Peggy Barrett was once tall,
well-shaped, and comely. She was in her youth remarkable for two qualities,
not often found together, of being the most thrifty housewife, and the best
dancer in her native village of Ballyhooley.
But she is now upwards of sixty
years old; and during the last ten years of her life, she has never been able
to stand upright. Her back is bent nearly to a level; yet she has the freest
use of all her limbs that can be enjoyed in such a posture; her health is
good, and her mind vigorous; and, in the family of her eldest son, with whom
she has lived since the death of her husband, she performs all the domestic
services which her age, and the infirmity just mentioned, allow.
She washes
the potatoes, makes the fire sweeps the house (labours in which she
good-humouredly says "she finds her crooked back mighty
convenient"), plays with the children, and tells stories to the family
and their neighbouring friends, who often collect round her son's fireside to
hear them during the long winter evenings.
Her powers of conversation are
highly extolled, both for humour and in narration; and anecdotes of droll or
awkward incidents, connected with the posture in which she has been so long
fixed, as well as the history of the occurrence to which she owes that
misfortune, are favourite topics of her discourse.
Among other matters she is
fond of relating how, on a certain day, at the close of a bad harvest, when
several tenants of the estate on which she lived concerted in a field a
petition for an abatement of rent, they placed the paper on which they wrote
upon her back, which was found no very inconvenient substitute for a table.
Peggy, like all experienced story-tellers,
suited her tales, both in length and subject, to the audience and the
occasion. She knew that, in broad daylight, when the sun shines brightly, and
the trees are budding, and the birds singing around us, when men and women,
like ourselves, are moving and speaking, employed variously in business or
amusement; she knew, in short (though certainly without knowing or much caring
wherefore), that when we are engaged about the realities of life and nature,
we want that spirit of credulity, without which tales of the deepest interest
will lose their power.
At such times Peggy was brief, very particular as to
facts, and never dealt in the marvellous. But round the blazing hearth of a
Christmas evening, when infidelity is banished from all companies, at least in
low and simple life, as a quality, to say the least of it, out of season; when
the winds of "dark December" whistled bleakly round the walls, and
almost through the doors of the little mansion, reminding its inmates, that as
the world is vexed by elements superior to human power, so it may be visited
by beings of a superior nature : - at such times would Peggy Barrett give full
scope to her memory, or her imagination, or both; and upon one of these
occasions, she gave the following circumstantial account of the
"crookening of her back."
"It was of all days in the year, the
day before May-day, that I went out to the garden to weed the potatoes. I
would not have gone out that day, but I was dull in myself, and sorrowful, and
wanted to be alone; all the boys and girls were laughing and joking in the
house, making goaling-balls and dressing out ribands for the mummers next day.
I couldn't bear it 'Twas only at the Easter that was then past (and that's ten
years last Easter - I won't forget the time), that I buried my poor man; and I
thought how gay and joyful I was, many a long year before that, at the May-eve
before our wedding, when with Robin by my side, I sat cutting and sewing the
ribands for the goaling-ball I was to give the boys on the next day, proud to
be preferred above all the other girls of the banks of the Blackwater, by the
handsomest boy and the best hurler in the village; so I left the house and
went to the garden.
I stayed there all the day, and didn't come home to dinner.
I don't know how it was, but somehow I continued on, weeding, and thinking
sorrowfully enough, and singing over some of the old songs that I sung many
and many a time in the days that are gone, and for them that never will come
back to me to hear them.
The truth is, I hated to go and sit silent and
mournful among the people in the house, that were merry and young, and had the
best of their days before them. 'Twas late before I thought of returning home,
and I did not leave the garden till some time after
sunset. The moon was up; but though there wasn't a cloud to be seen, and
though a star was winking here and there in the sky, the day wasn't long
enough gone to have it clear moonlight ; still it shone enough to make every
thing on one side of the heavens look pale and silvery-like; and the thin
white mist was just beginning to creep along the fields.
On the other side,
near where the sun was set, there was more of daylight, and the sky looked
angry, red, and fiery through the trees, like as if it was lighted up by a
great town burning below. Every thing was as silent as a churchyard, only now
and then one could hear far off a dog barking, or a cow lowing after being
milked. There wasn't a creature to be seen on the road or in the fields. I
wondered at this first, but then I remembered it was May-eve, and that many a
thing, both good and bad, would be wandering about that night, and that I
ought to shun danger as well as others.
So I walked on as quick as I could,
and soon came to the end of the demesne wall, where the trees rise high and
thick at each side of the road, and almost meet at the top. My heart mis-gave
me when I got under the shade. There was so much light let down from the
opening above, that I could see about a stone throw before me.
All of a
sudden I heard a rustling among the branches, on the right side of the road,
and saw something like a small black goat, only with long wide horns turned
out instead of being bent backwards, standing upon its hind legs upon the top
of the wall, and looking down on me. My breath was stopped, and I couldn't
move for near a minute.
I couldn't help, somehow, keeping my eyes fixed on it;
and it never stirred, but kept looking in the same fixed way down at me. At
last I made a rush, and went on; but I didn't go ten steps, when I saw the
very same sight, on the wall to the left of me, standing in exactly the same
manner, but three or four times as high, and almost as tall as the tallest
man.
The horns looked frightful: it gazed upon me as before; my legs shook,
and my teeth chattered, and I thought I would drop down dead every moment. At
last I felt as if I was obliged to go on - and on I went; but it was without
feeling how I moved, or whether my legs carried me.
Just as I passed the spot
where this frightful thing was standing, I heard a noise as if something
sprung from the wall, and felt like as if a heavy animal plumped down upon me,
and held with the fore feet clinging to my shoulder, and the hind ones fixed
in my gown, that was folded and pinned up behind me.
'Tis the wonder of my
life ever since how l bore the shock; but so it was, I neither fell, nor even
staggered with the weight) but walked on as if I had the strength of ten men,
though I felt as if I couldn't help moving, and couldn't stand still if I
wished it.
Though I gasped with fear, I knew as well as I do now what I was
doing. I tried to cry out, but couldn't; I tried to run, but wasn't able; I
tried to look back, but my head and neck were as if they were screwed in a
vice. I could barely roll my eyes on each side, and then I could see, as
clearly and plainly as if it was in the broad light of the blessed sun, a
black and cloven foot planted upon each of my shoulders.
I heard a low
breathing in my ear; I felt, at every step I took, my leg strike back against
the feet of the creature that was on my back. Still I could do nothing but
walk straight on. At last I came within sight of the house, and a welcome
sight it was to me, for I thought I would be released when I reached it.
I
soon came close to the door, but it was shut; I looked at the little window,
but it was shut too, for they were more cautious about May-eve than I was; I
saw the light inside, through the chinks of the door; I heard 'em talking and
laughing within; I felt myself at three yards distance from them that would
die to save me ; - and may the Lord save me from ever again feeling what I did
that night, when I found myself held by what couldn't be good nor friendly,
but without the power to help myself, or to call my friends, or to put out my
hand to knock, or even to lift my leg to strike the door, and let them know
that I was outside it!
'Twas as if my hands grew to my sides, and my feet were
glued to the ground, or had the weight of a rock fixed to them. At last I
thought of blessing myself; and my right hand, that would do nothing else, did
that for me. Still the weight remained on my back, and all was as before. I
blessed myself again: 't was still all the same.
I then gave myself up for
lost: but I blessed myself a third time, and my hand no sooner finished the
sign, than all at once I felt the burthen spring off of my back: the door flew
open as if a clap of thunder burst it, and I was pitched forward on my
forehead, in upon the middle of the floor. When I got up my back was
crookened, and I never stood straight from that night to this blessed
hour."
There was a pause when Peggy Barrett
finished. Those who had heard the story before had listened with a look of
half-satisfied interest, blended, however, with an expression of that serious
and solemn feeling, which always attends a tale of supernatural wonders, how
often soever told.
They moved upon their seats out of the posture in which
they had remained fixed during the narrative, and sat in an attitude which
denoted that their curiosity as to the cause of this strange occurrence had
been long since allayed. Those to whom it was before unknown still retained
their look and posture of strained attention, and anxious but solemn
expectation.
A grandson of Peggy's, about nine years old (not the child of the
son with whom she lived), had never before heard the story. As it grew in
interest, he was observed to cling closer and closer to the old woman's side;
and at the close he was gazing steadfastly at her, with his body bent back
across her knees, and his face turned up to hers, with a look, through which a
disposition to weep seemed contending with curiosity.
After a moment's pause,
he could no longer restrain his impatience, and catching her gray locks in one
hand, while the tear of dread and wonder was just dropping from his eye-lash,
he cried, " Granny, what was it?"
The old woman smiled first at the elder
part of her audience, and then at her grandson, and patting him on the
forehead, she said, "It was the Phooka."
Source:
Thomas Crofton Croker - Fairy Legends and Traditions, first published
1825. republished by Collins Press, Cork 1998.