Transcript

Bhí bean ann uair amháin agus bhí mac amháin aici. Bhí na... bhí na comharsanaigh ag tabhairt amadáin air agus bheadh corraí mór uirthi cionn go bheadh[1] siad ag tabhairt amadáin air.

An lá seo rinn sí réidh cearc Dé Domhnaigh don meán lae[2] agus rinn sí réidh 'un a ghoil 'un an Aifhrinn[3]. Dúirt sí le Séamas, nuair a bheadh[4] an cea-... a bheadh an pota ag goil... amharc... an pota a mheascadh. Tháinig sé isteach agus bhí sé ag meascadh an potú agus d'amhac[5] sé isteach ann. Thóg sé rud beag den chearc amach as an phota agus chuir sé ina béal[6] é.

"Tá sé sin milis," a deir sé, agus thóg sé an cearc an dara... an dara uair amach as an phota agus d'ith sé an cearc uilig go léir.

"Ó," a deir sé, "chan fhuil a fhios agam goidé atá mé ag goil a dhéanamh anois," a deir sé. "Chan fhuil cearc fán[7] toigh ach an cionn atá amuigh ar gor, agus caithfidh mé an chearc sin a thabhairt isteach agus a chur insa phota."

Chuaigh sé amach agus thug sé an cearc a bhí amuigh ar gor agus chuir sé isteach insa phota í, cleiteacha, cluimneach[8], beo is a bhí sí. Agus choinnigh sé síos insa phota í gur éag sí.

Fuaigh sé amach é féin agus chuir... bhí sé ag cur gor ar na huigheacha[9]. Tháinig a máthair[10] abhaile agus bhí sí ag scairt ar Séamas agus rinn sé (fr)eagar uirthi amuigh ar an nead. Agus seo an rud a dúirt sé: "Gic, gic, gic, a mháthair," a deir sé. "Tá mé ag cur gor ar na huigheacha."

"Ó, chan iontas," a deir sí, "go bhfeil na... bhfeil na comharsanaigh ag tabhairt amadáin ort. Amadán maith atá ionat anois nuair atá tú ag cur gor ar na huigheacha."

Translation

There was once a woman and she had one son. The neighbours used to call him a fool and she would get very angry that they were calling him a fool.

This one day she prepared a Sunday chicken for the midday meal and she got ready to go to Mass. She told James, when the hen... when the pot was boiling(?)... to look... to stir the pot. He came in and he was stirring the pot and he looked inside it. He took a little piece of the chicken out of the pot and put it in his mouth.

"That's sweet," he said, and he took the hen a second time... a second time out of the pot and he ate the whole hen.

"Oh," he said, "I don't know what I'm going to do now," he said. "There's no hen about the house but the one that is outside brooding, and I must bring that hen in and put it in the pot."

He went out and he took the brooding hen and he put it into the pot, feathers, plumage, alive as could be. And he held it down in the pot until it died.

He went out himself and he... he sat on the eggs. His mother came home and she called James and he answered her from the nest outside. And this is what he said: "Cluck, cluck, cluck, mother," he said. "I'm sitting on the eggs."

"Oh, no wonder," she said, "that the neighbours call you a fool. You're a right fool now sitting on the eggs."

Footnotes

Commentary

This is an example of an international folktale, ATU 1218 Numskull sits on eggs to finish the hatching. It follows international versions closely, where a stupid son is at home alone, and manages to kill the brooding hen, so he sits on her eggs himself to hatch them. It was first documented in the sixteenth century, and is now found throughout Europe and the Americas, often in combination with other international folktales concerning fools. See Hans Jorg Uther, The types of international folktales: a classification and bibliography (3 vols, Helsinki, 2004). The story is reasonably well known in Ireland and has been recorded in all four provinces. See Seán Ó Súilleabháin and Rieder Th. Christiansen, The types of the Irish folktale (Helsinki, 1968).

This story is transcribed also in Heinrich Wagner and Colm Ó Baoill, Linguistic atlas and survey of Irish dialects (4 vols, Dublin, 1958-69), vol. 4, 298-9, and in Róise Ní Bhaoill, Ulster Gaelic voices: bailiúchán Doegen 1931 (Belfast, 2010), 264-6. Another version appears in Nollaig Mac Congáil and Ciarán Ó Duibhín, Glórtha ón tseanaimsir (Gleann an Iolair, 2009), 39-40.