The Story-Teller at Fault

Long ago, when the Tuatha De Danann ruled Ireland, a king of Leinster loved nothing better than a good story. Like every prince of the land, he kept a story-teller of his own. This man held a large estate from the king, and in return he had to tell a new story every single night before the king went to sleep. He knew a great many, and he had grown old in the king’s service without missing a night. However troubled the king might be by the business of the kingdom, his story-teller could always lull him to sleep.

One morning the story-teller got up early and walked in his garden, as he always did, turning over ideas for that night’s tale. But on this morning nothing would come. He paced every corner of his land and went home with his head as empty as a drum. He could get as far as “There was a king who had three sons,” or “One day the king of all Ireland,” and not one word further.

His wife was puzzled that he was so late for breakfast. “Come and eat, my dear,” she said.

“I can’t eat a thing,” he answered. “In all my years with the king of Leinster I have never sat down to breakfast without a fresh story ready for the night. This morning my mind is shut tight. I may as well lie down and die, for I’ll be shamed tonight when the king calls for me.”

Just then his wife glanced out of the window. “Do you see that black thing at the end of the field?” she asked.

He did, and the two of them went to look. Lying on the grass was a wretched old man, with a wooden leg on the ground beside him.

“Who are you, good man?” asked the story-teller.

“Little it matters who I am. I’m only a poor, lame, worn-out old creature taking a rest.”

“And why have you a box and dice in your hand?”

“I’m waiting for someone to play a game with me.”

“Play with you! What could a poor old fellow like you have to play for?”

“I have a hundred pieces of gold in this leather purse,” said the old man.

“You might as well play him,” said the wife. “Then perhaps you’ll have something to tell the king tonight.”

They set a flat stone between them and threw the dice on it, and in no time the story-teller had lost every coin he had.

“Will you play another game?” asked the old man.

“Don’t talk nonsense. You have all my money.”

“Haven’t you a chariot, and horses, and hounds? I’ll stake all my gold on them.”

“Not for all the money in Ireland would I risk seeing my lady walk home on foot!”

“Play him, husband,” said his wife. “I don’t mind walking, if it comes to that.”

“I never said no to you yet,” he answered, “and I won’t start now.” So he sat down, and with one throw he lost his houses, his hounds and his chariot.

“Will you play another?” asked the beggar.

“Are you mocking me? What have I left to stake?”

“I’ll put up everything I’ve won against your wife.”

The story-teller turned away without a word, but his wife held him back. “Take the bet,” she said. “This is the third time, and luck must turn. You’re sure to win now.”

They threw, and the story-teller lost. To his grief and astonishment, his wife at once walked over and sat down beside the ugly old beggar.

“Is this how you leave me?” he cried.

“Well, I was won,” she said. “You wouldn’t cheat the poor man, would you?”

“Have you anything more to stake?” asked the old man.

“You know very well I haven’t.”

“Then I’ll stake the whole lot, your wife included, against your own self.”

They played, and the story-teller lost that game too. “Well, here I am,” he said. “What do you want with me?”

The old man pulled a long cord and a wand from his pocket. “Which animal would you sooner be, a deer, a fox or a hare? You may choose now, but you may not get the chance later.”

The story-teller chose a hare. The old man threw the cord round him and touched him with the wand, and there on the grass was a long-eared hare, leaping and frisking. But not for long, for his own wife whistled up the hounds and set them on him! A high wall ran round the field, so he could not escape, and the beggar and the lady laughed to see him twist and double. When he ran to his wife for shelter, she pushed him back towards the dogs with her foot. At last the beggar called off the hounds, gave another stroke of the wand, and the story-teller stood before them, panting and out of breath.

“How did you like the sport?” asked the beggar.

“It may be sport for some,” said the story-teller, looking hard at his wife. “I could do without it. But tell me, who are you at all, and where are you from, and why do you enjoy tormenting a poor old man like me?”

“Oh, I’m a queer, good-for-little sort of fellow, poor one day and rich the next. If you want to know more about me, come along, and you may see more than you would ever find out alone.”

“I am not my own master, to go or stay,” sighed the story-teller.

The stranger reached into his bag and, before their eyes, drew out a respectable middle-aged man. He ordered this man to take care of the lady, the carriage and the horses, and to have them ready whenever he called for them. The moment he had spoken, everything vanished, and the story-teller found himself at the Foxes’ Ford, near the castle of Red Hugh O’Donnell. He could see everyone, but no one could see him.

O’Donnell sat in his hall, heavy and dull in body and spirit. He sent his doorkeeper to see who was coming, and the doorkeeper found a lank grey beggarman at the gate. His sword stuck half out of its sheath behind him, cold muddy water squelched in both his shoes, the tips of his ears poked through his old hat, his shoulders poked through his ragged cloak, and in his hand was a green holly wand.

“Where are you from, and what is your trade?” asked O’Donnell.

The beggarman answered in a rhyme about coming from the farthest stream of the earth, by way of Islay and Man and a cold hillside. Then he said, “I am a juggler, and for five pieces of silver you shall see a trick of mine.”

O’Donnell agreed. The beggarman laid three little straws on his palm and said he would blow away the middle one and leave the other two. Everyone said it could not be done. But he simply pressed a finger on each of the outside straws and puffed the middle one away. O’Donnell laughed and paid him.

“I’ll do that for half the money,” said one of O’Donnell’s lads. He put three straws on his hand and a finger on each outer one, and blew, and his whole fist flew off along with the straw.

“Sore you are, and sorer you’ll be,” said O’Donnell.

For six more pieces the beggarman offered to move one ear without the other. Everyone said it was impossible, but he just took hold of one ear and pulled it. O’Donnell laughed and paid up. The lad who had lost his fist sneered that anyone could do that, and gave his own ear a tug, and off came his ear and his head with it.

Then the beggarman offered his strangest trick of all. Out of a bag under his arm he took a ball of silk, and he flung it slanting up into the clear blue sky, where it turned into a ladder. He set a hare on the thread, and up it raced; then he sent a red-eared hound racing up after it.

“Will anyone run after the dog?” he asked. One of O’Donnell’s lads said he would. “Up you go,” said the juggler, “but if you let my hare be killed, I’ll cut off your head when you come down.”

The lad climbed, and all three disappeared. After a long while the beggarman said, “I fear the hound is eating the hare and our friend has fallen asleep.” He wound in the thread, and down came the lad, sound asleep, and down came the hound with the last bite of the hare in its mouth. With one sweep of his sword the beggarman struck off the lad’s head, and he treated the hound no better.

“I am little pleased and much angered,” said O’Donnell, “that a hound and a lad should be killed in my court.”

“Ten pieces of silver for each,” said the juggler, “and their heads will be back on their shoulders.” O’Donnell paid, and at once the lad and the hound were whole. For the rest of their days the hound would not touch a hare, and the lad made sure to stay awake.

Then the beggarman vanished, and nobody could tell whether he flew off through the air or the ground swallowed him. Swift as wave over wave, like whirlwind after whirlwind, he sped without a stop until he leapt lightly over the turrets of the court of the king of Leinster.

It was the hour for the king’s story, and he was heavy and weary, for search as his men might, there was no trace of his story-teller. He sent his doorkeeper to look for anyone who might bring news, and there at the gate stood the same lank grey beggarman, dressed in the same rags, but this time holding a three-stringed harp.

“What can you do?” asked the doorkeeper.

“I can play,” said the beggarman. And he told the invisible story-teller, “Don’t worry. You will see everything, and no one will see you.”

The king called the harper in. “I have the finest harpers in all five provinces of Ireland,” he boasted, and he signalled to them to play.

When they had finished, the king asked, “Did you ever hear the like?”

“King,” said the beggarman, “did you ever hear a cat purring over a bowl of broth, or beetles droning at dusk, or a sharp-tongued old woman scolding?”

“Often,” said the king.

“The worst of those noises is sweeter to me than the best playing of your harpers.”

At that the harpers drew their swords and rushed at him. But instead of hitting him, every blow landed on another harper, and soon they were all cracking one another’s heads. The king thought it hard that they should murder each other as well as the music. “Hang the fellow who started this,” he said, “and if I can’t have a story, let me at least have peace.”

The guards seized the beggarman, marched him to the gallows and hanged him. But when they marched back to the hall, there he sat on a bench, drinking from a jug of ale.

“Didn’t we just hang you?” cried the captain of the guard.

“Me? Why would you talk of hanging me?”

The guards ran to the gallows, and there hung the king’s favourite brother. They hurried to the king, who had dozed off, and told him the vagabond was back as well as ever. “Then hang him a second time,” mumbled the king, and went back to sleep. They did so, but this time they found the king’s chief harper hanging where the beggarman should have been.

“Do you want to hang me a third time?” asked the beggarman.

“Go wherever you like,” said the poor puzzled captain, “as fast as you like, and as far. You’ve caused trouble enough.”

“Now you’re talking sense,” said the beggarman. “And since you’ve stopped trying to hang a stranger for finding fault with your music, I’ll tell you this: go to the gallows and you’ll find your friends sitting on the grass, none the worse.”

With that he vanished, and the story-teller found himself back in the field where they had first met, with his wife, the carriage and the horses waiting.

“I’ll torment you no longer,” said the beggarman. “There are your carriage, your horses, your money and your wife. Do what you like with them.”

“I thank you for my carriage, my houses and my hounds,” said the story-teller, “but you may keep my wife and my money.”

“No, I want neither. And don’t think badly of your wife, for she could not help what she did.”

“Couldn’t help it! Couldn’t help kicking me into the jaws of my own hounds! Couldn’t help throwing me over for a ragged old—”

“I’m not as ragged or as old as you think. I am Angus of the Bruff, and you have done me many a good turn with the king of Leinster. This morning my magic showed me the fix you were in, and I decided to get you out of it. As for your wife, the same power that changed your shape changed her mind. Forgive and forget, as husband and wife should. And now you have a story for the king.” Then he was gone.

It was true. That night the story-teller gave the king the whole tale from beginning to end, and the king laughed so long and loud that he could not sleep at all. He told his story-teller not to trouble about new stories any more, for every night of his life he would gladly hear the tale of the lank grey beggarman, and laugh at it as heartily as the first time.

About this telling

Joseph Jacobs put this tale together for Celtic Fairy Tales from two sources: Gerald Griffin’s Tales from a Jury-Room and a Scottish Gaelic tale in J. F. Campbell’s collection, “The Slim Swarthy Champion.” Jacobs says he shortened it, leaving out a reference to one O’Connor Sligo that appears in all the versions.

Jacobs compares the sky-ladder episode with historical reports of Indian conjuring associated with Marco Polo and later travellers. This is a comparison of accounts, not verification that a ladder rose unsupported into the sky. His description of framed storytelling as an Eastern feature is his historical interpretation, not an exclusive rule about where such stories occur. He also notes that the rhyming descriptions of the beggarman are “runs,” stock passages that Gaelic story-tellers used over and over in different tales.

Jacobs says he had to tone down the sky-ladder episode in his own version. Here the comic violence of the juggler’s tricks is told briefly, and the rhyming runs are mostly given in plain prose.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #7885, The Story-Teller at Fault)

Suggested for older readers within ages 9–12 with an adult: includes people wagered as property, a hound chase, severed body parts and apparent hangings, some reversed by magic.

A solution made from the problem

The storyteller cannot invent a new tale, so Angus makes him experience one. The final story repeats events readers have already followed, turning the whole adventure into its own explanation. Yet the rescue is also a torment. Angus’s claim that he controlled the wife’s mind releases her from blame within the fantasy; it places responsibility for the cruelty with him.

Tell it twice

Summarise one trick first as the storyteller experiences it and then as Angus explains it. What information changes? Discuss whether a helpful final result makes the means harmless.

Talk about it

• Why was the story-teller so worried at breakfast, and how did his troubles end up solving his problem?
• Which of the lank grey beggarman’s tricks did you find funniest or strangest?
• Angus said the story-teller’s wife could not help what she did. Do you think the story-teller should forgive her?

More stories like this

• The Field of Boliauns — another Irish tale of a sly fairy trick
• The Sprightly Tailor — another Celtic tale of a clever hero facing magic
• The Russet Dog — another string of trickster tales from Jacobs