The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire

The Shee an Gannon was born in the morning, named at noon, and that same evening he went to ask the king of Ireland for his daughter’s hand.

“I will give you my daughter,” said the king, “but you won’t get her unless you bring me the news I want: what stopped the Gruagach Gaire from laughing. He used to laugh all the time, so loudly that the whole world heard him. Out in the garden behind my castle are twelve iron spikes, and on eleven of them are the heads of kings’ sons who came asking for my daughter. Every one of them went off to find out what I wanted to know, and not one could tell me what stopped the Gruagach laughing. When they came back without the answer, I took their heads, and I very much fear your head will be on the twelfth spike, for I will do the same to you unless you tell me.”

The Shee an Gannon said nothing, but left the king and pushed on to find out why the Gruagach had gone silent. He crossed a glen at a step and a hill at a leap and travelled all day until evening, when he came to a house. The master of the house asked what sort of man he was.

“A young man looking for work,” he said.

“Well,” said the master, “I was going to look for a man tomorrow to mind my cows. If you work for me, you’ll have a good place, the best food in the world and a soft bed.”

The Shee an Gannon took the job and ate his supper. Then the master said, “I am the Gruagach Gaire. Now that you are my man and have had your supper, you shall have a bed of silk to sleep on.”

The next morning after breakfast the Gruagach said, “Go and untie my five golden cows and my hornless bull and drive them out to graze. But when you have them on the grass, take care not to let them near the giant’s land.”

The new cowherd drove the cattle out, and when he came near the giant’s land, he saw it was thick with woods and surrounded by a high wall. He put his back against the wall and pushed a great stretch of it inwards, then went inside and threw out another great stretch, and drove the five golden cows and the hornless bull onto the giant’s land. Then he sat up in an apple tree, keeping the sweet apples for himself and tossing the sour ones down to the Gruagach’s cattle.

Soon there was a great crashing in the woods, the noise of young trees bending and old trees breaking, and a five-headed giant came pushing through and stood before him.

“You poor miserable creature,” said the giant, “weren’t you bold to come onto my land and trouble me like this? You’re too big for one bite and too small for two. I don’t know what to do with you but tear you apart.”

“You nasty brute,” said the cowherd, climbing down to meet him, “little I care for you.” And at each other they went.

The din of their fight was so great that everything in the world stopped to watch and listen. They fought until late afternoon, and the giant was getting the better of it. Then the cowherd thought that if the giant killed him, his father and mother would never find him or see him again, and he would never win the daughter of the king of Ireland, and at that thought his heart grew strong. He sprang at the giant, and with the first squeeze and thrust he drove him to his knees in the hard ground, with the second to his waist and with the third to his shoulders.

“I have you at last. You’re done for now!” said the cowherd. He cut off the giant’s five heads, sliced out their tongues, tossed the heads over the wall, pocketed the tongues and drove the herd home, and that evening the Gruagach could not find enough pails in the whole place to hold the milk of the five golden cows.

But while the cowherd was on his way home, the son of the king of Tisean came along, picked up the giant’s heads and claimed the princess as his bride, to be married when the Gruagach Gaire should laugh.

After supper the cowherd would not talk to his master but kept his thoughts to himself and went off to his silk bed. In the morning he was up before his master, and the first thing he said was, “Why don’t you laugh any more, when once the whole world could hear your laughter?”

“I’m sorry the daughter of the king of Ireland sent you here,” said the Gruagach.

“If you won’t tell me willingly, I’ll make you tell me.” And the cowherd put on a terrible face and ran through the house like a madman until he found some ropes of untanned sheepskin hanging on the wall. He took them down, seized the Gruagach and tied him at wrists, waist and ankles so tightly that his little toes were whispering in his ears.

“I’ll tell you what stopped my laughing if you set me free,” said the Gruagach. So the cowherd untied him, and they sat down together, and the Gruagach told his story.

“I lived in this castle with my twelve sons. We ate and drank and played cards and enjoyed ourselves, until one day, while we were playing, a slender brown hare rushed in, jumped onto the hearth, tossed the ashes up to the rafters and ran off.

“Another day he came again, but this time we were ready for him. As soon as he tossed the ashes and ran, we chased him until nightfall, when he went into a glen. We saw a light ahead, and I ran on and came to a house with one great room. In it was a man called Yellow Face with his twelve daughters, and the hare was tied up at the side of the room near the women.

“A big pot hung over the fire with a great stork boiling in it. The man of the house said, ‘There are bundles of rushes at the end of the room. Go and sit there with your men.’ Then he brought two pikes from the next room, one of wood and one of iron, and asked which I would take. I said, ‘The iron one,’ thinking it would be better for defending myself if I were attacked.

“Yellow Face gave me the iron pike and the first turn at taking what I could out of the pot on its point. I got only a small scrap of the stork, and he took all the rest on his wooden pike. So we went hungry that night, and when the man and his twelve daughters had eaten the stork, they threw the bare bones in our faces, and all night long we were pelted with stork bones.

“In the morning, as we were leaving, the man asked me to wait. He brought out twelve iron loops and one wooden one and said, ‘Put the heads of your twelve sons in the iron loops, or your own head in the wooden one.’ I said, ‘I’ll put my sons’ heads in the iron loops and keep my own out of the wooden one.’

“He put the iron loops on my twelve sons’ necks and the wooden one on his own. Then he snapped the loops one after another and took the heads off my twelve sons, but did his own neck no harm. And when he had killed my sons, he took hold of me and stripped the skin from the small of my back downwards, and in its place he slapped on the skin of a black sheep that had hung on the wall for seven years. The sheepskin grew onto me, and every year since then I shear myself, and all the wool for my stockings I clip off my own back.”

With that the Gruagach showed the cowherd his back, covered in thick black wool.

“Now I know why you don’t laugh,” said the cowherd, “and small blame to you. But does that hare still come here?”

“He does indeed.”

They sat down at the table to play cards, and before long the hare ran in, and before they could stop him, he was out again. The cowherd raced after the hare, and the Gruagach after the cowherd, as fast as their legs would carry them until nightfall. Just as the hare was going into the castle where the Gruagach’s sons had been killed, the cowherd caught him by the hind legs and dashed him against the wall, and the hare’s skull flew into the main room and fell at the feet of the master of the house.

“Who dares to meddle with my fighting pet?” screamed Yellow Face.

“I do,” said the cowherd, “and if your pet had had any manners, he might be alive now.”

The cowherd and the Gruagach stood by the fire, where a stork was boiling in the pot just as when the Gruagach had first come. The master of the house brought out an iron pike and a wooden one and asked the cowherd which he would choose.

“I’ll take the wooden one,” said the cowherd, “and you may keep the iron one.” He went to the pot and brought out the whole stork on his pike except for one small bite, and he and the Gruagach ate stork all night long. This time it was they who were at home in the place.

In the morning the master of the house brought out the twelve iron loops and the wooden one and asked the cowherd which he would take.

“What could I do with twelve iron loops, for myself or my master? I’ll take the wooden one.” He put it on, and then he took the twelve iron loops, put them on the necks of the twelve daughters of the house and snapped them, and turning to their father, he said, “I’ll do the same to you unless you bring my master’s twelve sons back to life and make them as well and strong as they were when you took their heads.”

The master of the house went out and brought the twelve sons back to life, and at the sight of all twelve sons alive and sound, the Gruagach burst out laughing, and all the Eastern world heard it.

“That’s a bad turn you’ve done me,” said the cowherd, “for the daughter of the king of Ireland is to be married the day after your laugh is heard.”

“Then we must get there in time,” said the Gruagach, and off they all hurried as fast as they could go, the cowherd, the Gruagach and his twelve sons. When they were within three miles of the king’s castle, the crowds were so thick that nobody could move a step.

“We must clear a road through this,” said the cowherd.

“We must indeed,” said the Gruagach, and they set to work, tossing people to one side and the other, and soon they had a way through to the king’s castle. As they went in, the daughter of the king of Ireland and the son of the king of Tisean were kneeling, just about to be married. The cowherd gave the bridegroom a blow that sent him spinning until he came to rest under a table on the far side of the room.

“What scoundrel struck that blow?” asked the king.

“I did,” said the cowherd.

“Why would you hit the man who has won my daughter?”

“Because he never won her. I did. If you don’t believe me, the Gruagach Gaire is here himself. He will tell you the whole story from beginning to end, and I will show you the giant’s tongues.”

So the Gruagach came forward and told the king everything: how the Shee an Gannon had become his cowherd and minded the five golden cows and the hornless bull, cut off the heads of the five-headed giant, killed the wizard hare and brought his twelve sons back to life. “And what’s more,” said the Gruagach, “no other living soul has heard from me why my laughter stopped, and no one else has set eyes on my woolly fleece.”

When the king heard this and saw the giant’s tongues fitted into the heads, he had the Shee an Gannon kneel beside his daughter, and they were married on the spot. The son of the king of Tisean was thrown into prison and put to death the next day for his lie, and the wedding lasted nine days, and the last day was better than the first.

About this telling

Joseph Jacobs took this tale for Celtic Fairy Tales from Jeremiah Curtin’s Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland. He shortened the early part and added a few touches from Campbell’s story “Fionn’s Enchantment.” He notes that the opening is like the start of “The Sea-Maiden.”

Jacobs thought this was a folk tale first and was only later told about the hero Finn. He adds that Mr. Nutt believed the earliest form of the story, which has a mysterious healing vessel in it, may be the seed from which the legend of the Holy Grail grew.

The tale is grim in places. The heads on the spikes, the beheadings and the Gruagach’s flayed back are kept but told briefly. In Curtin the false bridegroom is burned to ashes; here it says only that he was put to death.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #7885, The Shee an Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire)

For older readers with adult guidance: includes multiple beheadings, flaying, coercive restraint and the killing of daughters in retaliation. This is a particularly violent wonder tale.

Grief is not just an unanswered riddle

The king treats the lost laugh as a test for suitors, but the explanation is a bereaved father’s suffering. Restoring the sons restores laughter. The hero also forces the account from his employer and kills the other man’s daughters while demanding restoration. That symmetry makes the victory morally troubling: harm to one family is answered through harm to another.

Track knowledge and cost

Record what the king, cowherd and Gruagach each know before the confession. Then list who is restored and whose fate remains unresolved at the end. Does the wedding account for every loss the story has shown?

Questions to ask

• What did the king of Ireland ask of every man who wanted to marry his daughter?
• Why had the Gruagach Gaire stopped laughing?
• How did the Shee an Gannon turn Yellow Face’s tricks against him?

You may also like

• The Sea-Maiden — a Celtic tale that begins the same way, as Jacobs notes
• The Lad with the Goat-Skin — another Irish tale about making someone laugh to win a princess
• The Story-Teller at Fault — another Irish wonder tale from Celtic Fairy Tales