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The Kiltartan wonder book

Chapter 16: CAILLEAC-NA-CEARC
By Lady Gregory
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Children & Young Adult ReadingMythology, Legends & Folklore

About This Book

A collection of short folktales from a rural parish retold in a colloquial voice, presenting whimsical and moral narratives centered on ordinary people, fools, kings, and enchanted animals. Episodes follow quests and tests—mysterious birds, helpful mules, hidden rulers, and magical transformations—that mix humor with wonder and pragmatic cunning. Stories vary in length and form, alternating straightforward adventure with brief fables and mythic motifs, often resolving by cleverness, ritual acts, or revealed identities. Illustrations accompany many tales, and the prose preserves dialect rhythms, lending intimacy and an oral-storytelling flavor throughout.

CAILLEAC-NA-CEARC

I think I didn’t tell you the story of Cailleac-na-Cearc, the Woman of the Hens, says the old man with the new wife; and how she committed sin.

It was one day they rose up, herself and her twelve children, and there was not bit or drop in the house, and the height of the door of frost and snow was in it; and she sent the husband out to see could he get firing with a little hatchet he had.

And when he went out he got directions to cut a certain tree. And there came out of the tree to him as much as he could carry of lumber of the best of stuff, and he brought it home to the wife.

Well, after a while she bade him go again to the tree and cut it. And there came from it the same lumber of provisions and gold and money and everything they wanted. And the third time she sent him to cut the tree, and the tree spoke to him that time, and it said: ‘You may take what you can this time, but let you never come near me again.’ And he brought back more than would fill the corners of the house. And he said to the wife, that was enough.

But she made him go the fourth time, for women is awful, and she wanted to get all that she could; and only for her bidding he didn’t like to draw back to the tree. And that time the tree spoke to him again, and it said: ‘You have full and plenty, and you’ll see the way your missus is, and you going back to the house.’ For she was covetous and had no patience, and it was by the Almighty God’s will he made a hen of her, and twelve chickens of her twelve children. And she went scraping in the face of the dunghill, and she never left doing that till the day of judgment, picking for her chickens that stopped small as they were always.

When she had too much she wasn’t pleased till she got more, and so she couldn’t keep it and had nothing at all left her in the heel of the hunt.

I suppose it was God that made the provision within in the tree. For the man was holy. Did he mind seeing his children turned into chickens? He did not. He was a born saint, and it is likely it was a saint talked with him abroad at the tree; and he had full and plenty while he lived; and the day he died the gates of heaven were open, and it was as a white pigeon that he went in through them. That now is a true story, and that is a thing that surely happened.