Laois Folk Tales

  ‘'In search of our history you come across more legends than history. Fairies, banshees, leprauchans, spirits and ghosts...I suffered agonies because of them when I was a child. I'd be terrified. I'd be listening to them before I went to bed. An uncle of mine would come down from Blandsfort and stay up all night telling those stories and we couldn't sleep after them. Myself and my brothers and sisters, we'd wake up crying during the night.''    Frank Fogarty to Nuala Hayes 
The origins of the people of Laois, the Laoighsigh, are lost within the mists of a mythical, heroic past. In battles and legends, in the thin line that separates myth from history. 
Nothing unusual. We are on Irish ground, after all.
The birth of Oisín, the warrior bard and the last of the Fianna.The House of Death which closely resembles the Norse myth of Thor fighting Old Age. Strange elf women and cailleachs that protect and punish. Old men guarding treasures over the centuries. Cats with superpowers because everything in Ireland is super-powered. Maidens who tell it like it is and damn the consequences. Magic hills, bewitched cattle, strange hares. Pipers and warriors. Legends of saints, of St.Patrick and St.Brigid and the Book of Leinster. A Laois son who became a Pope and a broken-heart woman who became a spectre. Women like Gormlaith who fear nothing and no one. Funerals of dead who are alive and necromancers playing card games. Banshees, changelings, fairylands and secrets. And every story is permeated by the resistance to the British occupation and the Great Famine that savaged the land.
Poor Queen Elizabeth I may have defeated the Spanish Armada but someone should have explained to her that you never send your lover to do the chores. Not to mention, that you may have defeated Spain, but Ireland is a totally different nut to crack, dear lady. 
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