there’s something noble to
them about that fish’s travail, so bold
and burning that it knocks down every
church in the parish, leaving turds
in the chalice. Soul begone! is the
prayer for too-clenched teeth -- not the
soul we pray Michael row to heaven
but its fraught freezing sea, all waves and
salt liquor and fluked beasts who
loll and haul the tide like the
fifty cows of Tethys. It is the lurching
part of every desire that must betray
the long-denied bed. No wonder
schizophrenia runs rife in the poor
counties of western Ireland,
too close perhaps to those tall cliffs
of Moher where the distance to the
doomed sea is measured the ache luring
and leaping in the chest, somewhere
beneath the arm that pushes back
with a man’s failing strength. Their
churches too long ago banned that
fish from the liturgy, and now those
churches fade to ruin, ossuaries of
Latin embalmed in a hoarse brogue.
The crash of North Sea surf against
those cliffs will eat the heart of God
away and all the fish will tumble
down at last into the reign of foam
and fire. And then the good aged
crofters of Clare and Kerry will
quit their bruited turf and join
hands out there to dance and
then fan out to fey the bed
of every maid matron and crone,
a school of salmon leaping
from the lakes to barge their
way on home. And all the
gals will sing Amen my man.




DR. DAVY JONES’ LOCKER

Great God! How the sea whitens
When first it comes!
Great are its gusts
When it comes from the south;
Great are its evaporation
When it strikes on coasts.
It is in the field, it is in the wood,
Without hand and without foot,
Without signs of old age,
Though it be co-aeval
With the five ages or periods ....
-- Song of Taleisin (The Mabinogion)

My mind is too wild for your
tethering skull. I walk past
the school library at dusk
this late summer’s day,
huge storms ripping horizons,
the dark not so much falling
as rising from all I don’t know,
up from the corners of buildings
and streets of far ice, up
from the eyes of robed
deacons guarding all the doors,
like waters rising,
drowning commons and classrooms,
drowing this library at the
center of all, floor by floor,
knocking all books from their shelving
til they bump and bleat against ceilings
then go limp, dark to their spines,
freed at last to swim in the
black watery mine of a mind
molted here, my scholar’s career
tossed from view, sunk and split
and spilling pearls of swine truth,
chumming a red spoor to bright sharks
fanged in what I already always knew.





And finally, in this watery quest of a post down to some darker greater half of the heart, the house in the middle of the wood, the grail castle of Halloween, I end today’s installment with this marvellous tale of the Land Down Under from Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
edited and selected by W. B. Yeats (1888)

THE SOUL CAGES

T. Crofton Croker

Jack Dogherty lived on the coast of the county Clare. Jack was a fisherman, as his father and grandfather before him had been. Like them, too, he lived all alone (but for the wife), and just in the same spot. People used to wonder why the Dogherty family were so fond of that wild situation, so far away from all human kind, and in the midst of huge shattered rocks, with nothing but the wide ocean to look upon. But they had their own good reasons for it.

The place was just the only spot on that part of the coast where anybody could well live. There was a neat little creek, where a boat might lie as snug as a puffin in her nest, and out from this creek a ledge of sunken rocks ran into the sea. Now when the Atlantic, according to custom, was raging with a storm, and a good westerly wind was blowing strong on the coast, many a richly-laden ship went to pieces on these rocks; and then the fine bales of cotton and tobacco, and such like things, and the pipes of wine and the puncheons of rum, and the casks of brandy, and the kegs of Hollands that used to come ashore! Dunbeg Bay was just like a little estate to the Doghertys.

Not but they were kind and humane to a distressed sailor, if ever one had the good luck to get to land; and many a time indeed did Jack put out in his little corragh (which, though not quite equal to honest Andrew Hennessy's canvas life-boat would breast the billows like any gannet), to lend a hand towards bringing off the crew from a wreck. But when the ship had gone to pieces, and the crew were all lost, who would blame Jack for picking up all he could find?

"And who is the worse of it?" said he. "For as to the king, God bless him! everybody knows he's rich enough already without getting what's floating in the sea."

Jack, though such a hermit, was a good-natured, jolly fellow. No other, sure, could ever have coaxed Biddy Mahony to quit her father's snug and warm house in the middle of the town of Ennis, and to go so many miles off to live among the rocks, with the seals and sea-gulls for next-door neighbours. But Biddy knew that Jack was the man for a woman who wished to be comfortable and happy; for to say nothing of the fish, Jack had the supplying of half the gentlemen's houses of the country with the Godsends that came into the bay. And she was right in her choice; for no woman ate, drank, or slept better, or made a prouder appearance at chapel on Sundays, than Mrs. Dogherty.

Many a strange sight, it may well be supposed, did Jack see, and many a strange sound did he hear, but nothing daunted him. So far was he from being afraid of Merrows, or such beings, that the very first wish of his heart was to fairly meet with one. Jack had heard that they were mighty like Christians, and that luck had always come out of an acquaintance with them. Never, therefore, did he dimly discern the Merrows moving along the face of the waters in their robes of mist, but he made direct for them; and many a scolding did Biddy, in her own quiet way, bestow upon Jack for spending his whole day out at sea, and bringing home no fish. Little did poor Biddy know the fish Jack was after!

It was rather annoying to Jack that, though living in a place where the Merrows were as plenty as lobsters, he never could get a right view of one. What vexed him more was that both his father and grandfather had often and often seen them; and he even remembered hearing, when a child, how his grandfather, who was the first of the family that had settled down at the creek, had been so intimate with a Merrow that, only for fear of vexing the priest, he would have had him stand for one of his children. This, however, Jack did not well know how to believe.

Fortune at length began to think that it was only right that Jack should know as much as his father and grandfather did. Accordingly, one day when he had strolled a little farther than usual along the coast to the northward, just as he turned a point, he saw something, like to nothing he had ever seen before, perched upon a rock at a little distance out to sea. It looked green in the body, as well as he could discern at that distance, and he would have sworn, only the thing was impossible, that it had a cocked hat in its hand. Jack stood for a good half-hour straining his eyes, and wondering at it, and all the time the thing did not stir hand or foot. At last Jack's patience was quite worn out, and he gave a loud whistle and a hail, when the Merrow (for such it was) started up, put the cocked hat on its head, and dived down, head foremost, from the rock.

Jack's curiosity was now excited, and he constantly directed his steps towards the point; still he could never get a glimpse of the sea-gentleman with the cocked hat; and with thinking and thinking about the matter, he began at last to fancy he had been only dreaming. One very rough day, however, when the sea was running mountains high, Jack Dogherty determined to give a look at the Merrow's rock (for he had always chosen a fine day before), and then he saw the strange thing cutting capers upon the top of the rock, and then diving down, and then coming up, and then diving down again.

Jack had now only to choose his time (that is, a good blowing day), and he might see the man of the sea as often as he pleased. All this. however, did not satisfy him--"much will have more"; he wished now to get acquainted with the Merrow, and even in this he succeeded. One tremendous blustering day, before he got to the point whence he had a view of the Merrow's rock, the storm came on so furiously that Jack was obliged to take shelter in one of the caves which are so numerous along the coast; and there, to his astonishment, he saw sitting before him a thing with green hair, long green teeth, a red nose, and pig's eyes. It had a fish's tail, legs with scales on them, and short arms like fins. It wore no clothes, but had the cocked hat under its arm, and seemed engaged thinking very seriously about something.

Jack, with all his courage, was a little daunted; but now or never, thought he; so up he went boldly to the cogitating fishman, took off his hat, and made his best bow.

"Your servant, sir," said Jack.

"Your servant, kindly, Jack Dogherty," answered the Merrow.

"To be sure, then, how well your honour knows my name!" said Jack.

"Is it I not know your name, Jack Dogherty? Why man, I knew your grandfather long before he was married to Judy Regan, your grandmother! Ah, Jack, Jack, I was fond of that grandfather of yours; he was a mighty worthy man in his time: I never met his match above or below, before or since, for sucking in a shellful of brandy. I hope, my boy," said the old fellow, with a merry twinkle in his eyes, "I hope you're his own grandson!"

'Never fear me for that," said Jack; "if my mother had only reared me on brandy, 'tis myself that would be a sucking infant to this hour!"

"Well, I like to hear you talk so manly; you and I must be better acquainted, if it were only for your grandfather's sake. But, Jack, that father of yours was not the thing! he had no head at all."

"I'm sure, said Jack, "since your honour lives down under the water, you must be obliged to drink a power to keep any beat in you in such a cruel, damp, could place. Well, I've often heard of Christians drinking like fishes; and might I be so bold as ask where you get the spirits?"

"Where do you get them yourself, Jack?" said the Merrow, twitching his red nose between his forefinger and thumb.

"Hubbubboo," cries Jack "now I see how it is; but I suppose, sir, your honour has got a fine dry cellar below to keep them in."

"Let me alone for the cellar," said the Merrow, with a knowing wink of his left eye.

'I'm sure," continued Jack, "it must be mighty well worth the looking at."

"You may say that, Jack," said the Merrow; "and if you meet me here next Monday, just at this time of the day, we will have a little more talk with one another about the matter."

Jack and the Merrow parted the best friends in the world. On Monday they met, and Jack was not a little surprised to see that the Merrow had two cocked hats with him, one under each arm.

"Might I take the liberty to ask, sir," said Jack, "why your honour has brought the two hats with you today? You would not, sure, be going to give me one of them, to keep for the curiosity of the thing?"

"No, no, Jack," said he, "I don't get my hats so easily, to part with them that way; but I want you to come down and dine with me, and I brought you that hat to dive with."

"Lord bless and preserve us!" cried Jack, in amazement, would you want me to go down to the bottom of the salt sea ocean? Sure, I'd be smothered and choked up with the water, to say nothing of being drowned! And what would poor Biddy do for me, and what would she say?"

"And what matter what she says, you pinkeen? Who cares for Biddy's squalling? It's long before your grandfather would have talked in that way. Many's the time he stuck that same hat on his head, and dived down boldly after me; and many's the snug bit of dinner and good shellful of brandy he and I have had together below, under the water."

"Is it really, sir, and no joke?" said Jack; "why, then, sorrow from me for ever and a day after, if I'll be a bit worse man nor my grandfather was! Here goes--but play me fair now. Here's neck or nothing!" cried Jack.

"That's your grandfather all over," said the old fellow; "so come along, then, and do as I do."

They both left the cave, walked into the sea, and then swam a piece until they got to the rock, The Merrow climbed to the top of it, and Jack followed him. On the far side it was as straight as the wall of a house, and the sea beneath looked so deep that Jack was almost cowed.

"Now, do you see, Jack," said the Merrow: "just put this hat on your head, and mind to keep your eyes wide open. Take hold of my tail, and follow after me, and you'll see what you'll see."

In he dashed, and in dashed Jack after him boldly. They went and they went, and Jack thought they'd never stop going. Many a time did he wish himself sitting at home by the fireside with Biddy. Yet where was the use of wishing now, when he was so many miles, as he thought, below the waves of the Atlantic? Still he held hard by the Merrow's tail, slippery as it was; and, at last, to Jack's great surprise, they got out of the water, and he actually found himself on dry land at the bottom of the sea. They landed just in front of a nice house that was slated very neatly with oyster shells! and the Merrow, turning about to Jack, welcomed him down.

Jack could hardly speak, what with wonder, and what with being out of breath with travelling so fast through the water. He looked about him and could see no living things, barring crabs and lobsters, of which there were plenty walking leisurely about on the sand. Overhead was the sea like a sky, and the fishes like birds swimming about in it.

"Why don't you speak, man?" said the Merrow: "I dare say you had no notion that I had such a snug little concern here as this? Are you smothered, or choked, or drowned, or are you fretting after Biddy, eh?"

"Oh! not myself indeed," said Jack, showing his teeth with a good-humoured grin; "but who in the world would ever have thought of seeing such a thing?"

'Yell, come along, and let's see what they've got for us to eat?"

Jack really was hungry, and it gave him no small pleasure to perceive a fine column of smoke rising from the chimney, announcing what was going on within. Into the house he followed the Merrow, and there he saw a good kitchen, right well provided with everything. There was a noble dresser, and plenty of pots and pans, with two young Merrows cooking. His host then led him into the room, which was furnished shabbily enough. Not a table or a chair was there in it; nothing but planks and logs of wood to sit on, and eat off. There was, however, a good fire blazing upon the hearth--a comfortable sight to Jack.

"Come now, and I'll show you where I keep--you know what," said the Merrow, with a sly look; and opening a little door, he led Jack into a fine cellar, well filled with pipes, and kegs, and hogsheads, and barrels.

"What do you say to that, Jack Dogherty? Eh! may be a body can't live snug under the water?"

"Never the doubt of that," said Jack, with a convincing smack of his upper lip, that he really thought what he said.

They went back to the room, and found dinner laid. There was no tablecloth, to be sure--but what matter? It was not always Jack had one at home. The dinner would have been no discredit to the first house of the country on a fast day. The choicest of fish, and no wonder, was there. Turbots, and sturgeons, and soles, and lobsters, and oysters, and twenty other kinds, were on the planks at once, and plenty of the best of foreign spirits. The wines, the old fellow said, were too cold for his stomach.

Jack ate and drank till he could eat no more: then taking up a shell of brandy, "Here's to your honour's good health, sir," said he; "though, begging you pardon, it's mighty odd that as long as we've been acquainted I don't know your name yet."

"That's true, Jack," replied he; "I never thought of it before, but better late than never. My name's Coomara."

"And a mighty decent name it is," cried Jack, taking another shellfull: "here's to your good health, Coomara, and may ye live these fifty years to come!"

"Fifty years!" repeated Coomara; "I'm obliged to you, indeed! If you had said five hundred, it would have been something worth the wishing."

"By the laws, sir," cries Jack, "you live to a powerful age here under the water! You knew my grandfather, and he's dead and gone better than these sixty years. I'm sure it must be a healthy place to live in."

"No doubt of it; but come, Jack, keep the liquor stirring."

Shell after shell did they empty, and to Jack's exceeding surprise, he found the drink never got into his head, owing, I suppose, to the sea being over them, which kept their noddles cool.

Old Coomara got exceedingly comfortable, and sung several songs; but Jack, if his life had depended on it, never could remember more than

"Rum fum boodle boo,
Ripple dipple nitty dob;
Dumdoo doodle coo,
Raffle taffle chittiboo!"

It was the chorus to one of them; and, to say the truth, nobody that I know has ever been able to pick any particular meaning out of it; but that, to be sure, is the case with many a song nowadays.

At length said he to Jack, "Now, my dear boy, if you follow me, I'll show you my curiosities!" He opened a little door, and led Jack into a large room, where Jack saw a great many odds and ends that Coomara had picked up at one time or another. What chiefly took his attention, however, were things like lobsterpots ranged on the ground along the wall.

"Well, Jack, how do you like my curiosities?" said old Coo.

"Upon my sowkins, sir," said Jack, "they're mighty well worth the looking at; but might I make so bold as to ask what these things like lobster-pots are?"

"Oh! the Soul Cages, is it?"

"The what? sir!"

"These things here that I keep the souls in."

"Arrah! what souls, sir?" said Jack, in amazement; "sure the fish have no souls in them?"

"Oh! no," replied Coo, quite coolly, "that they have not; but these are the souls of drowned sailors."

"The Lord preserve us from all harm!" muttered lack, "how in the world did you get them?"

"Easily enough: I've only, when I see a good storm coming on, to set a couple of dozen of these, and then, when the sailors are drowned and the souls get out of them under the water, the poor things are almost perished to death, not being used to the cold; so they make into my pots for shelter, and then I have them snug, and fetch them home, and is it not well for them, poor souls, to get into such good quarters?"

Jack was so thunderstruck he did not know what to say, so he said nothing. They went back into the dining-room, and had a little more brandy, which was excellent, and then, as Jack knew that it must be getting late, and as Biddy might be uneasy, he stood up, and said he thought it was time for him to be on the road.

"Just as you like, Jack," said Coo, "but take a duc an durrus before you go; you've a cold journey before you."

Jack knew better manners than to refuse the parting glass.

"I wonder," said he, "will I be able to make out my way home?"

"What should ail you," said Coo, "when I'll show you the way?"

Out they went before the house, and Coomara took one of the cocked hats, and put it upon Jack's head the wrong way, and then lifted him up on his shoulder that he might launch him up into the water.

"Now," says he, giving him a heave, "you'll come up just in the same spot you came down in; and, Jack, mind and throw me back the hat."

He canted Jack off his shoulder, and up he shot like a bubble--whirr, whiff, whiz--away he went up through the water, till he came to the very rock he had jumped off where he found a landing-place, and then in he threw the hat, which sunk like a stone.

The sun was just going down in the beautiful sky of a calm summer's evening. Feascor was seen dimly twinkling in the cloudless heaven, a solitary star, and the waves of the Atlantic flashed in a golden flood of light. So Jack, perceiving it was late, set off home; but when he got there, not a word did he say to Biddy of where he had spent his day.

The state of the poor souls cooped up in the lobster-pots gave Jack a great deal of trouble, and how to release them cost him a great deal of thought. He at first had a mind to speak to the priest about the matter. But what could the priest do, and what did Coo care for the priest? Besides, Coo was a good sort of an old fellow, and did not think he was doing any harm. Jack had a regard for him, too, and it also might not be much to his own credit if it were known that he used to go dine with Merrows. On the whole, he thought his best plan would be to ask Coo to dinner, and to make him drunk, if he was able, and then to take the hat and go down and turn up the pots. It was, first of all, necessary, however, to get Biddy out of the way; for Jack was prudent enough, as she was a woman, to wish to keep the thing secret from her.

Accordingly, Jack grew mighty pious all of a sudden, and said to Biddy that he thought it would be for the good of both their souls if she was to go and take her rounds at Saint John's Well, near Ennis. Biddy thought so too, and accordingly off she set one fine morning at day-dawn, giving Jack a strict charge to have an eye to the place. The coast being clear, away went Jack to the rock to give the appointed signal to Coomara, which was throwing a big stone into the water. Jack threw, and up sprang Coo!

"Good morning, Jack," said he; "what do you want with me?"

"Just nothing at all to speak about, sir," returned Jack, "only to come and take a bit of dinner with me, if I might make so free as to ask you, and sure I'm now after doing so."

"It's quite agreeable, Jack, I assure you; what's your hour?"'

"Any time that's most convenient to you, sir--say one o'clock, that you may go home, if you wish, with the daylight."

"I'll be with you," said Coo, "never fear me."

Jack went home, and dressed a noble fish dinner, and got out plenty of his best foreign spirits, enough, for that matter, to make twenty men drunk. Just to the minute came Coo, with his cocked hat under his arm. Dinner was ready, they sat down, and ate and drank away manfully. Jack, thinking of the poor souls below in the pots, plied old Coo well with brandy, and encouraged him to sing, hoping to put him under the table, but poor Jack forgot that he had not the sea over his head to keep it cool. The brandy got into it, and did his business for him, and Coo reeled off home, leaving his entertainer as dumb as a haddock on a Good Friday.

Jack never woke till the next morning, and then he was in a sad way. "'Tis to no use for me thinking to make that old Rapparee drunk," said Jack, "and how in this world can I help the poor souls out of the lobster-pots?" After ruminating nearly the whole day, a thought struck him. "I have it," says he, slapping his knee; "I'll be sworn that Coo never saw a drop of poteen, as old as he is, and that's the thing to settle him! Oh! then, is not it well that Biddy will not be home these two days yet; I can have another twist at him."

Jack asked Coo again, and Coo laughed at him for having no better head, telling him he'd never come up to his grandfather.

"Well, but try me again," said Jack, "and I'll be bail to drink you drunk and sober, and drunk again."

"Anything in my power," said Coo, "to oblige you."

At this dinner Jack took care to have his own liquor well watered, and to give the strongest brandy he had to Coo. At last says he, "Pray, sir, did you ever drink any poteen?--any real mountain dew?"

"No," says Coo; "what's that, and where does it come from?"

"Oh, that's a secret," said Jack, "but it's the right stuff--never believe me again, if 'tis not fifty times as good as brandy or rum either. Biddy's brother just sent me a present of a little drop, in exchange for some brandy, and as you're an old friend of the family, I kept it to treat you with."

"Well, let's see what sort of thing it is," said Coomara.

The poteen was the right sort. It was first-rate, and had the real smack upon it. Coo was delighted: he drank and he sung Rum bum boodle boo over and over again; and he laughed and he danced, till he fell on the floor fast asleep. Then Jack, who had taken good care to keep himself sober, snapt up the cocked hat--ran off to the rock--leaped, and soon arrived at Coo's habitation.

All was as still as a churchyard at midnight--not a Merrow, old or young, was there. In he went and turned up the pots, but nothing did he see, only he heard a sort of a little whistle or chirp as he raised each of them. At this he was surprised, till he recollected what the priests had often said, that nobody living could see the soul, no more than they could see the wind or the air. Having now done all that he could for them, he set the pots as they were before, and sent a blessing after the poor souls to speed them on their journey wherever they were going. Jack now began to think of returning; he put the hat on, as was right, the wrong way; but when he got out he found the water so high over his head that he had no hopes of ever getting up into it, now that he had not old Coomara to give him a lift. He walked about looking for a ladder, but not one could he find, and not a rock was there in sight. At last he saw a spot where the sea hung rather lower than anywhere else, so he resolved to try there. Just as he came to it, a big cod happened to put down his tail. Jack made a jump and caught hold of it, and the cod, all in amazement, gave a bounce and pulled Jack up. The minute the hat touched the water away Jack was whisked, and up he shot like a cork, dragging the poor cod, that he forgot to let go, up with him tail foremost. He got to the rock in no time and without a moment's delay hurried home, rejoicing in the good deed he had done.

But, meanwhile, there was fine work at home; for our friend Jack had hardly left the house on his soul-freeing expedition, when back came Biddy from her soul-saving one to the well. When she entered the house and saw the things lying thrie-na-helah on the table before her--"Here's a pretty job!" said she; "that blackguard of mine--what ill-luck I had ever to marry him! He has picked up some vagabond or other, while I was praying for the good of his soul, and they've been drinking all the poteen that my own brother gave him, and all the spirits, to be sure, that he was to have sold to his honour." Then hearing an outlandish kind of grunt, she looked down, and saw Coomara lying under the table. "The Blessed Virgin help me," shouted she, "if he has not made a real beast of himself! Well, well, I've often heard of a man making a beast of himself with drink! Oh hone, oh hone!--Jack, honey, what will I do with you, or what will I do without you? How can any decent woman ever think of living with a beast?"

With such like lamentations Biddy rushed out of the house, and was going she knew not where, when she heard the well-known voice of Jack singing a merry tune. Glad enough was Biddy to find him safe and sound, and not turned into a thing that was like neither fish nor flesh. Jack was obliged to tell her all, and Biddy, though she had half a mind to be angry with him for not telling her before, owned that he had done a great service to the poor souls. Back they both went most lovingly to the house, and Jack wakened up Coomara; and, perceiving the old fellow to be rather dull, he bid him not to be cast down, for 'twas many a good man's case; said it all came of his not being used to the poteen, and recommended him, by way of cure, to swallow a hair of the dog that bit him. Coo, however, seemed to think he had had quite enough. He got up, quite out of sorts, and without having the manners to say one word in the way of civility, he sneaked off to cool himself by a jaunt through the salt water.

Coomara, never missed the souls. He and Jack continued the best friends in the world, and no one, perhaps, ever equalled Jack for freeing souls from purgatory; for he contrived fifty excuses for getting into the house below the sea, unknown to the old fellow, and then turning up the pots and letting out the souls. It vexed him, to be sure, that he could never see them; but as he knew the thing to be impossible, he was obliged to be satisfied.

Their intercourse continued for several years. However, one morning, on Jack's throwing in a stone as usual, he got no answer. He flung another, and another, still there was no reply. He went away, and returned the following morning, but it was to no purpose. As he was without the hat, he could not go down to see what had become of old Coo, but his belief was, that the old man, or the old fish, or whatever he was, had either died, or had removed from that part of the country.