The topic for Essay #1 focuses on the folktale collected from Seáinín Tom Ó Dioráin called ‘The Ship-Sinking Witch’.
There is a bay out west in Conamara and ‘Cuan an Dúin’ is its name. It is located between Roundstone and An Cloigeann (Cleggan). There was a fish bank there about two hundred and fifty years ago, and there was especially plenty of herring there, and they were so plentiful in the end that they put some of them out as fertiliser. There were a good number throughout Ireland who were needy and hungry at that time. Ulsterwomen came to Cuan an Dúin in the place where the fish were being caught, because they were surviving on the fish. But there were boats from everywhere in Connacht fishing there. Fishing is an old profession in Ireland but even so, there are professions older than it. Making kelp is older than it, weaving is older, and boat-building is older. But anyway, there was one Ulsterwoman there, and her daughter with her. Well, there was a young man in the village who attacked this young woman, and he wouldn’t marry her regardless of anyone’s advice, a priest, or a brother. Well, the mother of the young woman said that she would get revenge. Then, one night every boat was fishing, and this young man was also fishing, like everyone else. A woman came in to visit this Ulsterwoman, whose daughter was in trouble. A big fire was put down, and a pot of water on it, and a wooden cup floating down in the pot, and the pot was at a rolling boil; the old woman was in the room while the daughter was watching the pot for her. The old woman asked the daughter how the cup stood in the pot. The daughter said to her that it was working away; a half hour later she asked her again, and the daughter said that it was half full of water; a half hour later she asked her again how the cup stood in the pot; the daughter said that the cup was full of water. “His story is told now,” said the old woman; the next morning there were eighteen widows on the strand seeking their men and without finding them, and there were about ten times that of young people among them, and they (the fishermen) all had drowned.
Below you will now read another account of ‘The Ship-Sinking Witch’ is told by John Magennis.
The time of the famine an old Hag who practised witchcraft lived down at Leenadoon in the Easkey Parish, Co. Sligo. She spied a vessel sailing on the ocean and expected that it had food on board. She got ready a tub of water, put it outside the door and got the “coppin” or wooden vessel or bowl out of the churn. She set it sailing on the tub. She started her prayers of witchcraft inside. After a while she sent her daughter out to see how the “coppin” and vessel on the ocean were getting on. She returned saying that the coppin was floating about and that the vessel was coming towards land. She prayed on and sent the daughter out again. She came in with news that roughness was on the sea and waves on the water in the tub. The coppin was being tossed badly about. Still she prayed and sent the daughter out the third time and came back with the news that the coppin was gone to the bottom of the tub. The witch and her daughter went down to the shore and found the vessel [p. 651<] a complete wreck. The cargo of Indian corn was washed up on the shore and was gathered by the starving population. But barnachs [?] and Indian corn proved too strong for the poor hungry people and they all died not of hunger but of eating too much. [p. 652<]
In your essay, compare Ó Dioráin’s version of ‘The Ship-Sinking Witch’ (NFCS 2A: 483-485) with Magennis’s version of ‘The Ship-Sinking Witch’ (NFCS 167: 651-652) . The full citations at the end of your essay would be:
NFCS 2A: 483-485; Seáinín Tom Ó Dioráin (69), Sruthán, Árainn, County Galway. Collector: Micheál Ó Flannagáin, Eoghanacht School, County Galway, 1938. Teacher: Seósamh Ó Flannagáin.
NFCS 167: 651-652; John Magennis (59), Clooneen, Co. Sligo. Collector: Evelyn Kelly, Gleann Iascaigh School, Bellafarney, Co. Sligo, 1938. Teacher: Bríd Bean Uí Cheallaigh.
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