Dream of Owen O’Mulready

Long ago there lived near Ballaghadereen a man named Owen O’Mulready, who worked for the local gentleman. He was a quiet, comfortable, contented man. He and his wife Margaret lived alone in a nice little house, with enough potatoes for the year on top of the wages their master paid them. Owen had no worries and no wants except one: he wished he could have a dream, because he had never had one in his life.

One day, while Owen was digging potatoes, his master, James Taafe, came out to his ridge and they fell to talking, as they often did. The talk turned to dreams, and Owen said there was nothing he would like better than to have one.

“You’ll have one tonight,” said his master, “if you do what I tell you.”

“Musha, I’ll do it gladly,” said Owen.

“When you go home tonight, rake the fire out of the hearth, put it out, make your bed where it was and sleep there. You’ll have dreaming enough before morning.”

Owen promised. But when he began to pull the fire out, Margaret could not understand what he was doing, so he explained everything James Taafe had told him. He got his way, and the two of them lay down together on the hearth.

Owen had not been asleep long when there was a knock at the door. “Get up, Owen O’Mulready, and take a letter from the master to America.”

Owen got up and pulled on his boots, muttering, “It’s late you come, messenger.” He took the letter and set off, and he did not stop until he reached the foot of Sliabh Charn, where he met a boy herding cows.

“God bless you, Owen O’Mulready,” said the boy.

“God and Mary bless you, my boy,” said Owen. “Everyone knows me, and I know nobody at all.”

“Where are you off to at this time of night?”

“I’m going to America with a letter from the master. Is this the right road?”

“It is. Keep straight on to the west. But how will you get across the water?”

“Time enough to think of that when I get to it,” said Owen.

On he went until he came to the edge of the sea, and there he saw a crane standing on one leg on the shore.

“God bless you, Owen O’Mulready,” said the crane.

“God and Mary bless you, Mrs Crane,” said Owen. “Everybody knows me, and I don’t know anyone.”

“What are you doing here?” Owen explained his errand and said he did not know how he would cross the water. “Put your two feet on my two wings and sit on my back, and I’ll carry you over,” said the crane.

“And what will I do if you get tired before we’re across?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tire till I’ve flown over.”

So Owen climbed onto the crane’s back, and she rose up over the sea. But she had not flown more than halfway when she cried, “Owen O’Mulready, get off me. I’m tired.”

“May you be seven times worse this day twelvemonth, you rogue of a crane!” said Owen. “I can’t get off you now, so don’t ask me.”

“I don’t care,” said the crane, “if you’d only get off me a while till I take a rest.”

Just then they saw some threshers above their heads, and Owen shouted, “Och, thresher, thresher, let your flail down to me, so I can give the crane a rest!” The thresher let down his flail, but the moment Owen grabbed it with both hands, the crane flew off, laughing and jeering at him.

“May my share of bad luck go with you!” said Owen. “You’ve left me in a fine fix, hanging between the sky and the water in the middle of the great sea.”

Before long the thresher shouted down to him to let go of the flail.

“I won’t,” said Owen. “Wouldn’t I be drowned?”

“If you don’t let go, I’ll cut the strap.”

“I don’t care,” said Owen. “I have the flail.” He looked away into the distance and saw a boat far off. “O sailor dear, sailor, come, come, and maybe you’ll catch my bag of bones!”

“Are we under you yet?” called the sailor.

“Not yet, not yet,” said Owen.

“Throw down one of your shoes, so we can see where it falls,” said the captain.

Owen shook one foot, and down fell the shoe.

“Uill, uill, puil, uil liu! Who’s killing me?” came a scream from Margaret in the bed. “Where are you, Owen?”

“I didn’t know if it was you that was in it, Margaret.”

“Indeed it is,” she said. “Who else would it be?”

She got up and lit the candle, and there was Owen, halfway up the chimney, hanging by his hands from the pot-hook and black with soot. He had one shoe on, and the toe of the other had hit Margaret, and that was what woke her. Owen climbed down off the hook and washed himself, and after that night he had no wish at all for any more dreams.

About this tale

Jacobs’s notes in More Celtic Fairy Tales say this story was translated for him by Leland L. Duncan from the Gaelic Journal. He compares part of it with Crofton Croker’s “Daniel O’Rourke” and says it was not known outside Ireland to his knowledge; that is a limit of his historical account, not a claim about all later circulation.

Jacobs saw more than a joke here. Owen makes his bed on the hearth, and Jacobs interprets the hearth through its association with the spirit world in household belief. That is his explanation of the setting, rather than a demonstrated way to induce dreams. Musha is an Irish exclamation, something like “well, indeed.”

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, More Celtic Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #34453)

Reading guidance: ages 9–12. Includes a dream of falling and drowning, then a comic accident at home. Sleeping in a hearth or climbing a chimney is part of the fiction, not a dream experiment to try.

Reading the story closely

The dream keeps promising support and withdrawing it: the crane tires, then the thresher threatens to cut the strap. Owen’s confidence that he can solve each problem later turns into hanging helplessly between places. The falling shoe joins the dream and household worlds, allowing Margaret’s cry to interrupt both at once.

Draw two parallel scenes: the flail above the sea and the pot-hook in the chimney. Add the shoe to each. Which details can the ending account for, and which remain dream inventions? Perform the repeated greetings to hear how familiarity makes the strange journey feel ordinary.

Think about it

• Why did Owen want to have a dream so badly?
• What went wrong when Owen tried to give the crane a rest?
• What was really happening to Owen and Margaret while he dreamed?

You may also like

• Andrew Coffey — another strange Irish night that ends on a hillside
• Guleesh — an Irish lad’s wild night journey
• Jack and His Master — a comic Irish tale from Jacobs’s collections