Turning and turning in the widening gyre…

This being a blog about Irish fairy tales, my answer will be circular, starting with the last question, then answering the first and returning where I began.

For the Irish, time and space – as well as music, poetry, fairy tales and life itself – is interconnected and circular, open yet insular. Journeys and lives explore imaginative possibilities and inevitably return to their starting points. Irish today’s are shaped by their yesterdays, the future by the past, tomorrow by today. When the Irish emigrated, Bringing It All Back Home says that some lived in enclaves and weren’t interested in assimilating (63). This was a wide-open, new country, yet they defined their space by their cultural group.

Each of the fairy tales repeated this circular, enclosed pattern of time and space. In “The King of Ireland’s Son,” the story begins with a funeral procession, unraveling to meet an assortment of unusual characters. It rewinds as each character, in turn, helps the son. Loose ends are neatly tied up when we learn that the short, green man who accompanies him on his journey is the corpse in the coffin at the beginning of the story.

Within these fairy tale journeys, fate plays a prominent role in drawing wanderers where they began, back home. Although time and space seems to stretch out endlessly, it’s an illusion, like Truman’s world in the movie “The Truman Show.” Sometimes fate helps; sometimes it hinders the wanderer in achieving his dreams.

Fate plays a particularly important role in “The Birth of Finn MacCumhail.” Finn’s father is told he will be killed in battle, and he is. The king is told his daughter’s son will take his kingdom, and in spite of trying to kill Finn as an infant, Finn wins the king’s daughter and thus, by marriage, takes his kingdom. However, he chooses the “champions” over the daughter, beginning the Fenians, Irish warriors. Since one of the Irish revolutionary movements took this name, fate appeared even after the story ended to be trying to return the kingdom to Finn.

The Irish view time and space as sean nós singers use the trills and melodic doubling back and other ornamentation in interpreting the songs. Although they are free to wander as far as they’d like, ultimately, both the singers and the Irish are drawn back home.

Each fairy tale reveals a slightly different perspective of the Irish culture in this circular journey.

What I found most striking about all the fairy tales was the dichotomy: freedom and fate; inclusiveness and insularity; emigration and home ties. The old is new and the new old. The Irish seems conflicted, which I wonder might come from reconciling the hard times with love of country, the joy of music and dance with life’s cold realities.

In “The King of Ireland’s Son,” the giant gave the son – a “melodious, lying Irishman” – a number of old items that seemed of less value than similar ones he offered. Yet, each actually was far more useful than it appeared. Similarly, each of the travelers – the gunman, earman, foot runner, blowman and man who broke stones against his thigh – were very odd, to say the least. However, each proved to have great worth. That the king’s son accepted each without question, demonstrated to me the inclusiveness of the Irish, open to all.

For me, “Dreams of Gold,” told of the difference between striving to achieve one’s dreams and simply sitting back and dreaming. By taking control of your life, working hard to realize your dreams, all things are possible. For example, the man from Mayo went looking for and found the gold he’d dreamt about (although, of course, it turned out to be in his own backyard). However, if you just dream, and don’t act, as the cobbler did, nothing will happen. Or if you let something stand in your way, like Anthony Hynes did, there’s always something that will hold you back. As the fairy tale says, “There’s dreams and dreams.”

In addition to the role of fate in life, two things stood out for me in “The Birth of Finn MacCumhail.” First, hierarchy was unquestioned. The hag’s sons complained about Finn and Bran interfering with their ancestral rights. Secondly, strength – and life – was drawn from family and the core of one’s being. Finn’s grandmother saved his life, slew his enemies and even practiced tough love, using switches to help him run faster. Yet, he had to look within himself, or rather chew his finger down to the marrow (his Irish soul?) to “receive knowledge of all things.” It was only through self-knowledge, with a little help from his friend (Bran), that Finn knew how to overcome his enemies and meet his challenges.

“Usheen’s Return to Ireland” seemed to me to be a thinly veiled metaphor for emigrating to the West, where life is good, then returning to Ireland, which is under stress without opportunity. Yet, when Usheen returns, love for his native land follows. He can’t leave and dies broken.

Finally, “The Man Who Had No Story” is the ultimate Irish fairy tale. It shows how if you’re Irish, you’re born to be a musician, dancer, storyteller, even a priest or doctor. It includes a swipe at the British for being the source of Ireland’s misery and celebrates Irish sociability. With a little magic, every Irishman is a storyteller. The tale loops and circles back, a story within a story that ends where it began.

And so shall I. The Irish fairy tales told me much more about my ancestors than their view of space and time. They emphasized their imagination by telling tales in which the magical was an accepted part of life. They embodied the imagination, sense of adventure, possibility of dreams, warmth, and especially the hold of fate and tug of homeland on the Irish psyche.

Nothing better epitomizes that interwoven circle of past and present than the Celtic knot. In both, lines loop and cross, opening and closing space while creating beautiful, interconnected patterns that reflect the complexity of Ireland’s people.