Message #130647

[Crissy Herrell]

This was an Irish charm for the toothache:--

"May the thumb of chosen Thomas
in the side of guileless Christ
heal my teeth without lamentation
from worms and from pangs."

Charms of a peculiar kind were employed to ward off evil. Of these--more potent than the feminine sign of the horseshoe over the threshold--was the celebrated Shelah-na-Gig. The writer, many years ago, was shown one of these strange figures in the reserved depositaries of the British Museum. It was the squatting figure of an

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exposed naked female, rudely sculptured, not unlike, except in size, the singular colossi under the Museum porch brought from Easter Isle. This figure was taken down from over the doorway of an ancient church in Ireland, and was, without doubt, a relic of pagan days, used during many Christian centuries to ward off evil from the incoming congregation. Another stood by the moat of Howth.

In the Stone Chips of E. T. Steven we have the following--"The horse-shoe is still the conventional figure for the Yoni in Hindoo temples, and although its original import was lost, until lately the horse-shoe was held to be a charm against witchcraft and the evil eye amongst ourselves, precisely as was the case with the more unmistakable Shelah-na-Gig at certain churches in Ireland."

The Dublin Museum contains an extraordinary bone-pin representing the Shelah-na-Gig and evidently a charm to shield the wearer. It was found alongside a skull in a field. Wilde declared that a Roscommon child was taken from the grave to obtain its arms for charm purposes.

Popular holidays are still associated with the ideas of former heathen festivals.

May-day in some parts of Ireland has its female mummers, who dance and hurl, wearing a holly-bush. A masked blown carries a pail of water with a mop for spreading its contents abroad. Boys then sing carols, as in France. In the south-east of Ireland a girl is chosen as May Queen, presiding at all May-makings till she is married. May Eve, having its dangers from fairies, &c., is spent in making cattle safe from the milk-thieving little people, by causing the cows to leap over fires. Dairymaids prudently drive their cows along with the mystical rowan stick.

Of the phallic May-pole, set up for St. John's Eve or Midsummer-day, N. O'Kearney remarks, "The pole was

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evidently used in the Druidical ceremonies." Yule cakes were Nur cakes. Hogmanay was observed, as in Scotland. Hog was a Chaldaen festival. Irish pagan feasts were announced by the blowing of long horns, two or three yards in length, some of which are to be seen in Dublin Museum. The Christmas Candle of south-west Ireland was burnt till midnight on Christmas Eve, and the remnant kept as a preservative against evil spirits till the next year's candle was set up. Magic ointment revealed the invisible.

All Saints' Day perpetuated the pagan Samhain of November Eve. Holy cakes, known sometimes as triangular bannocks, were then eaten as Soul-Mass cakes.

"November Eve," says Mrs. Bryant's Celtic Ireland, "is sacred to the Spirits of the Dead. In the western islands the old superstition is dying very hard, and tradition is still well alive. It is dangerous to be out on November Eve, because it is the one night in the year when the dead come out of their graves to dance with the fairies on the hills, and as it is their night, they do not like to be disturbed."--"Funeral games are held in their houses." In olden times it was thought their dead heroes could help in distress.

"Twice during the Treena of Tailten,
Each day at sunrise I invoked Mac Eve
To remove from me the pestilence."