Gale Days and the Curse of the Púca!

Gale Days and the Curse of the Púca! (And I am not talking about tonight's windy weather).

Michaelmas, or the Feast of 'Michael and All Angels', is celebrated on the 29th of September each year. Michaelmas is associated with the end of the harvest, the beginning of autumn and the shortening of daylight hours as winter approaches and the nights grow longer, darker and colder. 

Michaelmas is one of the 'quarter days'.

There were four traditional 'quarter days' in each year, even going back to pre-christian times and they marked out the year for our ancestors. Lady's Day was celebrated on the 25th of March, Midsummer's Day on the 24th of June, Michaelmas Day on the 29th of September and of course Christmas Day on the 25th of December.

It is no coincidence that they coincide roughly with the solstices and equinoxes, which were always celebrated since ancient times, especially by the earliest settlers in Ireland, call them what you like, the Fir Bolgs, Formorians, Milesians, Tuatha De Dannan, whomever, the end and the start of each season, be it Spring or Summer was always marked by them, by fire and by feast.

The 'quarter days' were closely associated with the four Celtic seasons, Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasa and Samhain.

With the arrival of Christianity, they became associated with christian religious feast-days, and with our modern seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

More importantly, in the modern era, from the 17th century onwards, ever since the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, the Down Survey and the forcible confiscation of 95% of land in Ireland from Irish, and Norman Irish families and clans, and transfer of same into English settler hands, the Irish became tenants on lands that we used to own! 

Now, by dint of conquest, we were obliged to pay rent to these colonial settlers, to live on our confiscated land!

Those rents came due, usually, twice a year, coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, on two of the 'Quarter days', traditionally, Ladys Day and Michaelmas Day.

Those two days became known as the 'Gale Days', which I believe is an anglicisation of the Irish verb to 'seize or capture or confiscate', 'Gabháil', which to the uneducated English ear, that word 'Gabháil' sounded an awful lot like 'Gale' and by God,  it certainly put the wind up us Irish! While the English relished in telling us that 'it's an ill wind that blows no good', we Irish had dozens of words for the wind, many of which augured bad cess! And of course, 'cess' was an old English word for tax! Go figure. No question, 'Gale Days' were the bane of a tenant farmer's life. 

If they could pay the rent, then all was fine, but if the growing season had been poor, or wet or stormy, or for whatever other reason, through illness, theft, houghing, disease, laziness, rebellion or just plain bad luck, and the rent was not paid, or only paid in part, then that tenant was on the slippery slope to privation, eviction, starvation or worse. 

Gale Days were 'grab' days to the landlord or agent, and 'give' days to the farmer. 

Eviction was a constant threat and that memory of eviction has left an indelible mark on our people, even today.

For some farmers, who may have been short of cash on the Gale Day, and time had to be bought to gather the rent, a goose or two would be brought to the 'Big House', as a token, in exchange for a bit of 'give', a little leeway on the debt to be paid, for a consideration, an obligation, and to beg or gain, just a few more weeks to allow the tenant farmer to raise the monies for the rental payment, to sell the pig, or the turf or potatoes, their cap in hand, tugging their forelock, begging, on their calloused knees, for just a bit of a break! Sometimes their pleas fell on deaf ears, and the battering ram and the Peelers were sent on their merry work, throwing down the walls of the pitiful cabins, throwing the families and their meagre possessions onto th side of the road, at the mercy of the dreaded Workhouse, or if they were lucky, onto the deck of an over-crowded 'Famine ship'!

Sometimes, it was a case of waiting for the 'money from America' from a son or daughter who had emigrated from the farm, and on whose remittances the farm, and the future of his or her family now depended. 

If that cheque was late, well, your goose was cooked!

Michaelmas was therefore a kind of settlement day, a sigh of relief, or a cause of great anxiety, an end to one season and perhaps, hopefully, the beginning of another. 

Michaelmas was also the traditional day to begin a new lease, or tenancy agreement, and also the day to start an apprenticeship, or a position as a farm-hand or servant, and also, though not farming related, the day for electing magistrates and the beginning day of legal and university terms.

In that sense, Michaelmas was not the farmer's friend, though Saint Michael, The Archangel, was in fact the Christian God of the Harvest, the God of Plenty, the fearless God who gave succour during the Winter months, giving the farmer protection and strength to see his family through the harsh Winter, to combat want and disease and disaster, until the following Spring, from darkness into light. He was 'the man'!

In Christian terms though, Saint Michael had also usurped the ancient Celtic folklore surrounding the harvest. He it was, apparently, that threw the Devil out of Heaven and consigned him to Hell, though not before the Devil managed, as he fell to his fiery lair, to grab onto an Irish  blackberry bush, and ripped and torn by thorns, spat and crapped on the blackberries, cursing them, and making them rotten, inedible.

That fallen angel, the devil, took the place of the ancient evil Irish fairy, the 'Púca', the mischief-maker, the crop-ruiner, the milk-spoiler, the hunger-monger! He was a bad egg!  

The folk-memory of the malevolent Púca is still observed today, though we'd never acknowledge the pagan origin of this belief. 

Truth is, no one I know would dream of eating a Blackberry after the 29th of September, ever! You'd never eat a blackberry that had been pissed on by the Púca! 

It sounds far worse in Irish.

'Lá 'le Michíl a chacann an púca ar na sméara. Ní lubhálfadh máithreacha dos na leanaí aon tsméar ná mogall a phriocadh ó Lá le Michíl amach mar bhíodh na sméara go léir sailithe age an bpúca.' 

Folklore Collection Máire Ruiséal, Dún Chaoin (CBÉ, 469:151)

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And so, as Michaelmas ends, and the modern season of Autumn begins, we might all say a prayer to Saint Michael, the Archangel, the conqueror of the Devil, to give us the strength to weather the coming Winter, and to survive, and to beat the Covid19 pandemic, the modern day equivalent of the 'Curse of the Púca'!  