Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [4]
Similarly mystical is Jacqueline Carey’s sad story of the “Isle of Women.” It is dense with the melancholy Irish sense of doomed love. I don’t think the people of the story are faerie exactly, though the Lady has some magical power. In a way I am surprised that the theme of lost love doesn’t recur in some of the other stories.
Morgan Llywelyn’s sweet story of Nuala’s cat, however, is a fine way to end a book about a fantastic sensibility that constantly plays back and forth between a profound fatalism and a strong sense of hope. I’m sure “The Cat with No Name” was an angel, indeed perhaps Maeve from my story, engaged in renewed work for the Other.
I have written this introduction with the assumption that the authors of the stories are all Irish, but, as far as I know, none of them are. Diana Duane knows Dublin so well that she may well be Irish. Morgan Llywelyn is Welsh, though she lives in Ireland, Tanith Lee claims a strong strain of Irish genes.And while my grandparents were all from Mayo—God help us—I’m a Yank. The Irish sense of the fantastic is so catholic that outsiders can readily fit into its hopeful and fatalistic twilight and write, not like the real Irish would, but at least with enough verisimilitude to sound like they’re Irish. The Emerald Magic is available for all who will treasure it.
One final story, or rather the first line of it, which is enough to demonstrate how Catholic Christianity has adjusted itself to the Irish sense of thin boundaries between worlds. The line is, “One cold and windy day in the County Mayo the Mother of God was out walking with himself in her arms.” I mean, where else would she be out walking save in the County Mayo, where the people are open to surprise and wonder, where it is always possible that one may encounter a wonder person along the road.
ANDREW M. GREELEY
Grand Beach
June 2003
THE
Little People
Herself
BY DIANE DUANE
Imet the leprechaun for the first and last time in the conveyor-sushi bar behind Brown Thomas. It was the “holy hour,” between three and four, when the chefs go upstairs for their own lunch, and everything goes quiet, and the brushed stainless-steel conveyor gets barer and barer.
The leprechaun had been smart and ordered his yasai-kakiage just before three.He sat there now eating it with a morose expression, drinking sake and looking out the picture windows facing on Claren-don Street at the pale daylight that slid down between the high buildings on either side.
While I’d seen any number of leprechauns in the street since I moved here—our family always had the Sight—I’d never found myself so close to one. I would have loved to talk to him, but just because you can see the Old People is no automatic guarantee of inti-macy: they’re jealous of their privacy, and can be more than just rude if they felt you were intruding. I weighed a number of possible opening lines, discarded them all, and finally said, “Can I borrow your soy sauce? I’ve run out.”
He handed me the little square pitcher in front of his place setting and picked up another piece of yasai-kakiage. I poured shoyu into the little saucer they give you, mixed some green wasabi horseradish with it, and dunked in a piece of tuna sashimi.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“Mix them like that.” He gestured with his chin at the wasabi. “You’re supposed to just take it separately.”
I nodded. “I’m a philistine,” I said.
“So are we all these days,” the leprechaun said, and looked even more morose. He signaled the obi-clad waitress, as she passed, for another sake.“Precious little culture left in this town anymore.Nothing but money, and people scrabbling for it.”
It would hardly have been the first time I’d heard that sentiment coming from a Dubliner, but it hadn’t occurred to me that one of the Old People thought the same way. I’d have thought they were above such things. “Do you work in