Banshees, Leprechauns and Pishogues:
The Three Toms Remember the Old Stories
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THE THREE TOMS - Tom Scanlon, Tom Butler, and Tom O'Flynn - ready to dig into a feast of delicious boiled potatoes, cabbage and ham.
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By CATHOLINE BUTLER
In this issue, the three Toms - Tom O'Flynn (Limerick), Tom Scanlon (Mayo) and Tom Butler (Mayo) - are still gathered around the O'Flynn hearth and the conversation continues. [For easier reading Tom O'Flynn is Tom O, Tom Scanlon is Tom S, and Tom Butler is Tom B.]
In Ireland, long before there was radio or television, entertainment was often storytelling, and the news would be carried from one neighbour to another or by travelling bards.
The bards were welcomed at every house because they brought the news from one county to the next. When neighbour would meet neighbour, generally the first thing they would want to know is "what's the news?" or in Irish "Cen sceal?"
It's been said that the Irish love to talk, and that's where the three Toms are in their element. Their topics include everything from the economy in Ireland to sports, local and overseas news, and, of course, the women.
There can be no doubt that the three Toms like to stretch the blarney a bit ....well, maybe a lot! But one thing that you can always be sure of, no matter how depressing the daily news is.....the slagging, laughter and sceal is always non-stop at O'Flynn's.
Now, the steam is rising from the boiled cabbage, ham and spuds, and the tea is ready.....all the right ingredients for the three Toms to carry on with the discussion. This time it's about banshees, leprechauns and pishogues.
Speaking about the banshee, Tom S said, "it was said that people with Mac or O in front of their name would sometimes hear the banshee cry before someone died. But sure, didn't everyone in Ireland have Mac or O in front of their name."
Tom O said, "It has been said that the banshee followed people with the Mac and O names when they left Ireland."
He says he personally knows about an incident saying, "There was a chap living not too far from me here in Vancouver, who had an O in front of his last name.
"He had been sick for awhile and he used to stand at the window looking out and he saw the woman (the banshee), and she would be keening.
"He told his son that he saw the banshee and that went on for two or three days before he died."
Tom O continued, "now, that happened right here in this city because his daughter told me that she would try to get her father to leave the window, but he told her that he could see the woman outside and that he would like to meet her."
"The cry from the banshee has been described as a wailing cry, it's always a woman, dressed in black and you would not see her face. Somewhere close beside her would be light, a type of fire beside her.
"At least, that was what I heard when I was growing up in Ireland," said Tom O. "My sister said that she heard the banshee before my father died and my mother said that before her father died, there were three knocks on her door and she knew that her father had died."
Tom B said, "the same thing happened at our neighbours the Caseys. They used to lock their back door every night and every morning the door would be wide open.
"Our other neighbours, the O'Malleys, lived in a big house near us and every night the furniture in their house would all be moved and rearranged.
"They finally couldn't take it any more and packed up. We all helped them to move their furniture out of their house to another house."
Tom O said, "that sounds like the pishogues. The leprechauns never did anyone harm but the pishogues did try to do someone harm."
A pishogue was when a man or a woman would give their soul to the devil to obtain wealth.
Tom O continued, "At home in Limerick we heard about a woman who used to go on the first of May to a place where there was a hawthorne tree with branches that grew into the ground. She would circle the tree several times and give her soul to the devil for wealth.
"This same lady that was doing the pishogues, would be going through our fields night and day, but mostly at night. You would meet her crossing the fields at 10 o'clock or at midnight and she would be going around to all the neighbours.
"If the neighbours had a field of potatoes, or a barn with eggs, she would go there, and she would also visit the cows and the cattle as well. She was a very prosperous lady.
"Anyway, the time came when the Lord was taking her home. For three weeks she was inside in the house and she was screaming...she could be heard for two miles and we all said, 'the devil has got a hold of her now.'"
He remembers that his mother said she would have to go down to the house and visit this sick woman. "My brother James and myself warned her not to go into the house for fear that she would bring the bad luck out of it.
"After my mother came home from visiting this woman, we went out into our barn where we had four suckey calves and three of them were dead. And as if that wasn't bad enough, I had a pony and he came in from the field, lay down and died.
"That night, we were bringing the cattle in from the field to milk them and one of the cows ran right through a wall and died.
"That all happened in a few days so....that has been my experience with the pishogues."
The conversation then turned to 'hungry grass'. During the time of the Famine in Ireland, grass that the starving Irish had walked over in search of food and where many lay buried was referred to as hungry grass.
Even today, some people who walk over that same grass will experience those same excruciating hunger pains.
Tom O talked about his experience with hungry grass. "On our farm in Ireland we had horses, and I ploughed our fields with the horses. One time, one of our neighbours asked if I would plough his field.
"He told me that when I was ploughing, to always stay out seven or eight feet from the hedges because during the Famine, when the people were walking to Limerick City in search of food, many of the babies died on the way.
"The family would bury the babies in the hedges and the land where they were buried became known as hungry grass."
The kettle is still on over at the O'Flynn gathering house.....and the three Toms are still telling stories around the hearth.
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