Dullahan, the headless horseman
—Illustrated by W. H. Brooke, Croker, Fairy Legends (3rd ed., 1834).
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The Dullahan (Irish: Dubhlachan; dúlachán, /ˈduːləˌhɑːn/), also called Colainn Gan Cheann (meaning "without a head" in Irish), is a type of legendary creature in Irish folklore. He is depicted as a headless rider, on a black horse, who carries his own head held high in his hand or under his arm.

Terminology

Dullahan or Dulachan (Irish: Dubhlachan [Duḃlaċan]) referring to "hobgoblin" (generic term; cf. Dullahan described as "unseelie (wicked) fairy"[1]), literally "signifies dark, sullen person", according to the lexicographer Edward O'Reilly,[2] apparently containing the stem dubh meaning "black" in Irish.[3] Dulachan and Durrachan are alternative words for this "hobgoblin", and these forms suggest etymological descent from dorr/durr "anger" or durrach "malicious" or "fierce".[2]

Dullahan was later glossed as "dark, angry, sullen, fierce or malicious being"[a][8] encompassing both etymologies, though Thomas Crofton Croker considered the alternative etymology more dubious than the dubh "black" ("dark") etymology.[b]

The Irish name Ó Duibhleacháin[c] is cognate with "Dullahan", according to certain researchers of Irish names.[10]

Legends

Croker's Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1828) contained a section on "The Dullahan" with five chapters, devoted to the lore of headless beings, followed by his own commentary.[11]

A dullahan is the general term for the headless evil spirit.[6][12]

He may be depicted as a Headless Horseman,[13] stereotypically on a black horse,[18] who carries his own head held high in his hand, or under his arm.[19][1]

There are also legends and tales concerning the "Headless Coach"[20] (also called "Coach-a-bower";[21] Irish: cóiste bodhar[22]), with its presumed driver being the Dullahan.[23][24]

The rumour of a Dullahan's appearance often develops near a graveyard or a charnel vault where a wicked aristocrat is reputed to be buried.[6]

Headless Coachman

A dullahan is not always a mounted horseman, but may also appear as a headless coachman[24] who drives the horse-drawn carriage out of graveyards,[6] or conversely, arrives driving the Death Coach at the doorstep of a person whose death is nigh approaching.[25]

"Headless Coach" (Irish: Cóiste Gan Cheann)[26] or the "Soundless Coach" (literally "deaf coach", Irish: cóiste bodhar;[22][26] Hiberno-English: Coshta Bower, corrupted to "coach-a-bower")[27] [25] is the name given to the said vehicle driven by the dullahan.[28]

In the story "Hanlon's Mill", Michael (Mick) Noonan was walking back from his trip to a shoemaker at Ballyduff, Co. Cork, and passed the ruined mill of "Old Hanlon",[d] which seemed to be issuing clacking noises as if it were in operation. He then met his neighbour Darby who asked him to take the car and horse back, and came upon the River Awbeg,[e] continuing from open road to the road flanked by wooded areas. He noticed that the moon reflected on the pool of water disappeared, and when he turned, he saw, proceeding beside his cart, a black coach drawn by six headless black horses, driven by a headless coachman clad in black. The next morning, Mick received news from the huntsman that Master Wrixon of Ballygibblin had a fit, and died.[29] Croker in connection to this story remarks that the appearance of "Headless Coach" foreshadows imminent death, or misfortune.[30]

Croker reports one legend that a Headless Coach would run back and forth from Castle Hyde[f] to a glen/valley[g] beyond the village of Ballyhooly, in County Cork.[h][30] Nearby in the town of Doneraile,[i] it was said that the coach would visit the houses in succession, and whichever occupant dared to open the door would be splashed with a basin (basin-ful) of blood by the coachman.[30] At any rate, the coach making a stop is a death omen,[19] or ill omen for the "departing soul".[22]

Soundless Coach

Cóiste Bodhar was referred to as "Soundless Coach" by Robert Lynd, who gave an account of a "silent shadow" of a coach passing by, provided by an avowed witness from Connemara.[26] However William Butler Yeats explained that "the 'deaf coach' was so called because of its rumbling sound".[31][j]

According to one witness,[k] only the silent shadow of the horse-drawn hearse, i.e, the "Soundless Coach" was seen passing by.[26]

Males and females

The tale "The Good Woman" recounts a peasant's encounter with a cloaked female whom he takes on as passenger, who turns out to be a headless Dullahan. Later, he encounters many Dullahans, both males and females.[32]

The alleged experience happened to a resident of "White Knight's Country" at the foot the Galtee Mountains (Galtymore),[l] a peasant named Larry Dodd, who was also the most skilled horse-breaker around.[m] He traveled (westward) to Cashel where he bought a nag, intending to sell it at Kildorrery fair that June evening.[35] He offered a ride to a cloaked female, stopping at "Kilnaslattery Church" to mend his shoe. When he grabbed her to exact a kiss as payment in kind for the ride, he discovered her to be a Dullahan. After losing grip of consciousness, he found that in the church ruins was a wheel of torture set with severed heads (skulls), and all around headless Dullahans, both men and women, nobles and commoners of various occupations. Larry was offered a drink, which caused his head to be severed in mid-sentence as he was about to compliment it, though his head reverted when he regained his senses. He also seemed to have lost his horse to the Dullahans.[36][n]

Bone-crafted objects

The Dullahan allegedly uses the human spine (extracted from a corpse) as a whip, according to a number of modern-day (21st century) commentators.[40][41][45][o]

The headless coachman merely bears a "long whip" in Croker's tale "The Harvest Dinner", with which he lashed the horses so furiously he almost struck a witness blind in an eye (the would-be-victim regarded it as deliberate assault).[47] Croker deduces that the headless one as a way of habit always uses the long whip as weapon to destroy his witness's eye[48] or eyes, reasoning that the coachman's wrath turns to the onlooker because he himself lack the ability to look, due to his headlessness.[p][49]

The spine is mentioned in conjunction with the phantom coach by Croker in his poem "The Death Coach", but the lines "The spokes are the dead men's thigh bones,/And the pole is the spine of the back" presumably refer to these bones being used on the axle and the wheel-spokes of the carriage.[50] A later writer prosifying this description supplied additional details, so that the "two hollow skulls" used as lanterns on the carriage [50] are set with candles,[51] and the hammercloth made of pall material "mildew'd by damps"[50] is embellished as being chewed away by worms.[51][q]

Severed head

The Dullahan may be a headless body, or may carry his (severed) head,[19] which he may carry under his (right) arm,[19] as in Croker's tale "The Headless Horseman":

..such a head no mortal ever saw before. It looked like a large cream cheese hung round with black puddings: no speck of colour enlivened the ashy paleness of the depressed features; the skin lay stretched over the unearthly surface almost like the parchment head of a drum. Two fiery eyes of prodigious circumference, with a strange and irregular motion, flashed like meteors.[53]

In the words of the modern storyteller Tony Locke of County Mayo, Dullahan's mouth, full of razor-sharp teeth, forms a grin reaching the sides of the head, its "massive" eyes "constantly dart about like flies", and the flesh has acquired the "smell, colour and consistency of mouldy cheese".[41] A modern commentator also explicitly states that the Dullahan has the ability to see with the severed head, i.e., "use it to scan the countryside for mortals about to die".[1]

In contrast, the headless coach in the tale "The Harvest Dinner" described above is described "blind (thief)",[47] and Croker assumes he lacks the sense of sight, as is mentioned above.[49]

Miscellanea

Some believe the Dullahan to be the embodied spirit of the Celtic god Crom Dubh.[41]

There are rumours that golden objects can force the Dullahan to disappear.[54][better source needed]

In popular culture

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ O'Hanlon's book drew from Croker. See Frank Kinahan's remark (though it concerns the appropriation material regarding the merrow).[5]
  2. ^ Croker felt that the "this etymology [by O'Reilly] may be questioned, as dubh "black" is a "component of the word".[3]
  3. ^ And possibly the corrupt form "O Dilgan", of West Clare.
  4. ^ Located near where Edmund Burke grew up (Killavullen), as the story alleges Burke had been tutored Old Hanlon.
  5. ^ It is perhaps 40 miles from Ballyduff northward to Killavullen, and 10 more miles further north to Ballygibblin (mentioned in the conclusion below), and River Awbeg flows by it.
  6. ^ About 2 miles NW of Fermoy.
  7. ^ "Glana Fauna".
  8. ^ Fermoy is on the Blackwater, as is Killavullen, and Ballyhooly is about midpoint in between.
  9. ^ 4 miles west of Ballygibblin, 7 miles NNW of Killavullen (the Mill).
  10. ^ Cf. Charles Welsh, who repeats the blood basin splashing told by Croker, adds that the "rumbles to your door".[28]
  11. ^ Lynd's informant was from Connemara, County Galway.
  12. ^ The Mountains span from Co. Limerick to Co. Tipperary, but the White Knight's estate here was probably to the south, in Co. Cork. In 1643, the then White Knight (prob. John Fitzgibbon, 9th White Knight) lived at Kilbehenny Castle in the southern shadow of Galtymore,[33] John Oge Fitzgibbon, 10th White Knight was known by alias "John the White Knight of Mitchelstown, Co. Cork"."[34]
  13. ^ Within 40 miles around.
  14. ^ The epilogue tells of Larry getting a tongue-lashing from his wife Nancy Gollagher after his absence the whole night. Larry wisecracks that the headless woman should be called a "Good Woman" (as given in the title) in comparison, for she lacks the ability to verbally abuse him so.[37] It is further explained that a "Good Woman" referred to a saint or devoted woman martyred by decapitation, but this got corrupted to a standing joke that a woman without a head (and therefore can only remain silent) is therefore a "Good woman".[38][39]
  15. ^ Dullahan using human spine as whip occurs in fantasy fiction writer Craig Shaw Gardner's novelization Leprechauns (1999).[46]
  16. ^ The coachman is called a "blind thief" in the tale, which corroborates the notion he cannot see.
  17. ^ And the upholstery covering the wagon becomes "dried human skin", for example, in Jim Zub's comic novel Wayward 4 (2017).[52]

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c Haughton (2012), p. 54.
  2. ^ a b Edward O'Reilly (by private communication[4]) cited by Croker.[3]
  3. ^ a b c Croker (1828), II: 98.
  4. ^ Croker (1834), II: 240.
  5. ^ Kinahan, F. (1983). "Armchair Folklore: Yeats and the Textual Sources of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry". Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature. 83C: 265. JSTOR 25506103. Much of what Yeats had to call on might be classed as armchair folklore: Croker describes the merrow, Kennedy borrows from Croker but adds an anecdote, O'Hanlon goes back to Croker and then adds a touch of his own.
  6. ^ a b c d e O'Hanlon, John (1893). "Legend of Murrisk". The Poetical Works of Lageniensis [pseud.] Dublin: James Duffy. pp. 218–221, n 4, n7 and n8.
  7. ^ a b Campbell, Josianne Leah (2016). "Death Coach". In Fee, Christopher R.; Webb, Jeffrey B. (eds.). American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore: an Encyclopedia of American Folklore. Dublin: ABC-CLIO. pp. 285–296. ISBN 9781610695688.
  8. ^ O'Hanlon (1893),[6] also quoted by Josianne Leah Campbell (2016).[7]
  9. ^ MacLysaght, Edward (1985). "(O) Dilgan". The Surnames of Ireland (6 ed.). Irish Academic Press. ISBN 9781911024644.
  10. ^ Rev. Patrick Woulfe, cited by genealogist Edward MacLysaght.[9]
  11. ^ Croker (1828), Section "The Dullahan". Chapters "The Good Woman"; "Hanlon's Mill"; "The Harvest Dinner"; "The Death Coach"; "The Headless Horsemann" II: 85–152
  12. ^ In Croker's tale "The Good Woman", a female dullahan and several others, a nobleman and lady, soldier and sailor, priest and laymen appear. II: 85–98
  13. ^ Croker (1828), II: 98. §The Dullhan, "The Headless Horseman", p. 146
  14. ^ Croker (1828), II: 107.
  15. ^ Croker (1828), II: 150–151.
  16. ^ Addison, Joseph (6 July 1711). "Untitled [Ghost Story]". The Spectator. 2 (110): 108.
  17. ^ Handley, Sasha (2016) [2007]. Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth Century England. Routledge. p. 116. ISBN 9781317315254.
  18. ^ Haughton (2012), p. 54 generalizes on colour of the horseman's steed. Whereas Croker's story "Hanlon's Mill" features a "black coach drawn by six black horses".[14] Croker's annotation also quotes an account of a "spirit.. in the shape of a black horse without a head", from The Spectator,[15][16] but this was actually a fabricated ghost story by Joseph Addison, set near the (English) manor of the fictitious Sir Roger de Coverley.[17]
  19. ^ a b c d Yeats, William Butler, ed. (1892). "The Solitary Fairies: 6. The Dullahan". Irish Fairy Tales. London: T. Fisher Unwin. p. 229.
  20. ^ a b Croker (1828), II: 109.
  21. ^ Croker (1828), II: 136.
  22. ^ a b c Doyle, James J. [Séamas Ó Dubhghaill] [in Irish] (February 1922). "Irish Popular Traditions". The Irish Monthly. 51 (584): 78.
  23. ^ Croker's section on The Dullahan includes the tale "Hanlon's Mill", and in the postscript Croker states the "Headless Coach" is a "general superstition".[20]
  24. ^ a b O'Hanlon's poem "Legend of Murrisk" describes the Coach-a-bower on the move, and its driver is explicitly called "Dullahan" in a subsequent stanza.[6]
  25. ^ a b Haughton (2012), p. 63, historian, cited by Josianne Leah Campbell (2016).[7]
  26. ^ a b c d Lynd, Robert (1912) [1909]. Home Life in Ireland (3 ed.). A. C. McClurg. p. 67.
  27. ^ Croker (1828), 2: 136.
  28. ^ a b Welsh, Charles (1904). "Irish Fairy and Folk Tales". In McCarthy, Justin; Welsh, Charles (eds.). Irish Literature. Vol. 3. Maurice Francis Egan; Douglas Hyde; Lady Gregory; James Jeffrey Roche (assoc. ed.). Chicago: DeBower-Elliot Company. pp. xxix–xx.
  29. ^ Croker (1828), 2: 106–108.
  30. ^ a b c Croker (1828), 2: 109.
  31. ^ Gregory, Augusta (1920). Yeats, Wililam Butler (notes) (ed.). Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 284, n17.
  32. ^ Croker (1828), II: 85–98.
  33. ^ Flynn, Paul J. (1926). The Book of the Galtees and the Golden Vein: A Border History of Tipperary, Limerick & Cork. Hodges, Figgis & Company. p. 116.
  34. ^ Graves, James, ed. (1881). Unpublished Geraldine documents: From the Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland. Vol. 4. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Sons. p. 67.
  35. ^ Croker (1828), II: 85–87.
  36. ^ Croker (1828), II: 87–96.
  37. ^ Croker (1828), II: 97–98.
  38. ^ Croker (1828), II: 100.
  39. ^ Brady, John Henry (1839). "bug, bugbear". Clavis Calendaria; Or, A Compendious Analysis of the Calendar. London: Henry Washbourne. p. 317.
  40. ^ Haughton (2012), pp. 54–55.
  41. ^ a b c Locke, Tony, ed. (2014). Mayo Folk Tales. The History Press. Dullahan. ISBN 9780750961141.
  42. ^ Ray, Brian (2010). "Tim Burton and the Idea of Fairy Tales". In Greenhill, Pauline; Matrix, Sidney Eve (eds.). Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity. University Press of Colorado. p. 207. ISBN 9780874217827.
  43. ^ Yeats, William Butler, ed. (2003). "The Solitary Fairies: The Banshee". Irish Fairy and Folk Tales. Paul Muldoon (foreword). Random House Publishing Group. p. 118. ISBN 9780812968552.
  44. ^ Yeats, William Butler, ed. (1888). "The Solitary Fairies: The Banshee". Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. London: Walter Scott. p. 108.
  45. ^ Brian Ray's essay claims that "W. B. Yeats mentions.. the dullahan.. brandishing a whip made from a human spine",[42] however, the source Ray cites, Yeats (2003), p. 118[43] (= Yeats (1888), p. 108[44] fails to mention whip or spine.
  46. ^ Gardner, Craig Shaw (1999). Leprechauns. Hallmark Entertainment Books. p. 41. ISBN 9781575665351.
  47. ^ a b Croker (1828), II: 126.
  48. ^ Haughton (2012), p. 55.
  49. ^ a b Croker (1828), II: 136–137.
  50. ^ a b c Croker (1828), II: 133–134.
  51. ^ a b White, Carolyn (2001) [1985]. Ballyvourney Collection (Irish songs) (4 ed.). Mercier Press. p. 67. ISBN 9781856350099.
  52. ^ Zub, Jim (2017). Wayward. Vol. 4 Threads and Portents. Illustrated by Steve Cummings; John Rauch. Image Comics. ISBN 9781534303133.
  53. ^ Croker (1828), II: 143.
  54. ^ "Hidden Ireland | The Dullahan". www.irelandseye.com. Retrieved 10 May 2019.
  55. ^ The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to Twenty-First-Century Chic. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 2016. ISBN 9781611478655.

General and cited references

External links

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