Bridging Appalachia

Legends are narratives, which involve an element of belief that is grounded in time and place[1].  They tend to be shorter than folktales and provide a social function of expressing community fears in order to uphold values and maintain status quo.  Authenticity is presented in these tales through naming of people and places and establishment of relationships (i.e., this happened to my grandfather’s neighbour).  International migratory legends (ML), categorised by folklorist Reidar Christiansen, are found in multiple locations and feature details specific to a particular locality.  Bo Almqvist expanded upon Christiansen’s work by classifying suggested Irish types of migratory legends (MLSIT).  These variants contain Irish names and places and tend to be supernatural in nature.  One such variant is MLSIT 3056 “The Old Woman As Hare.”  Several folkloristic approaches can be employed to evaluate versions of this migratory legend.  For the purposes of this paper, the narratives will be explored through historic-geographic, stylistic, rites of passage and coding approaches.

Novelist and folklorist, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, located sixty-three versions of “The Old Woman As Hare” in 1993.  Utilising duchás.ie from the National Folklore Collection, the author selected two examples of “The Old Woman As Hare” from the main manuscript collection and three examples from the School’s Collection for analysis.  The basic elements of the narratives chosen are a loss of butter[2], a transformation of a and old woman into a hare, a male protagonist with a hound, a chase, an injury to the hare and exposure of the hare’s true identity.

The historic-geographic method to classify folktales was developed by Antti Aarne, translated by Stith Thompson and expanded upon by Hans-Jorg Uther.  It involves the classification of individual tale types, traditional narratives that do not depend on any external tale for meaning, using ATU numbers.  These tale types can stand alone or exist in combination.  Migratory legends, as defined by Christiansen, follow their own numbering system from ML 3000 to ML 8025.  MLSIT 3056 “The Old Woman as Hare” falls under the “Witches and Witchcraft” heading (ML 3030 – ML 3080).  The variant is closely related to ML 3055, “The Witch Who Was Hurt,” which Christiansen only vaguely refers to in his 1958 proposed list of migratory legend types.  As a note following the entry for ML 3045 “Following the Witch,” he says only that ML 3050 and 3055 do not “follow any definite epic pattern, but are, as a rule told as personal experiences of same definite person.”[3] Understandably, Bo Almqvist felt that this classification was too broad and ultimately inaccurate.  He recommended that the tale type be divided into MLSIT 3056 and MLSIT 3057 “The Knife Against the Wave,” which is generally found along the Irish coast.[4]  Versions of “The Old Woman As Hare” can be found across the north and midlands of Ireland from the 16^th to 20^th centuries and they thematically relate to a contemporary urban legend, found in England and Dublin, The Robber Who Was Hurt.[5]  This tale-type was presented by Jacqueline Simpson in 1986 and involves a burglar trying to break into the home of an old woman, who burns his hands with tongs in a complete role reversal, indicative of its urbanisation and modernity.[6]  Classification of tale-types, using the historic-geographic method aids in detecting patterns and allowing for comparisons across time and space.

The stylistic approach, as established by Max Lüthi, recognises six stylistic categories in the genre of European folktales – one-dimensionality, depthlessness, abstraction, isolation/interconnectedness, sublimation/all-inclusiveness and function/significance.[7]  With this approach, Lüthi posits that style creates meaning.  Legends, being somewhat tethered to place, rather than existing outside of time and place, resist this method of analysis, but the categories may be applied, if only to exhibit the distinctions.  Lüthi differentiates folktales from legends stating, “[s]o transparent is the intent of legends to depict the miraculous and the Wholly Other that the resulting stories are stripped of their mystery,” while folktales “mix the miraculous with the natural, the near with the far, and the ordinary with the incomprehensible in a completely effortless way.”[8]  The one-dimensionality of folktales is indicated by the separation of everyday and otherworld beings using geographic separation.  The hero must travel to a distant land to encounter supernatural characters, which he regards with neither curiosity nor astonishment.[9]  Uncanny behaviours in legends happen locally and are regarded with confusion and scorn.  The loss of butter in the hare narratives is a matter of great mystery, which must be remedied with magical thinking, often in the form of a pure-black hound.  The depthlessness of objects in folktales is noted by their uncommon nature (i.e., swords, wands and pearls) and their specific usefulness, followed by abandonment.  The characters are defined by actions and express no emotional or physical suffering, even when injured; however, legendary individuals display pain and illness through vocal expression or physical manifestation.[10]  The wound inflicted upon the hare-witch by the hound demonstrates this difference, with one tale from County Clare describing a three-month recovery process.[11]

Abstraction distinguishes the style of folktales in every regard – flat, clearly delineated characters, simply named/described objects and locations, pure colours, whole numbers and formulaic plots.[12]  Legends, on the other hand, involve real places which may be richly described and may already exist within the listener’s imagination in great detail.  The characters may be identified with either simple descriptors, multiple adjectives or proper names.  A Galway legend from Clifden describes the chase of the hare by the hound with attention to landscape, expressive emotion and the passage of time.[13]  The pure-black hound could be seen as an abstraction, particularly when contrasted by the white hare in the same Galway tale, but a regionally situated explanation for the juxtaposition will be given in the coding section below.  Isolation and universal connection are represented in folktales through character interactions and gifts.  The hero is isolated from his home and family and propelled by quest-related tasks, yet helped by otherworld beings whenever necessary.  He does not form lasting relationships, but seamlessly receives assistance without displaying any useful qualities, just as the antihero/villain misses each opportunity through some mechanism of fate.[14]  In legends, such as “The Old Woman As Hare,” fears come from within the community and highlight tensions between disparate groups.  There is a more subtle isolation at play, which can be perceived by noting the solitary nature of the hare and the location of the old woman’s hut on the edge of town or in a nearby bog.  There is no evidence of universal connection in the world of legend.  The villagers who have lost butter must seek help from fairy-men, priests or huntsman with specific skills.  The hound, which does seem to be imbued with magical properties, must also be sought out and is a cherished tool rather than a disposable gift.

Sublimation and all-inclusiveness are fundamental to the production of folktales, which effortlessly combine externally established motifs of both common and magical quality to create a world that is capable of representing all aspects of human existence.  The magic, in its abstracted form, is performed without intent or awareness of the uncanny, separating it from the genre of legend.[15]  Contrariwise, the old woman of the migratory legends must transfigure herself to avoid detection before charming the butter from the cows, specifically at dawn near Bealtaine.  The results of her actions are perceived as supernatural and dealt with in ways that exist outside of everyday behaviour.  Lastly, the function and significance of folktales, as designated by Lüthi, are to entertain and to “illuminate the nature of existence.”[16]  Through all of the above sometimes numinous and overlapping categories, folktales provide a comprehensive reflection of the world in terms of how events do/should unfold.  As mentioned above, legends function to express community fears and maintain status quo.

A rites of passage approach to analysis involves the work of Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner.  The author summarised their major contributions to folkloristics in a previous unpublished work.

“van Gennep identifies three stages in rites of passage – ‘preliminal rites (rites of separation), liminal rites (rites of transition), and postliminal rites (rites of incorporation)’ (1999, 102).  Upon passing through these stages, which may or may not always be clearly delineated, participants shift from one social or magico-religious role to another.  Liminality is marked by a sense of being out of time and on the threshold of two different states – being neither this nor that.  Building on van Gennep’s work, Turner takes a closer look at the three stages with an emphasis on liminality and the experience of the ‘liminal persona’ as a being of indeterminate nature (1967)” (Sellner 2023, 4).

In “The Old Woman As Hare” narratives, separation occurs via the loss of butter and the implied transformation of the old woman into the hare.  The liminal space is defined by the old woman in her transfigured state as she violates social order by stealing the livelihood of her female neighbours and wildly traversing fields, which are the domain of men.  The time of the narratives is also liminal, as the butter infractions take place at dawn on or near May Day/Bealtaine, a time when the veil to the otherworld is particularly thin and families take care to reestablish boundaries and protect themselves against sympathetic magic by hanging wreaths and refusing requests.[17]  Incorporation is visible when the hare turns back into the old woman and returns to her rightful place of domesticity.  Both order and butter are restored.

Coding is defined by Radner and Lanser as “the expression or transmission of messages potentially accessible to a (bicultural) community under the very eyes of a dominant community.”[18]  In the north and midland regions of Ireland in the 16^th to 20^th centuries, this can refer to three different dichotomies – Catholics and Protestants, men and women, and healers and non-healers.  These dichotomies can be complicated in terms of power dynamics, particularly in the case of healers and non-healers.  In the legends, the old woman is often depicted as a healer, midwife or fairy-woman.  She is clearly feared and othered, but has power when she is needed. 

Coding can be complicit – collectively decided by a whole community, explicit – apparent to anyone or implicit – arguable and potentially constructed by either the creator, the receiver or an outside observer.[19]  They are messages, which can be true on multiple levels.  This type of coding, which will be used for analysis of the selected versions of “The Old Woman As Hare” narrative, does not have to be conscious and often exists in conditions where, if explicitly stated, would invoke risk.  The religion of the collectors and storytellers is not known, but there are three female collectors, two male collectors, two female informants and three male informants.  The ethnographic backgrounds of these tradition-bearers, along with the lines of transmission of the legends can contribute to interpretation of implicit coding, as does the lived-experience of the author of this paper.  Coding can be achieved through a number of methods.  This analysis will focus on appropriation, juxtaposition, incompetence and indirection via metaphor and hedging. 

Appropriation, or the feminine use of male-associated materials (accurate or not), as mentioned above, can be seen as the hare-witch leaves her domestic realm to traverse the male agricultural domain.  This transgression, which can alternatively be seen as an act of resistance, results in her pursuit and an eventual attack by the male instrument of the hound.  In the legend from County Kerry, the old woman carries a blackthorn stick.[20]  This implement, though associated with witches in the form of the blackthorn wand, is more often aligned with men as a tool of resistance against oppressive landlords.  In this way, her use of the stick can be read as a queer-code and/or appropriation in the service of defying social norms.  Juxtaposition, or the paradoxical arrangement of texts, objects or performances, is seen more explicitly in the contrasting colouration of the pure-black hound and the white hare in the narrative from Clifden.  The white animal would be recognised by the whole community as associated with the otherworld, while implicitly inferring a healer or Protestant woman.

 Indirection through metaphor is prevalent in the tales.  Some versions unambiguously distinguish the old woman as a healer or rarely as a Protestant, but it is generally her relegation to the liminal, outskirts of town that infer her identity.[21]  In one tale her home is built into the side of a hill, implying a connection to the fairies.[22]  In most versions of the tale, the hare-witch is jumping through a hole or open window as she is wounded by the hound.  This vaginal opening to her realm of safety is violated by the teeth of the animal, which has already been defined as a male instrument.[23]  This implicit coding for rape can be seen as a way for women to communicate and commiserate about the dangers of living alone and engaging in non-traditional roles.  The old woman with the blackthorn stick was said to beat cats to death and use their blood for medicine.  Her hare transformation and encounter with the huntsman and hound result not from butter-charming, but from trying to escape a vengeful attack by the cats.  The huntsman, to whom she appeals for help in the form of a hare, follows the typical pattern of setting his hound on her.  When surprised by her reconstitution into old-woman-shape, he flees, leaving the door open and allowing a swarm of cats to tear her apart.[24]  Superficially this retribution repays her cruelty and slightly deeper is a recrimination of her medicine-making, but for those in the know, the cats may refer to the legend of the Kilkenny cats.  This tale concerns two cats, who fight so violently that only their tails remain.  It became a social metaphor for fights where both sides are damaged, namely the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants.[25]  Indirection through hedging refers to diminishing or equivocating a message.  At the end of the legend from Killarrive in County Galway, the narrator matter-of-factly states that “the hound died and the man got such a fright that he did not live long after.”[26]  This ending differs from the other tales in that the man and his dog are seemingly punished for interfering with, in this case, a known witch, but the sentence is presented in such a pragmatic way that it doesn’t evoke the same emotion as the old woman’s fate.  The Clifden legend ends with the narrator promising that the old woman had never been suspected of wrong-doing.[27]  This assertion seems highly unlikely, as the description of her home and its location are dripping with witch symbolism. 

Each of these approaches to narrative folklore offer insights, which aid in analysis.  The historic-geographic method provides a framework for finding tale-types for comparison, while the rites of passage and coding approaches allow for a deeper exploration of tales.  Though the structural approach lends itself better to the evaluation of folktales, it can be utilised to accentuate the differences between folktales and legends.  Each of these practices can also be combined with structuralist, psychoanalytical and/or ethnographic approaches.  Exploration of “The Old Woman As Hare” migratory legends offer interpretations of fears expressed by northern and midland Irish communities from the 16^th to 20^th centuries in a socially-constructed attempt to maintain status quo.

Bibliography

Almqvist, Bo. 1991. “Crossing the Border: A Sampler of Irish Migratory Legends about the Supernatural.” Béaloideas 59 (Journal Article): 209. https://doi.org/10.2307/20522388.

Christiansen, Reidar Th. 1958. The Migratory Legends: A Proposed List of the Types with a Systematic Catalogue of the Norwegian Variants. Vol. 175 = Vol. 71,1;175 = Vol. 71,1.; Book, Whole. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.

Dillon, Jonny and Clare Doohan. 2017. “May Day Folklore.” 27 April, 2017.  Blúiríní Béaloidis. Podcast, MP3 Audio, 1:16:23.  https://soundcloud.com/folklore_podcast/bluirini-bealoidis-02-may-day-customs-traditions.

Lüthi, Max. 1986. The European Folktale: Form and Nature. 1st Midland. Book, Whole. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

MacKillop, James. 2004. “Kilkenny Cats.” In A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198609674.001.0001/acref-9780198609674-e-2877.

NFC 0037: 59-60. Bean Uí Casarlaigh, Kilmihil, County Clare. Collectors: Séamus Ó Duilearga and Michael Lillis. July 1931.

NFC 0191: 358-360. Pat Ruddy (50), Askillaun, Attimachugh, Foxford, County Mayo. Collector: Áine Ní Ruadháin, 1936.

NFCS 0034: 403. John Keogh (60), Killarrive, Athenry, County Galway. Collector: Eileen Keogh, Cill Tulaigh, County Galway, 1937. Teacher: Seán Ó Seasnáin.

NFCS 0456: 458. Dan Ó Donoghue, Lisbabe, County Kerry. Collector: Ráithín School, County Kerry, 1938. Teacher: Diarmuid Ua Cróinín.

NFCS 0004: 038-041. Mrs J. Lysaght, Clifden, County Galway. Collector: Connie McGrath, An Clochán School, County Galway, 1934. Teacher: An Br. Angelo Mac Shámhais.

Ní Dhuibhne, Éilís. 1993. “‘The Old Woman as Hare’: Structure and Meaning in an Irish Legend.” Folklore (London) 104 (1–2): 77–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.1993.9715855.

Radner Joan N. and Susan S. Lanser. 1993. “Strategies of Coding in Women’s Cultures” In Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture. Edited by Joan Newlon Radner and American Folklore Society. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Sellner, Jess Erin. 2023. “Deathbed Liminality: Persistence of Folk Beliefs and Practices in Care of the Dying.” Unpublished.

Turner, Victor. 1967. “Betwixt and between: the liminal period in rites de passage.” In Forest of Symbols: Aspects of the Ndembu Ritual, 93-111. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

van Gennep, Arnold. 1999. “The Rites of Passage.” In International Folkloristics: Classic Contributions by the Founders of Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes, 99-108. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.

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[1] Historical or contemporary

[2] This element is replaced by killing cats in NFCS 0456: 458.

[3] (48)

[4] (Almqvist 1992)

[5] (Dhuibhne 1993, 82)

[6] (Dhuibhne 1993)

[7] (Lüthi 1986)

[8] (Lüthi 1986, 2)

[9] (Lüthi 1986)

[10] (Lüthi 1986)

[11] (NFC 0037: 59-60)

[12] (Lüthi 1986)

[13] (NFCS 0004: 038-041)

[14] (Lüthi 1986)

[15] (Lüthi 1986)

[16] (1986, 92)

[17] (Dillon and Doohan 2017)

[18] (Radner and Lanser 1993, 3)

[19] (Radner and Lanser 1993)

[20] (NFCS 0456: 458)

[21] (NFC 0191: 358-360; NFCS 0034: 403; NFCS 0456: 458; Dhuibhne 1993)

[22] (NFCS 0456: 458)

[23] (Dhuibhne 1993)

[24] (NFCS 0456: 458)

[25] (MacKillop 2004)

[26] (NFCS 0034: 403)

[27] (NFSC 0004: 38-41)