Emerald Magic Read online

  Emerald

  Magic

  Also by Andrew M. Greeley

  from Tom Doherty Associates

  All About Women

  Angel Fire

  Angel Light

  Contract with an Angel

  Faithful Attraction

  The Final Planet

  Furthermore!: Memories of a Parish Priest

  God Game

  The Priestly Sins

  Star Bright!

  Summer at the Lake

  White Smoke

  Sacred Visions (editor with Michael Cassutt)

  The Book of Love (editor with Mary G. Durkin)

  Bishop Blackie Ryan Mysteries

  The Bishop and the Missing L Train

  The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain

  The Bishop in the West Wing

  Nuala Anne McGrail Novels

  Irish Gold

  Irish Lace

  Irish Whiskey

  Irish Mist

  Irish Eyes

  Irish Love

  Irish Stew!

  The O’Malleys in the Twentieth Century

  A Midwinter’s Tale

  Younger than Springtime

  A Christmas Wedding

  September Song

  Second Spring

  Emerald

  Magic

  GREAT TALES of

  IRISH FANTASY

  Edited by Andrew M. Greeley

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in these stories are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  EMERALD MAGIC: GREAT TALES OF IRISH FANTASY

  Copyright © 2004 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Ltd., and Tekno Books All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Emerald magic : great tales of Irish fantasy / edited by Andrew M. Greeley.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 0-765-30504-6

  1. Fantasy fiction, English—Irish authors. 2. Ireland—Fiction. I. Greeley, Andrew M., 1928–

  PR8876.5.F35E44 2004

  823'.0876608—dc22

  2003061477

  First Edition: February 2004

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction, copyright © 2004 by Andrew M. Greeley.

  “Herself,” copyright © 2004 by Diane Duane.

  “Speir-Bhan,” copyright © 2004 by Tanith Lee.

  “Troubles,” copyright © 2004 by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple.

  “The Hermit and the Sidhe,” copyright © 2004 by Judith Tarr.

  “The Merrow,” copyright © 2004 by Elizabeth Haydon.

  “The Butter Spirit’s Tithe,” copyright © 2004 by Charles de Lint.

  “Banshee,” copyright © 1986 by Ray Bradbury. First published in Woman’s Own, February 1986. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, the Don Congdon Agency.

  “Peace in Heaven?” copyright © 2004 by Andrew M. Greeley.

  “The Lady in Grey,” copyright © 2004 by Jane Lindskold.

  “A Drop of Something Special in the Blood,” copyright © 2004 by Fred Saberhagen.

  “For the Blood Is the Life,” copyright © 2004 by Peter Tremayne.

  “Long the Clouds Are over Me Tonight,” copyright © 2004 by Cecilia DartThornton.

  “The Swan Pilot,” copyright © 2004 by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

  “The Isle of Women,” copyright © 2004 by Jacqueline Carey.

  “The Cat with No Name,” copyright © 1989 by Morgan Llywelyn. First published in The Irish Times. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  For Colm O’Muircheartaigh,

  Up Kerry!

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION Andrew M. Greeley

  The Little People

  HERSELF Diane Duane

  SPEIR-BHAN Tanith Lee

  TROUBLES Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple

  THE HERMIT ANDTHE SIDHE Judith Tarr

  THE MERROW Elizabeth Haydon

  THE BUTTER SPIRIT’S TITHE Charles de Lint

  BANSHEE Ray Bradbury

  PEACE IN HEAVEN? Andrew M. Greeley

  Literar y Fantastics

  THE LADY IN GREY Jane Lindskold

  A DROP OF SOMETHING SPECIAL IN THE BLOOD Fred Saberhagen

  FOR THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE Peter Tremayne

  LONG THE CLOUDS ARE OVER ME TONIGHT Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  THE SWAN PILOT L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

  THE ISLEOF WOMEN Jacqueline Carey

  THE CAT WITH NO NAME Morgan Llywelyn

  About The Auther

  Introduction

  When I was a small one,my mother told me stories about “the little people” in Ireland, stories she had heard from her own mother. I don’t think she believed the stories, at least not that much. Her mother before may have told them at least half in fun. Even if they were not altogether true, they were good stories. So I learned early on in life about the characters that swirl around Dublin’s fair city in Diane Duane’s first story in this collection—leprechauns and pookas and silkie and banshee and the rest of them. I was surprised that they had all moved to Dublin, but so, it seems, has everyone else. Indeed the largest number of those who speak The Irish as their first language now live in Dublin. The “little people,” as my mother called them, go wherever the Irish speakers go.

  My mom also explained where the faerie came from. They were the moderate middle angels in the time of the great war in heaven between Michael and his angels and Satan and his angels.When the matter was settled, and the “bad angels” went off to hell, there was some discussion as to where the “independents” should be sent. They had not fought against the Lord God, so they didn’t deserve hell, but they hadn’t been on His side either, so they couldn’t stay in heaven. The decision was they would be sent to earth, to a place of their own choosing. They opted for Ireland: it was, after all, the place on earth most like heaven! They had the Emerald Isle all to themselves until the Celts came, a variety of humans for whom they didn’t have much affection, so they retreated to the west of the island and to their caves and forts and hills and islands in the river and other hangouts. Their situation was made worse when the monks came and replaced the druids. The latter were properly afraid of them, but the Catholic clergy vigorously denied their existence and denounced them from the altars. The Sidhe (whom I call the Shee because few can be expected to cope with the mysteries of Irish spelling) decided that it was not prudent to take on the priests directly and withdrew farther into the ground and into mystery and magic.

  In my own story in this collection I try to make peace between the two angelic hosts, an exercise of fantasy, I hasten to add, not theology (lest I be delated to the Holy Office!).

  However, at one time the greatest concentration of them was in the County Mayo, whence came all four of my grandparents. Indeed after the famine, it was said, there were more faerie in Mayo than there were humans. So it is fitting that I write this introduction.

  Do I believe that one could find the faerie in Mayo today? Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never looked for them and probably never will, and myself without any psychic sensitivity at all, at all. A prudent man, I would not venture into faerie fields or faerie forts or faerie mounds. You can never tell what you might find. Nor will I spend much
time in the “front” room of a Mayo cottage, which by tradition is kept neat and empty except for wakes because on their wild rides around the County, the Troop seems to dash through the front rooms. I’ve never heard the reason for this belief. Indeed even today, many people are unwilling to talk about the faerie because it is bad luck.

  Hence the various euphemisms for them in addition to my mom’s “little people.” They are variously called “they,” “the gentry,” and “the Troop.” Sometimes people don’t call them anything, but merely wink and nod in the general direction of nowhere.

  One of my sociological mentors, Everett C. Hughes, told a story about his research in rural Quebec. He asked an old man whether he believed in the faerie. “They’re not around anymore, the man replied, but they were in my grandmother’s day.”

  The Irish have no monopoly on the faerie.Mircea Eliade, the distinguished student of comparative religion, once wrote an essay on the Romanian faerie, who, it turned out, were exactly like the Irish faerie, even to the name of Troop of Diana (Tuatha de Danu). So perhaps the legends of the faerie folk are part of an ancient Indo-European heritage. Some will say that it is not surprising that they (or the memory of them) would survive in Ireland, because the Irish are a very superstitious people. In fact, in a survey of thirty nations, the Irish were the least superstitious, less even than the English. The highest rates were in Eastern Europe. So perhaps a study of folklore all along the Danube will unearth remnants of the Tuatha there too. They are at least an improvement on the overweight gods and goddesses who sing in Wagner’s ponderous opera and the ham-handed Nordic characters who live in the regions of the North Pole.

  The question remains, however, why, if the Irish are the least superstitious of Europeans, they still have so much affection for “them” and indeed why they seem to be so prevalent in this collection of Irish stories, dominating the first half and sneaking into the second half. There are, I believe, a number of explanations. The Irish love stories—they are really the only ones in the world who should write short stories—and “they” are the source of endless good stories. Moreover, they are occasionally somewhat sympathetic to humans, though they usually pay no attention to them.

  The so-called “Celtic twilight,”which Irish writers in the last century created as an ambience for their stories, does reflect to some extent the mystical bent of Irish culture, even in Dublin. In all the fog and the rain, mixed intermittently with dazzling sun showers, the boundaries between the real and the fantastical do seem a bit porous.

  The pre-Christian culture of the land believed that the boundaries between this world and the “many-colored lands”were thin and in some times of the year easily permeable—All Hallows, Brigid’s Day, May Day, Lady Day in Harvest (Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lugnasa). At these four days of the yearly cycle, especially All Hallows, those in the many-colored lands were free to walk among the living—to seek forgiveness, to settle scores, to request prayers, and to express love. The Church, which was very skillful in absorbing pagan festivals in the Celtic Isles, easily baptized these festivals and called them Rogation Days. In some popular Irish Catholicism the blessed in heaven are depicted not as existing in some far-off space but all around us, watching us with affection and pride.

  So Ireland is a land of twilight, twilight weather, twilight religion, twilight culture. Small wonder then that fantasy stories of Irish origin and influence are for the most part stories told at twilight time and in twilight perspective by lovers of half-light.

  Ms. Duane’s story, “Herself,” brings the night streets of Dublin alive with mystery and wonder and introduces a very new and very dangerous member of the Troop, who wants to destroy all the others. To deal with this threat she recalls your man back from Zurich and reunites him with his old love, Anna Livia Plurabelle.

  Your man lives on also in the stories of Flan O’Brien, who reports that himself survived death in Zurich during the war and works in South County Dublin, where he tends bar and write pious tracts for Jesuit magazines. O’Brien—ne Brian O’Nolan—is not thought of as a fantasy writer, but only because there was no such thing as fantasy literature in his days and because few read him today. However, he is certainly the greatest of all Irish fantasy masters.

  Tanith Lee, whose work I have admired for a long time, admits to only a strain of Irish genes.However, one need only to read one of her stories, any of her stories, to know that she comes from the twilight world and to suspect that this story (“Speir-Bhan”) is far more autobiographical than her many chilling vampire tales. I’ve never heard of the three fox women before, but they surely belong in the faerie legions, and I would not want to meet them on a dark night in the County Mayo or in London either. Note that in the first two stories, the faerie adjust easily to modern life, walking the streets of Dublin or riding the tube in London.

  The next two stories are violent. In the first, “Troubles” (Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple), two branches of the Shee fight one another in a pub on the eve of Beltaine. The good guys, as depicted by the narrator, win the bloody brawl, and the narrator comments that if they did not have the Irish, the fey would have to invent them.

  In Judith Tarr’s story (“The Hermit and the Sidhe”), the violence is between the Shee and the Church, or rather a rural monsignor who is moved to go on a crusade against them. He fails because the Shee find an ally in a hermit,much to the delight of the townsfolk.

  Elizabeth Haydon’s “The Merrow” may well be a cousin to the silkie woman who was a key character in John Sayles brilliant fantasy film The Legend of Roan Inish. In both cases the seal woman (perhaps borrowed from Nordic folklore) fought for her love, and in both they won, but more gently in the film, where the missing baby is only spending time with “another branch of the family” until his parents decide not to abandon the island. In both this and the previous story, God’s love for his creatures is invoked on the side of faerie, a point which Gaby and Mike make in my story.

  I’ve never heard of the Butter Spirit (in Charles de Lint’s story “The Butter Spirit’s Tithe”), though I suspect he is part of the crowd and not a nice person either, probably one of the bad Shee in the Yolen and Stemple story. However, the gray man is certainly part of the heritage and also a bad Shee, but not without some sense of justice.

  Is the wailing young woman out in the cold in Ray Bradbury’s story really a “Banshee” (a woman spirit) or is she a ghost or is she a plant that the narrator has used to get rid of his dubious friend? I’m inclined to think that she is the last. The real banshee, is, as everyone knows, an old woman, just as she appears in Duane’s story.

  Finally, my own efforts to reconcile the Shee with the Seraphs (“Peace in Heaven”) is based on two premises—if the angels have bodies (as the fathers of the Church say they do), albeit ethereal bodies, then there must eventually be deterioration and, for the species to survive, reproduction. Gender differentiation is not the only way to do it, but the Other seems to have a certain fondness for this method. The second premise is that in the book of Job, Satan is one of God’s court and not a demon. The Seraphs have appeared in some of my novels, but this is the first time they’ve ever been to Ireland. Like I say, they are fantasy, not theology. Yet, as I also say, I’ll be disappointed if in the Other’s variegated cosmos there are not beings like them.

  The second group of stories are less explicitly tied to faerie lore, though the “Lady in Grey” in Jane Lindskold’s story about Maud Gonne and William Yeats may well be faerie too. Yeats was surely the greatest English-language lyric poet of the twentieth century, but I have always felt that he was a creep as a lover and that Maud was well rid of him. Readers of the story will have to decide whether they agree with me.

  The two stories about blood, “A Drop of Something in the Blood” and “For the Blood Is the Life”(Fred Saberhagen and Peter Tremayne), are a reference (explicit and then implicit) to another Irish writer who has had an enormous impact on the world, though no one has ever suggested that Bram Stok
er, the creator of Dracula, was in the same class as Willie Yeats. The encounter between him and Charcot is a dazzling premise brilliantly executed. Peter Tremayne has the most terrifying of the horror stories in this collection, not particularly Irish in its assumptions, but still benefiting greatly from its setting in Dublin.

  Cecilia Dart-Thornton’s retelling of Lady Gregory’s version of the Oisin story is impressive. It is about Irish Faerie and the followers of Finn McCool, and the ultimate defeat of the faerie (though never complete) by Patrick and his crowd.Moreover the faerie woman who takes Oisin away from the Fiana is the daughter of MacLir, who shows up in Dublin to dialogue with Gaby and Mike. Yet the story in its present form is more literary than folkloric, so I put it in the section that deals with fantasy inspired less by folkore and more by more or less contemporary Irish literature (last century and a half).

  L. E. Modesitt, Jr.’s lyrical story of space travel could also belong to the early-twentieth-century Celtic revival, an era dense with Irish mysticism. And in this story there’s more than a hint of Irish mystical pride. “The universe is thought, wrapped in rhyme and music, and that’s why the best pilots hold the blood of the Emerald Isle . . . so long as there are Irish, there will always be an Ireland.” And Amen to that.

  Similarly mystical is Jacqueline Carey’s sad story of the “Isle of Women.” It is dense with the melancholy Irish sense of doomed love. I don’t think the people of the story are faerie exactly, though the Lady has some magical power. In a way I am surprised that the theme of lost love doesn’t recur in some of the other stories.

  Morgan Llywelyn’s sweet story of Nuala’s cat, however, is a fine way to end a book about a fantastic sensibility that constantly plays back and forth between a profound fatalism and a strong sense of hope. I’m sure “The Cat with No Name” was an angel, indeed perhaps Maeve from my story, engaged in renewed work for the Other.

  I have written this introduction with the assumption that the authors of the stories are all Irish, but, as far as I know, none of them are. Diana Duane knows Dublin so well that she may well be Irish. Morgan Llywelyn is Welsh, though she lives in Ireland, Tanith Lee claims a strong strain of Irish genes.And while my grandparents were all from Mayo—God help us—I’m a Yank. The Irish sense of the fantastic is so catholic that outsiders can readily fit into its hopeful and fatalistic twilight and write, not like the real Irish would, but at least with enough verisimilitude to sound like they’re Irish. The Emerald Magic is available for all who will treasure it.