Note 73 — Folklore from Donegal[72]

In "Celtic Folklore," vol. i., p. 210 et seq., Sir John Rhys relates a similar story. Here the woman is brought to a place which appears to her to be the finest she has ever seen. When the child is born the father gives her ointment to anoint its eyes, but entreats her not to touch her own with it. Inadvertently she rubs her finger across her eye, and now she sees that the wife is her former maidservant Eilian, and that she lies on a bundle of rushes and withered leaves in a cave. Not long afterwards the woman sees the husband in the market at Carnarvon, and asks for Eilian. He is angry, and, inquiring with which eye she sees him, puts it out with a bulrush.

From Palestine we have another variant of this story. The Rev. J. E. Hanauer, in "Folklore of the Holy Land," pp. 210 et seq., tells of a woman at El Welejeh who had spoken unkindly to a frog. The next night, on waking, she found herself in a cave surrounded by strange, angry-looking people; one of these "Jân" reproached her bitterly, saying that the frog was his wife, and threatening her with dire consequences unless a son were born. She assisted at the birth of the child, who was fortunately a boy, and was given a mukhaleh or kohl vessel, and was bidden to rub some of this kohl on the infant's eyes. When she had done this, she rubbed some on one of her own eyes, but before she had time to put any on the other the vessel was angrily taken from her. She was rewarded with onion-leaves, which in the morning turned to gold. Some time afterwards this woman was shopping at El Kuds, when she saw the Jennizeh pilfering from shop to shop. She spoke to her and kissed the baby, but the other answered fiercely, and, poking her finger into the woman's eye, put it out.