Kelly Taylor
Essay #2 - Interpretation of Myth
August 4, 1998

The Inexhaustable Meal-Chest

The general plot of this Irish faerie legend is that on Samhain Eve (Halloween) a poor elderly couple is visited by a Queen of the Fairies in that area of North Donegal. She asks for but a cup of oat meal, and in return she grants the couple a never-empty meal chest, with the warning that no one but the wife put her hand in the chest, or it will be empty.

From this story one can learn a great deal about Irish folk life in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, and probably earlier, and especially illustrated are certain beliefs and attitudes regarding faerie beings.

In the description of Peggy’s supper preparations and her husband Niall’s satisfaction with finishing his chores for the winter, we see a little tidbit of rural Irish life. He smokes a pipe and relaxes on a straw mat by the fire while his wife makes dinner. We even see a small bit of the layout of the room. Peggy is surprised when she opens the meal chest to find only a handful of oats. Although they are poor, and are out of ground meal, Niall insists they "will not starve" that winter since they have potatoes and grain that could still be threshed and ground. From this we can learn that at the time and place of this story, potatoes are not the only food-crop, and that grain is preferred and equally relied upon.

We also learn that the animals (Peggy says "fowl" which I assume to mean chickens) are fed from the same store of food as the humans, which is why Peggy sends Niall out to get potatoes to boil for the birds the next morning. When he goes he takes a lighted stick, which was not only for light, but also for protection from being led astray by the faeries on such a dangerous night. The pre-Christian festival was still very significant at the time of the telling of this story in the 1930’s.

As Peggy is getting turf for the fire from under the bed, she sees a small faerie woman standing by the door. The description given by the narrator uses Peggy’s own words, as if she had actually known Peggy. Whether or not this is true, or if it’s just the way of telling the story, I don’t know. Peggy describes the woman as being very exaggeratedly small, hag-like woman with "a nose that would go through the eye of a needle and she had not a tooth in her head but her eye-teeth." This is an interesting contrast to many other faerie stories in which the "wee gentry" are beautiful women, small red-headed men and even normal-looking people. It seems that the faerie woman’s appearance in this story is meant to frighten, since the setting is Samhain Eve, a night when evil is about. People obviously associated the faeries with danger, evil and ugliness, though in this story the faerie queen is beneficent.

Peggy controls herself, however, and greets the woman kindly, inviting her to sit by the fire. The faerie woman declines and asks for only "a loan" of a cupfull of last year’s meal. At this point Peggy asks her to identify herself, saying "God’s blessing on us and the Cross between us and harm!" and she makes the sign of the cross. It was a common belief that the usage of Christian symbols was sure protection against faerie interference and harm.

The woman identifies herself as "Maireog the Great, Queen of the Hosts of Binn Bhuí and of Pollán an Raithnigh!" Peggy seems to accept this easily and comments on the "evil hour" since they had just run out of meal, but tells the Faerie Queen that she is welcome to what is left. She fills the oak cup the faerie woman had carried with her, and when she gives it back. Then the faerie woman enchants the chest and tells Peggy it will never run out, as long as no one else ever puts a hand into it. This is a perfect illustration of the belief that faerie gifts are always two-sided or come with a very specific tabu that renders the gift non-existant if broken, and can even do harm to the person.

When Niall comes in and Peggy tells him, he doesn’t believe her, and goes to look in the chest, but fortunately Peggy gets there first and they see the chest is full of clean wonderful meal. Niall doesn’t understand until Peggy reminds him that "this is Samhain Eve and that the gentry are going about," which until then he had not realized.

Peggy puts a lock on the chest and for five years she gives away bags and bags of meal to any who need it, so much so that the neighbors begin to distrust her and Niall and some said that they had "the black magic." I find this an interesting note, that whenever anyone had a greater fortune than others and use it generously they were immediately suspect of carrying on with evil or the fairies.

The tabu is finally broken, of course, in the winter when Peggy leves the chest open to tend a sick and dying woman. Niall comes in and puts his hand in the bin to feed the cows. Peggy comes home and says that the woman she was tending has died. After a while she notices that the chest is open and empty as the day the faerie queen had come, and that was the end of the never-empty chest.

Because Peggy goes to tend a sick woman, is childless and is suspected of doing evil things by giving away food to the hungry and poor, it is possible she would also have been an herb-woman. It also seems this suspicion and distrust of luck was part of rural Irish life at the time, and perhaps still is.

The rural Irish of Northern Donegal in the early 1900’s still had a very strong folk tradition involving the pre-Christian festivals and the otherworldly creatures called "faeries" among other things. They were also very much Christianized, as is seen by the usage of invoking the name of God, Mary, Jesus and various saints in the legends as protection against the faeries and evil spirits. From this story we also see that the agricultural cycle was still paramount to other methods of reckoning time, and that the ways of life were still the same as they were hundreds of years ago. The acceptance of the possibility of human interaction with the faerie otherworld was widespread in the culture this story came from, and though there may have been skeptics, like Niall the farmer, the wise-women like Peggy knew better and knew how to respect the "wee gentry" so as to avoid their wrath.