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Elements of the Folk Hero-Tale In ELEMENTS OF THE FOLK HERO-TALE IN THE FICTION OF PADRAIC COLUM By Kay Diviney MacLaine B.A. (cum laude), Augustana College, 1973 M.A., Arkansas State University, 197^ A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE^tfNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August 1984 (c) Kay Diviney MacLaine f 1984 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of bn^J'sk The University of British Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3 Date <Mjr>h^ /A , MM Abstract The fiction of Padraic Colum (1881-1972), although it reflects important concerns of the Irish Revival, has been, like Irish fiction in general (Joyce excepted), almost entirely overlooked. To begin to correct this critical oversight, I have focused in this study on Colum's attempt, beginning with his children's book, The King of Ireland's Son (1916), to derive from the Irish folktale new and distinctive forms and themes for Irish fiction. In The King of Ireland's Son, Colum arranges and alters folktales to form a folktale-like synthesis which, however, expresses literary rather than folktale meanings. In Chapter I, I have identified Colum's folktale sources; in Chapter II, shown how he finds narrative patterns to convey literary meaning by transforming the traditional rhythms of the folktale into the literary rhythms of "deferral," "failure," and "gathering"; and in Chapter III, elucidated the themes—of the primacy of tradition in determining identity and of a new Irish heroism, that of the peasantry—which these rhythms are designed to express. Folklore continues to influence structure and content in Colum's romantic novel Castle Conquer (1923), the subject of my next two chapters, although the superficial trappings of the folktale are absent. In this novel, Colum's new image of heroism blends romance, the anti-heroism of comic folktales, and the real-life example of Ireland's rebel-poets (Chapter IV); as well, Castle iii. Conquer's many interpolated stories carry the theme of oral tradition into the structure of the novel (Chapter V). The following two chapters are devoted to The Flying Swans (1957) . A great achievement, this novel, with the disillusioned hindsight of the fifties, revises the ideas of heroism (Chapter VI) and of the relevance of folklore to life (Chapter VII). Yet Colum regenerates both ideas, in the process recasting in realistic terms the forms and themes of The King of Ireland's Son, written fifty years before. iv. Contents Page Abstract ii Introduction 1 I. The King of Ireland's Son: Adaptations of Folktale Sources 19 II. The King of Ireland's Son: Transformations of the Narrative Rhythms of the Folktale 56 III. The King of Ireland's Son: Heroism and Politics 117 IV. Castle Conquer: From Folk to Literary Heroism 170 V. Castle Conquer: Identity and the Transmission of Culture 197 VI. The Flying Swans: Heroism, Realism, and Art 237 VII. The Flying Swans and Folk Narrative: Garbled Folktales and Irish Archetyes 275 Conclusion 320 Bibliography 329 INTRODUCTION Padraic Colum's literary career, which includes works in every genre, extended from one end of the century almost to the other. The sheer volume and diversity of his work make his career difficult to assess, but the fact that his writing life began during a national renaissance and ended sixty or so years later in a personal renaissance means that there is the additional problem of scope. During this time, Colum produced nine books of poetry, collected in three volumes; twenty one-act and full-length plays; two novels; twenty-five children's books; a long narrative poem; scores of short stories; three travel books; two biographies and enough essays, reviews, introductions, prefaces, and other contributions to periodicals and to other people's books to bring the tally close to four figures, according to one estimate.^ A further problem in Colum's career is the fact that in 1914, newly married and struggling against poverty, Colum sailed for New York. What both Colum and his wife Mary expected to be a short stay in America turned into a lifetime of self-imposed exile which separated Colum from his natural audience, while his continuing Irish subject matter prevented him from entering the mainstream of American letters. Colum's personal anguish at separation from his native land, his family and his friends is reflected in his treatment of fellow-exile and namesake, Columcille, in The Legend of Saint Columba (1935). His sense of artistic loss is represented in The Flying Swans (1957), when Ulick O'Rehill's clairvoyant cousin Michaeleen warns him against going to sea. "'You will have to cut yourself in two,'" she warns 2 him, "'and each of you will be a stranger to the other.'" "What you love you'll leave behind you. .There will be sights and people you'll admire when you're away, and think them the best in the world. But you'll not speak for them—no, Ulick, you'll not speak for them." "I said you had wisdom, my child, but there's something you don't know, and I'll tell you what it is now. When you love something you don't lose that love by going away. You can keep it in your heart or your mind or someplace." FS_, 511-512 Ulick's defense holds true for Colum, who cherished in his heart an intense love for Ireland all his life. Nevertheless, Michaeleen point is also valid where Colum is concerned. Her fears for Ulick' artistic suicide no doubt express Colum's own regret at the effect of exile on his work. Significantly, he prevents the hero of The Flying Swans from following in his path and possibly from losing the chance for artistic wholeness. The length, productivity and diversity of Colum's literary life and the effect of his self-imposed exile have conspired to make Colum one of the most neglected writers of the Irish Literary Revival. His work receives comment, usually passing, in the standard histories of the Irish Revival, from Boyd's Ireland's Literary Renaissance (1916) to A. Norman Jeffares' Anglo-Irish Literature (1982). But few are the articles and books dealing with Colum independently, and fewer still those that are helpfully 3. and intelligently analytical. Some writers and critics seem to regard Colum as a genial and interesting relic of the days of glory, full of entertaining stories about his more famous contemporaries but not artistically important himself. The study of Colum's fiction undertaken here will attempt to demonstrate that this is simply not the case. Of the work that has been done on Colum, a great proportion consists not of clear-eyed criticism but of reminiscence. In addition to the several personal accounts of Colum, many of the most important aids to Colum research blend critical (or quasi- critical) or bibliographic investigation with biographical sketch. Alan Denson's checklist remains indispensable irrespective of the "appreciation" with which it begins, a little less helpful 3 than his two biographical sketches of Colum. The two other major works on^Cblum suffer more than Denson's bibliography from critical slackness and preoccupation with the outline of Colum's life. Zack Bowen's study, Padraic Colum: A Biographical-Critical Introduction (1970), includes in its 150 pages, as its title suggests, a brief biography along with its survey of Colum's vast and varied canon. Bowen's book is a useful introduction to Colum studies, sorting out some of the facts of his career and providing a helpful overview, but quite naturally lacking in detail. Ann Adelaide Murphy has more space and less material to cover in her dissertation, "Padraic Colum: A Critical Study of His Plays and Poems" (1980), but this work, most useful in its presentation of relatively inaccesible Colum materials, offers little in the way of analysis. The autobiographical element in Colum's writing, one of Murphy's interests, is a topic that merits discussion, but it requires a more exhaustive and analytical treatment than either Murphy or Bowen can afford. Indeed, Colum studies need urgently a good critical biography of Colum, as well as a selection of his letters and, possibly, a collection of his many scattered and almost entirely overlooked short stories. The major studies of Colum, then, are critically insufficient, but more astute criticism of Colum also tends to be marred by the common critical misconceptions about Column. In spite of a general lack of sympathy for Colum's interest in peasant Ireland, for instance, Richard Loftus's intelligent analysis in "Padraic Colum: The Peasant Nation," a chapter in his book, Nationalism in Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry (1964), is in many ways the ablest piece of writing on Colum. Yet Loftus founders on a misconception which, I fear, is both widely-held and damaging. He mistakenly finds in Colum's presentation of the Irish peasantry, notably in the theme of the heroism of the peasantryj an uncritical, sentimental, even perverse naivete. In his most strenuous criticism, of Colum, Loftus accuses him of exalting every quality of the peasant ,..xno matter how mean or unworthy.
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