Blair Collection > Beside the fire

NOTES. 193
story phonetically, and word for word, from a native of Glencolumkille, in
Donegal, informed me that all the other stories of the same narrator were
characterized by the same extraordinary style. I certainly have met nothing
like it among any of my shanachies. The crumskeen and galskeen which Neil
orders the smith to make for him. are instruments of which I never met or
heard mention elsewhere. According to their etymology they appear to mean
"stooping-knife" and " bright-knife," and were, probably, at one time, well-
known names of Irish surgical instruments, of which no trace exists, unless it
be in some of the mouldering and dust-covered medical MSS. from which Irish
practitioners at one time drew their knowledge. The name of the hero, if
written phonetically, would be more likeNee-al O Corrwy than Neil O Carree,
but it is always difficult to convey Gaelic sounds in English letters. When
Neil takes up the head out of the skillet (a good old Shaksperian word; by-the-
by, old French, esaiellette, in use all over Ireland, and adopted into Gaelic), it
falls in a gUggar or glitgoar. This Gaelic word is onomatopeic, and largely
in vogue with the English-speaking population. Anything rattling or gurgling,
like water in an india-rubber ball, makes a gligger ; hence, an egg that is no
longer fresh is called a glugger, because it makes a noise when shaken. I
came upon this word the other day, raised proudly aloft from its provincial
obscurity, in O'Donovan Rossa's paper, the United Irishman, every copy of
which is headed with this weighty sprtich, indicative of his political faith :
" As soon will a goose sitting upon a glugger hatch goslings, as an Irishman,
sitting in an English Parliament, will hatch an Irish Parliament."
This story is motivated like "The King of Ireland's Son." It is one of
the many tales based upon an act of compassion shown to the dead.
Trunk-Without-Head.
Page 157. This description of the decapitated ghost sitting astride the
beer-barrel, reminds one of Crofton Croker's " Clooricaun," and of the hag's
son in the story of " Paudyeen O'Kelly and the Weasel." In Scotch Highland
tradition, there is a " trunk-without-hcad,'' who infested a certain ford, and
killed people who attempted to pass that way ; he is not the subject, however,
of any regular story.
In a variant of this tale the hero's name is Labhras (Laurence) and the
castle where the ghost appeared is called Baile-an-bhroin (Ballinvrone). It is
also mentioned, that when the ghost appeared in court, he came in streaming
with blood, as he was the day he was killed, and that the butler, on seeing him,
fainted.