I THINK Dianne McLauren was the only anthropologist I’ve ever met, and that meeting must be 25 or 30 years ago. She came from America and I don’t know how she poked me out at all!
It was definitely long before I got a computer and I’d say before internet and suchlike were invented.
I think I got a phone call out of the blue from this lady, saying she was coming to Ireland soon and could I meet her? No bother, says I, thinking that, like so many before and since, she was just looking for her ‘roots’ -some ancestral link with his area.
I often surmise that if we had close on 5,000 people living in this parish in 1841, and that was down to around 600 a century later, even allowing for the horrors of the Famine, there must be literally thousands of folk all over the world with familial ties here.
For the life of me, I cannot recall who gave Dianne my name, but anyhow, she came. She introduced herself as an anthropologist, which in plain man’s language meant she studied humanity! Right, says I - that sounded like a fairly onerous study. She laughed and explained her trip to Ireland was in search of the mystical - or mythical - leprechaun!
Well, I told Diane that as a six-year -old boy I had definitely seen a kangaroo one morning in the Little Iron Gate Field, but I’d never seen trace nor tidings of any leprechaun. She wasn’t surprised. In her opinion, the last leprechauns had probably died out in Ireland maybe in the late 1700s or early 1800s.
Her studies of humanity and the movements of peoples had informed her three decades of research. Her theory as regards Ireland was that in very ancient pre-Celtic times, this country - still joined physically to mainland Europe - was probably inhabited by the group, clan or race that has been named as the Tuatha de Dannain.
This is not just a theory espoused by Dianne, but it’s widely held belief of many scholars.
When were these lads here? Well, the well laid out Ceide Fields in Mayo could be proof of ‘farmers’ in that area perhaps 6000 years ago. This site is an amazing example of a complex, structured and highly developed system of agricultural husbandry.
Were these the Tuatha? No-one knows. One way or another, various ‘new’ settlers like the Partalonians and others arrived in this country over the years.
Dianne’s theory was that the original settlers, the Tuatha de Dannan, were then marginalised, living in the woods and mountains on the outskirts of ‘society’. They were in effect ostracized ‘little people’, but then the average height of the populace of Ireland has risen dramatically over the centuries.
Living as outcasts, they continued their families within their own kind. The absence of ‘new blood’ causes genetic problems in successive generations. Inter-breeding also brought maladies, thus resulting in declining numbers of a low-sized race of people.
Dianne believed, from her research and exhaustive studies, that this marginalised grouping lived in hollows and even in the old and abandoned ‘raths’ or forts that still dot our countryside. They struggled on, but their future was doomed and destined for eventual extinction. Dianne thinks this happened about 300 years ago.
I asked her about the link between the leprechauns and gold and hidden treasure. She thought that an ancient race probably living so close to nature had cures, remedies and other traits now lost.
I suppose ‘the little people’ were seldom seen but often heard by night and this added to their mystique.
Fair enough, says I - not yet fully convinced about the veracity of her pronouncements - but what can I do or say to help you? All she wanted from me was any lore or stories I had heard over the years that might fit in with her research.
Eamonn Kelly used say after telling a yarn: “I’m only saying what I heard and I only heard what was said …. and what was said was mainly lies!” Dianne just wanted stories and she’d be the arbitrator of whether they were truth or lies. She wanted lore about leprechauns, ghosts and spirits.
Mrs Johanah Scanlan died in 1978 at the great age of 96. She lived with her bachelor sons Tom and Martin. They were farmers but much, much more - they were historians, aviators, mechanics, engineers, spiritualists, folklorists, and men who awakened and fostered a love of local history in my teenage head.
In the early 1970s, Donncha O Dulaing was in Castlelyons recording a radio programme for RTÉ. Mrs Scanlan was a Morrisson from just outside Castlelyons. Herself and Peter Hegarty, of Kilcor, recalled when An tAthair Peadar O Laoghaire was a priest in Castlelyons - when they were youngsters.
I can still hear Mrs Scanlan describe the ‘whish’ she often heard of a summer’s evening on Mellahen Moor - high ground, now forested. Back in the 1890s it was wide open, bare moorland and here’s where she often heard the ‘whish’ of the hurling games of the little people.
“But did ye see them?” Donncha enquired. “No, but we could hear the sounds on a calm, still evening away across the moor - we knew what it was alright.”
Mrs Scanlan was buried with her Morrison ancestors in Gortroe - she was the last person to go into that grave. On the headstone over her grave, a Richard Morrisson is commemorated. He died in 1777, aged just 35. He was bringing a load of coal by horse and butt from Janeville Quay below Tallow. On his journey home, as he passed along the road through Kilcor - nearly in sight of his home - he got some kind of a shocking fright. He got home shortly afterwards, took to his bed and died in a few days.
Richard was unable to describe who or what he saw on the hillside above the road. Some say the ghost of a slain Monk from the Cromwellian persecution was often to be seen. This couldn’t adequately explain what happened to poor Richard.
Strange things happen, and the absence of the ESB can’t be the reason for so many sightings and soundings.
At Coneen na Sprioda, above our house, the path trodden by a black dog crossing the road was still pointed out when I was child. I’ve never seen or heard the animal, but to this day or night I’d walk a bit faster and pull my coat tighter when passing the spot - especially of a moonlit night.
The Heaphy brothers lived in the next parish, Lisgoold. When Sonny died, the banshee’s lonesome cry was heard all along the nearby valley.
I know people who say the banshee’s call is simply the mating call of foxes, but ask anyone who’s heard both and you’ll get your answer!
Sonny Heaphy died after Eddie, and on the night of his death a dog literally galloping along the road was heard - it was a calm night. The sound was so clear, but no sight of the dog was observed.
Eddie milked three cows, and the day after he died two neighbours tried might and main to get the cows in out of the field for milking. If they were there yet, the cows would not oblige.
Only when one of the men put on Eddie’s coat and hat did the three animals walk in in single file.
Leprechauns, ghosts, banshees, spirits, ghostly dogs - figments of the imagination, or just a manifestation of all that’s around us all the time?
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
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