Tales from Irish folklore: The woman who was knocked by the fairy wind and replaced

Eva Osborne

A tale from Irish folklore details how a woman was knocked over by the sí-gaoith (fairy wind) and replaced by a fairy woman, forcing her husband to search for answers and a cure.

The story, relayed to Eddie Lenihan in Meeting The Other Crowd: The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland, starts with the man, his wife, and his family turning hay together.

The storyteller recounted the tale to him, saying: "The same day, the fairy wind came at different times. The old people at that time, if they heard the fairy wind coming, they'd throw themselves down. For if it knocked you, they said you might never again rise.

"But this woman, she had a rake, an ordinary rake - 'twas all handwork at the time-and she was clearing the ground, raking it clean with the timber rake. She was just out at the end o' the line o' hay, and she was turning, when the fairy wind caught her and knocked her, herself and the rake. She wasn't down two minutes when she was up again."

From that day on, the woman did not feel right, but life went on as normal.

"At that time, women milking cows used to sing for the cows. She was a great singer, but the husband noticed that she stopped that, stopped the singing. She wasn't right ever after.

"She worked away, but twelve months was nearly up, and she was getting weaker and weaker, and she wasn't fit to do much work."

The woman's husband tried everything and brought his wife to blessed wells and doctors, but nobody could find anything wrong with her.

The man decided to visit Biddy Early, a herbalist or bean-feasa (wise woman) from Co Clare and a prominent figure in Irish folklore.

When he got there, Biddy greeted him with: "Where are you the last twelve months? And you living with an old fairy woman since the day your wife got knocked by the sí-gaoith?"

"I have bad news for you," she said. "When you'll go home your wife is dead. There'll be a corpse-house there."

The husband pleaded for help, and Biddy said she would do her best, but could not guarantee anything. She went out the door.

"At that time, they used to pick ash plants for walking sticks in the November darkness," the storyteller said. "That was the time to pick sticks, ash plants, handles for whips, or anything."

Biddy Early took an ash plant and said: "When you go home, there'll be a wake in progress, or a kind of a corpse-house, for 'twill be daylight, you see. And when you go home, open the two doors and put a stone to each of 'em.

"Go in the room where that corpse is laid out and belt enough at her with that ash plant, and you'll see what'll happen. But don't touch the ground with that stick or yourself till you land in your own yard."

When he got back home, the wake was in progress. He shot past people trying to sympathise with him and started to follow through with Biddy's instructions.

"He done what Biddy Early told him—put a stone to the front door and a stone to the back. He went in the room and beat the life out o' the corpse. And the fairy woman went out the back door, and his own wife came in the front door. All was lost but for Biddy Early."

A massive dance and celebration followed, with everyone from the parish in attendance.

"She had two more children. She's buried over in Ballard. She died at her natural span, eighty-three years."

Eddie Lenihan said this tale of the man whose wife was carried by fairies seeking help from Biddy Early can be dated to the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

"Biddy's uncanny knowledge of his predicament frightens him, but after she consults with her magic bottle, things become clearer, though no less intimidating. But, by obeying her instructions to the letter, he saves his wife," Lenihan said.

"This is a story full of dark hints, which shows a world in which people are at the mercy of mysterious powers, where the simplest of mistakes can lead to tragedy, but where help is at hand if only it is asked for.

"Not too different, this, from our modern world, really, if we consider it, though all the surface points of reference may seem to be quite dissimilar."