The Full Moon & the Fairies in Irish Folklore

The fairies were thought to be particularly active under the light of the full moon. On those brightly illuminated nights fairies, who lived in beautiful palaces under the sea, were said to come up on to the land to revel and converse with the fairies of Ireland, at fairy mounds and around hawthorn trees, as Lady Wilde explains, ‘on moonlight nights they often come up on the land, riding their white horses, and they hold revels with their fairy kindred of the earth, who live in the clefts of the hills, and they dance together on the green sward under the ancient trees, and drink, nectar from the cups of the flowers, which is the fairy wine.’

As fairies and mortals lived separate but connected lives, the full moon presented greater possibilities of association between these two races. On Inishbofin, for example, dread of the fairies was so strong that when the moon was fullest, young girls were encouraged to stay indoors to avoid being abducted as brides to the fairies, while the good people’s* beautiful music and dancing was said to have tempted many a young girl to leave her home on these most ominous evenings. The full moon also presented an opportunity for the fairies to seek revenge on anyone who had slighted them, and anyone who built over a mound or cut down a fairy tree would do well to stay in on these nights for there are many stories that attest that the fairies took their opportunity to seek revenge on those mortals on these moonlit evenings.

* When speaking of the fairies the name ‘good people’ was often used as a precaution to causing offence.

Sources

Lady Jane Wilde,  Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland, 1887.

Lady Jane Wilde, Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages in Ireland, 1890.

Various articles from the Folklore Journal.

Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1867-1939.

Welcoming the New Moon in Irish Folklore

In Ireland there are a host of traditional beliefs and rituals that were widely observed in acknowledgement of the arrival of the New Moon.  It was traditionally believed that a person’s behaviour at the first sight of a new moon could influence their fate until the start of the next moon cycle.

One such widespread belief advises that in order for a person to increase their fortune a piece of silver should be borrowed when the New Moon first appears, as it was believed that your wealth would increase as the new moon waxed. It was considered lucky to turn the coins in your pocket on the first occasion that the luminary is sighted. In a similar manner, but with less favourable results, it was believed to be unlucky to catch sight of the New Moon through glass; a correspondent from a 1903 issue of Ireland’s Own warned that sorrow would follow a person who saw a new moon through glass until the appearance of the following new moon. Even the position that the New Moon was viewed from was deemed to be of consequence to the viewer’s fate: ideally, for luck, the New Moon should be seen over the right shoulder, while to see the New Moon over the left shoulder was believed to be unlucky, and seeing the New Moon directly before you was said to foretell a fall.

Direct appeals were also made to the New Moon. Some believed that a person who  demonstrated their veneration for the New Moon upon its first appearance would receive protection for as long as the moon lasted. In his 1870 book Irish Folk Lore Fr. John O’Hanlon provided two accounts of the manner in which salutations were made to the New Moon during the middle of the nineteenth in County Galway. 

In the first account, a person kneels down before the moon says a Pater or Ave, and then recites the following address:

‘Oh Moon! May thou leave us safe, as thou hast found us!’

While in the second account a person should ‘make a sign of the Cross, while at the same time chanting in an undertone the following short prayer:

“God and the holy Virgin be about me!”

And finally the following verse:

“I see the moon, and the moon sees me;

God bless the moon, and God bless me!”’

Appeals to the New Moon were also made by young women who sought insight to the identity of their future husband. In the early years of the twentieth-century an elderly woman from County Tipperary gave A. H. Singleton a detailed account of the following salutation which she had tried in her young day for insight into her future love life:

‘When you get a sight of it [the New Moon] kneel down, and with a black-handled knife lift a sod from under your right knee and from under the toe of your right foot repeating:

“New moon, new moon,

Happy may I be;

Whoever is my true love

This night may I see.”

Once this verse is recited a number of times the Lords pray should be repeated, after which the sod of earth is lifted from under your knee and foot and hidden outside your house ‘till you are ready to go to bed, then bring it inside. You must not speak to a living soul once the earth brought into the house. Then put the earth into the right-foot stocking, and put that under your head. But be sure you talk to no one till morning.’

Sources

Anonymous correspondent. Ireland’s Own, Vol 1, No. 8, 14 January 1903.

Donaldson, John. A Historical and Statistical Account of the Barony of Upper Fews in the County of Armagh. Dundalk, 1923.

O’Hanlon, John (Lageniensis). Irish Folk Lore: Traditions and Superstitions of the Country; with Humouress Tales. London, 1870.

Singleton, A. H. ‘Dairy Folklore and other Notes from Meath and Tipperary.’ London, 1904.

Illustration Siderous Nuncios(Starry Messanger) by Galileo Galilei, 1610.