FACT AND FOLKLORE IN LE FANU’S
By Ann Cahill
(ISSN 1932-9598)
Gothic literature is often wild fantasy set in places far removed from the reader, places where anything can happen and still not be beyond the realms of the possible. It is often also set in far gone times, when anything could happen, unlike the enlightened present. Sheridan Le Fanu’s accomplishment, even if pushed to it by Bentley, his English publisher, was to give some of his best work a contemporary English setting. The sense of discomfort induced by such nearness of the abnormal, the horrible and the frightening, all happening in the reader’s own country and in the reader’s own time, is the key to Le Fanu’s success as a novelist of suspense, the supernatural and the sensational. In his more successful novels Le Fanu further accentuates the normal when resolving the conflicts or issues involved. For example in The Rose and the Key published originally in 1871, Maud and her friends secure her release from the asylum, not by storming the building but by applying to the commissioners. Indeed, her erstwhile lover Charles Marston feels this point bitterly “Alas, for this pettifogging, crooked, vulgar generation!...here was no work for manhood or emotion. The lady must be rescued, alas! By writs of habeas corpus or commissioners; and her best champion would be a competent attorney.” (379). The contemporary or near contemporary setting is a common feature of the deviation from the Gothic genre that is sometimes called Irish Gothic, executed most famously perhaps by Charles Maturin, Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker.
Prior to the English modern settings of such novels as Uncle Silas and The Rose and the Key, Le Fanu wrote more traditionally of far off times, but not quite so far off, and of far off places, but not too far off. “Ultor de Lacy” is an example of this in Le Fanu’s work. As it was published anonymously in the Dublin University Magazine in 1861 when it was under Le Fanu’s ownership, it could be said to be free from previous and later editorial constraints. In this story, Le Fanu successfully uses relatively near historical fact and traditional folklore to create a hybrid tale that is gothic in heritage but strikingly modern in its psychological subject matter. The intertwining of historical fact and traditional lore (the word legend appears in the title of the story) creates a tension that would not have been achieved by one trait alone.
“The Jacobite Legacy”
“The
Jacobite Legacy” is the title of the first chapter of the story and sets the
historical scene for the narrative. These historical details are sufficient to
place the family in a racial, religious and political context that is at once
realistic and also relatively far removed from the majority of his readership.
Ultor de Lacy’s father died at the Court of St Germains after some time
holding a command in the Irish Brigade (Sheridan Le Fanu, “Ultor De Lacy: a
Legend of Cappercullen”, Madam Crowl’s Ghost and other stories,
(133-53). Le Fanu is rooting his tale in fact. The Irish Brigade in France
contained large numbers of Irish Catholics, as Basil Williams in The Whig
Supremacy 1714 – 1760 notes: “Under the terms of the treaty of Limerick in
1691 some 14,000 of James II’s army were actually transported to France by
William III to take service in Loius XIV’s Irish Brigade which had been
established in the previous year…According to one estimate between 1691 and
1745 no less than 450,000 Irish Catholics were recruited for the Irish Brigade
in France alone…” (159-163). It was during this time period that Ultor de Lacy
himself became involved in the 1745 Rebellion. Ultor’s involvement meant that
he forfeited the property left to him through his mother after his father
already forfeiting the de Lacy property due to his own involvement in
rebellion in
As
well as rooting “Ultor de Lacy” in literal history, Le Fanu also draws on the
factual geography of the area around Abington, Co
The
description of the house and glen at Cappercullen is uncannily like that of
Castle Ardagh in “The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh” one of the stories in
The Purcell Papers published in 1880 and later in Best Ghost Stories of
J S Le Fanu (340 – 60) “Through the midst of this woodland, there runs a
deep gulley or glen” which is “extremely deep and narrow, the sides descend to
the depth of some hundred feet, and are so steep as to be nearly
perpendicular.” Above this glen is “a massive square tower or keep, one side
of which rises as if in continuation of the precipitous cliff on which it is
based” (341). This must be the same place as described in “Ultor de Lacy” as
the “picturesque and massive remains of one of the finest of the Anglo-Irish
castles of
Setting the tale in a genuine landscape further validates Le Fanu’s story. Although Le Fanu insists that the story came to him via Miss Croker, it was originally related by Agnes herself. However, the reader is likely to be unimpressed by such narrative artifice. The idea of a ‘real’ editor whose word can be trusted had been used in fiction since the days of Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe. By Le Fanu’s day, the reader is requiring more proof of the accuracy and veracity of the narrative, and the integration of real history, real names (such as de Lacy) and real places, gives the story the required authenticity.
“The Fairies in the Castle”
As with the landscape, the local folklore is itself rooted in the very hills, mountains and lakes of the region. Le Fanu wrote many stories set in County Limerick, some were little more than literary versions of folklore such as “Stories of Lough Guir” originally published in All the Year Round in 1870, others were more constructed tales such as “Sir Dominick’s Bargain” and the “The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh”. By integrating local folklore into “Ultor de Lacy”, such as the reputation of the castle at Cappercullen being the “Phooka’s Tower” (136), Le Fanu seems to be indicating that folklore is irrational belief. The de Lacy family use such belief to maintain their secrecy “The haunted reputation of the castle – for in those days, in matters of the marvellous, the oldest were children – secured the little family in the seclusion they coveted.” (139). The capture of the little boy Shaeen Mull Ryan by the fairies of the castle, in reality by the sisters and Old Laurence, their retainer, is an instance of the naiveté of such beliefs. However, other supernatural events are given much greater psychological credence by Le Fanu when they directly affect the family. For example, the experience of the priest being unable to find the castle at night, and his thinking he sees the castle only for it to turn into a “great battlemented mass of cloud on the horizon” (p 140) and by his way being blocked on another occasion by a “gigantic human form,” (140) that then “lay like a huge palpitating carcass” (141) before springing towards the priest and scaring off the horse he sat on. Apart from the grotesqueness of the descriptions of such events there is also the added horror of even a man of God being unable to pass – is there nothing that can protect the family? It would seem so, as despite Ultor giving his daughters “a fragment of the consecrated wafer” (146), the curse of O’Donnell is eventually fulfilled.
By contrasting the supernatural using folklore motifs, with the personalised, evidenced, supernatural events brought about by O’Donnell’s curse, Le Fanu is offering up a multiple of explanations for the events in the story. Either it is a supernatural tale and O’Donnell is reaching them from beyond the grave to fulfil his curse; or it is a tale of a young girl’s sexual awakening and growing away from her family; or the de Lacy family is falling further into the inevitable decline of fortunes that was experienced by many other Anglo-Irish Catholic families as a result of the conquest of Ireland, the resultant colonialism and the various revolts against that conquest.
“Una’s Love”
The eventual fulfilment of O’Donnell’s curse appears to be his
enchantment and removal of Una, the daughter whose marriage was to stem the
downward spiral of the de Lacy’s fortunes. Although O’Donnell’s post death
appearances have an overtone of the Banshee in that “He hath been seen often
since, and always for that family perniciously,” (153), his supernatural
appearances could also be interpreted as Swedenborgian in nature. Both Una
and Alice seem good dutiful daughters but
Of course the loss of a child through enchantment is also recognised now as an attempt to explain or understand childhood illness and death which was much more common in the past. This occurs most notably in “The Child that went with the Fairies”. However, in “Ultor de Lacy”, as in “Schalken the Painter”, it is a sexually mature, if not yet sexually active, young girl that is abducted. So unlike the folklore explanation, in these latter stories enchantment and abduction are used, perhaps, to explain female sexual awakening. Part of the horror for Alice and her father is not just that they lose her to O'Donnell but that she is secretive, sly and gone of her own will - although Ultor believes her to be enchanted and has a "solemn exorcism" (152) performed to get her back. However, this does not work. There is a strong sense in the story that Una leaves of her own volition. She says at one point to her concerned sister "Knowledge is sorrow" (148).
It is interesting to note that in both “Ultor de Lacy” and “Schalken the Painter” the girls are to be sold in some way. Rose Velderkaust is sold; a contract is indeed signed, by her Uncle, not only for money but for the position and future that seems to be offered her by a marriage to such a wealthy man. Una is to be given in marriage to a French nobleman who is not very wealthy, but his status promises the opportunity for the de Lacy fortunes to be restored “though not the name, at all events the blood, the lineage, and the title which, so sure as justice ultimately governs the course of human events, will be again established, powerful, and honoured in this country, the scene of their ancient glory and transitory misfortunes.” (145). Rose in “Schalken the Painter” also seems to become resolved in her final fate. When Schalken sees her years later in the vault of a church where she leads him to her demonic husband’s bed, he notes that “there was nothing horrible, or even sad, in the countenance. On the contrary, it wore the same arch smile which used to enchant him long before in his happy days.” (p 46).
Other examples of young girls being ‘used’ in some way by their parents include Maud Ruthryn in Uncle Silas, where her welfare is nearly sacrificed to protect the honour of the family name, and Maud Vernon in The Rose and the Key, where Maud is incarcerated in an asylum to prevent a potentially incestuous relationship with her half brother Captain Vivian. Maud does not know she has a brother and one who is passionately loved by their mother Barbara Vernon in a way that she is not. The use of a young person who has to struggle to survive in an adult world is a major theme of folktales, so the power of stories such as “Ultor de Lacy” is that there is no redemption, no final happy ending. There is only loss and the young, like us all, are subject to vicissitudes of life that can be neither avoided nor controlled.
The pleasure of Le Fanu’s stories and novels, for the reader, is the ability to read them on one or many levels, to un-weave the themes used and to reconstruct them in the light of politics, history, folklore, religious or spiritual contexts, and still find at end of all that, a tale well told.
PRIMARY WORKS CITED
Le
Fanu, Sheridan. “Schalken the Painter”. Best Ghost Stories of J S Le Fanu.
- “Sir Dominick’s Bargain”. Madam Crowl’s Ghost and other stories. Ware: Wordsworth, 1994.
- “Squire Toby’s Will”. Best Ghost Stories of J S Le Fanu.
- “The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh”. Best Ghost Stories
of J S Le Fanu.
-
The Rose and the Key.
- The Child that went with the Fairies” Madam Crowl’s Ghost and other stories. Ware: Wordsworth, 1994.
- “Ultor de Lacy: a Legend of Cappercullen” Madam Crowl’s Ghost and other Stories. Ware: Wordsworth, 1994. Originally published in Dublin University Magazine, December 1861.
- Uncle Silas.
SECONDARY WORKS CITED
McCormack, William.
Williams, Basil. The Whig Supremacy 1714 – 1760. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.