Reading an old paper by Leigh Henry on Celtic music, I came across a wonderful anecdote worth reading in full (I do miss the days when academic work was written with such personal fervour), but an extract from which I'll relate here.
It is the early twentieth century, and Henry is out walking on the Irish coast in Sligo. He is lost in swirling sea-mists, from which emerges a mysterious old woman. He asks her for directions back to his cousins' home, and she gives such exhaustively precise directions that he asks if she's misleading him:
"Sure, son," she answered, "'tis meself will be lettin' the lie on ye when the stars be fallin' and the sun be burnt up like a peat-turf and the say itself will be as dry as an owid cow's udders in a drought; and 'tis then I'll be lettin' the lie on ye!"
Around me things grew suddenly still. I was ashamed of my sophisticated condescension to the peasant. For I had heard the words of a race of poets. This wizened old woman had answered me in phrases which would thrill one in the Abbey Theater of Dublin, or halt one from the pages of an Irish poem.
Henry (1933, p402)
The hyperbolic reaction of a sentimental and impressionable early-twentieth-century academic? Not so fast. Years later, Henry, in a book on Celtic myth, comes across this titbit on Alexander the Great:
[...] Alexander the Great-had conferred to make treaty with the Celts on the northern frontiers of ancient Greece. And after they had conferred seven days, they were agreed. So Alexander spoke to the Celtic envoys, saying, "We are of one accord; so sign our treaty!" And the envoys answered him, "We are Celts! We sign nothing; but we give our word; and when we forswear our given word, the stars shall crumble from the sky, the sun shall be burnt to cold ashes and the vastness of the sea shall run dry!"
(ibid, p403)
I have also been reading tales from the Auvergne, collected by the nineteenth-century folklorist Paul Sébillot, and came across a tale which struck me for a parallel with Irish folklore. A young girl, Isabeau, has run away from her cruel stepmother, and having rather lost her way:
French | English (my translation) |
Lorsqu’elle se réveilla, la lune était haute dans le ciel, les étoiles brillaient, et Isabeau eut peur, seule au milieu de cette plaine nue et dé serte. Elle trembla en entendant le cri du hibou, l’oiseau de malheur, et frémit en voyant des étoiles couler dans le ciel, car les étoiles filantes, lui avait-on dit, sont les âmes des morts, qui vont dans l’autre monde. Tout à coup, au milieu du silence de la nuit, il lui sembla enten dre au loin l’horloge du village sonner les douze coups de minuit, et immédiatement, elle vit la bruyère frémir et s’agiter. Elle aperçut d’abord un petit personnage pas plus haut qu’un enfant, qui sortit de dessous une pierre ; il avait une grosse tête et une grande barbe blan che qui tombait jusqu’à terre ; peu après vint le rejoindre une vieille petite femme toute ridée, et paraissant avoir plus de cent ans, puis de chaque caillou, de chaque touffe de bruyère, sortit un petit être semblable. Il y en avait des milliers, autant qu’il y a de grains de mil dans un boisseau, et tous couraient et s’agitaient avec vivacité. Enfin, ils se mirent tous à danser en chantant : Toutes les âmes pieuses. Toutes les âmes pieuses. La jeune fille voulut fuir, mais un des petits personnages la prit par la main en disant : « Voilà Isabeau, une fille des hommes, qui va danser et chanter avec nous ! » « Oui, danse avec nous, Isabeau, chante avec nous ! » Reprirent tous les autres. « Comment voulez-vous que je danse avec vous ? Répondit la pauvre fille. Vous chantez toujours la même chose. » « Ajoute, ajoute, Isabeau ! Tu finiras nos tourments ; nous sommes des âmes en peine, condamnées à danser et chanter depuis minuit jusqu’au jour, et cela tant que nous n’aurons pas fait un cantique à la louange du Seigneur. Nous y travaillons depuis plus de cent ans et nous n’avons encore trouvé que ce que tu viens d’entendre. » Et toutes les petites âmes se mirent encore à crier d’une voix suppliante : « Ajoute, Isabeau ! Ajoute ! Ajoute ! » La jeune fille réfléchit un moment, puis elle prit la main d’une des âmes en peine et chanta : Toutes les âmes pieuses, Toutes les âmes pieuses, Louent leur Seigneur et maître (bis) | She trembled hearing the cry of the owl, the bird of bad luck, and shivered seeing stars streak across the sky, for shooting stars, people had told her, were the souls of the dead going to the other world.
All at once, in the middle of the silence of the night, she seemed to hear the village clock strike the twelve strokes of midnight, and straight away, she saw the heather shiver and shake. She saw at first a little figure not higher than a child, emerging from under a stone; he had a big head and a great white beard which fell to the ground; shortly after, a little old woman, all wrinkled, joined him; she must have been more than a hundred years old. Then from every pebble, from every tuft of heather, emerged a similar little being. There were thousands, as many as there are millets in a bushel, and all running and gesticulating with vivacity. At last, they set about dancing while singing: “All the pious souls All the pious souls”
The young girl wanted to run away, but one of the little people took her by the hand, saying “Here is Isabeau, a daughter of men, to dance and sing with us!” “Yes, dance and sing with us, Isabeau!” echoed the others. “How can I dance with you?” she answered. “You sing the same thing over and over!”
“Continue, Isabeau, continue! You will end our misery; we are lost souls, condemned to dance and sing from midnight to daylight, until we have composed a hymn in praise of the Lord. We have been working at it more than a century, and we have not yet more than what you have just heard.”
And all the little souls began shouting pleadingly: “Continue, Isabeau! Continue! Continue!”
The young girl reflected a moment, and then she took the hand of one of the lost souls and sang: “All the pious souls, All the pious souls Praise their Lord and master.” (repeat)
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In any case, Isabeau continues to weave a full hymn for them, line by line, but what interests me most here is this lovely image of "lost souls," which reminds me of another belief, from Ireland:
'[T]he butterflies are the souls of the dead waiting for the moment when they may enter Purgatory, and so pass through torture to purification and peace.'
(from Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland)
Francophone readers, I also came across a wonderful old book by a Mlle. M. Caroëf, Contes et Légendes de Bretagne. It is beautifully and heartfeltly written. The narrative framing devices, set in the present day, are particularly effective in linking the past and present, gently deploring modern cynicism.
'The sun had just buried itself under the horizon, and the night was slowly creeping over the plain. A little tired from our course across the rocky paths of the moor, we had sat ourselves down on the rocks of the fairy Margot, these strange stones thrown in confusion across the moor, as though some giant hand had lobbed them one day from the sky.
It was the gentle hour where reality faded away, where the dreams shattered by the brutal clarity of the day awoke in the tottering twilight. Already in the shade which surrounded them, the rocks were assuming mysterious forms.
In the olden days, the light, laughing fairies played among these stones; you glimpsed them sometimes, effortlessly lifting great blocks, and then suddenly they vanished and bold men who drew closer found stationary stones, and heard echo a mocking laugh which followed them through the night [...]'
(my translation)
Regarding the subject-matter itself, I was particularly intrigued by the tale of the princess Ahès, which resembles a great deal the story of the Buddha, except that the prophecy, in her case, was that she would die as soon as she learnt of death, not just renounce worldly pleasures. The passage in which she learns this truth is particularly finely written.
There are plenty more intriguing stories- a cursed sword, a man who sympathises with the pain of felled trees, a fairy with a deadly dance ('rapid, lighter than the leaves carried by the south-west wind')..... all well worth a read.
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I revisited the recordings of Chopin grandpupil Koczalski after a while, and hit a jackpot almost straight away. Koczalski's recording of the Raindrop Prelude, as highlighted by the uploader of the linked video, is distinguished by a fabulous middle section. Look at the voicing of those first four left hand chords (repeated later too).
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