Amadán na Bruidhne

Also Known As: Irish, “the fool of the fairy palace” or “of the fairy mounds”; recorded phonetically as Amadán-na-Breena and Amadan-na-Briona; also called the Fool of the Forth
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Celtic Mythology, Irish Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: His touch, called the stroke, leaves a person paralysed, witless or dead, and the healers who could cure every other fairy harm said they could do nothing against it.
Role in Mythos: He is the fool of the fairy household, one of two members of the host, with its queen, whose blow no charm or herb can undo.
Relation to Humans: Country people in south Galway and on the Clare border feared him above all the fairies, especially in June, which they called the month the Amadán gives his stroke. They warded him off with a prayer said at the moment of meeting, and when that failed they looked to a Mass rather than to any wise woman.

A boy was lying in his bed in June when something knocked. He did not answer. It knocked a second time, and the woman who told the story afterwards said that even then, had he answered, he might have got away. At the third knock he fell back on the bed and did not rise as himself again. His name was Rivers, the thing at the door was the Amadán na Bruidhne, and the boy was taken in the end to the asylum at Ballinasloe, where he died. He was buried at Drumacoo.

The name is plain Irish. An amadán is a fool, the ordinary word a mother might use for a son who left the gate open, and na bruidhne means of the bruidhean, the fairy palace or hostel inside the hill. The fairy doctor Hearne, who lived on the border of Clare and Galway, explained the arrangement to W. B. Yeats: in every household of the fairies there is a queen and a fool, and a person touched by either of them never recovers, though the touch of any other fairy can be cured. Hearne added a line that has troubled readers since. The fool, he said, was maybe the wisest of them all.

Almost everything written in English about him comes from one burst of collecting in the cottages of south Galway around the turn of the twentieth century, by Yeats and by Lady Augusta Gregory of Coole. Yeats printed the testimony in “The Queen and the Fool,” a chapter of the 1902 edition of The Celtic Twilight. Gregory gave the fuller record as “The Fool of the Forth” in Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920), and admitted at its head that neither Yeats in Sligo nor she in Galway had heard of him before they went looking. The forth is the local English for a fairy fort or ringfort. Yeats added that he had heard the fool was known in the Scottish Highlands too, and the Dictionary of Celtic Mythology treats the amadán as a figure of both Irish and Scottish Gaelic lore. It sets the feared fool of the fairy mounds, who brings paralysis or death, beside a very different Amadán Mór, a heroic great fool of the tales, and finds no link between either and the everyday insult.

What he looks like depends on who met him. A woman near Gort who crossed his path, and escaped, said he was like a big strong man, half naked. Hearne said he was dressed like the mummers that used to go about the country. Others called him wide, leathan in Irish, and not smart. Mrs. Staunton saw him at a place she called Pul-na-shionac as low-sized and very wide, with a very high hat, a creature who would make shoes for anyone who could catch hold of him, and her neighbours told her that was a leprechaun she had seen, not the Amadán at all. An old woman in the Galway workhouse settled the argument her own way: he changes his shape every two days, sometimes young, sometimes a beast. She had heard lately that someone had shot him. She doubted it. He would be hard to shoot.

The shape-changing explains one of the gentler stories. A boy in June saw a lamb look over a wall at him, and the lamb had a beard. The family went not to a herb-woman but to the priest, a Mass was said, and the boy lived to marry and have a family of his own. The old woman on the Bog of Kiltartan who told it put the season plainly: June is the month the Amadán gives his stroke.

A worse story came from a Clare man. A boy had been dragged by the gentry into one of their fights, and three years later the Amadán came at him across the fields carrying a big vessel that shone in his arms. The boy ran. The fool threw the vessel after him, it broke with a great noise, and whatever came out of it, the boy’s wits were gone then and there. He lived on. He was never right again.

No one records where the fool comes from, what he wants, or why he strikes. A man by the sea offered the only explanation anyone gave: having no sense himself, the fool strikes where he likes, and whoever gets the stroke is gone. That is the frightening part of him. The banshee has her families and the fetch has its warning, but the Amadán’s blow follows no rule a household could learn and avoid. The fairies were also said to take human fools away with them at night, the male fools and the women fools called óinseachs, so the half-witted of the parish were thought to keep company with him after dark.

His power lies in the touch itself. Men near Athenry said that Biddy Early, the famous wise woman of Clare, could cure almost anything but not the Amadán’s stroke, because his power was greater than hers. A woman related to Hearne, who cured both people and cattle, told Yeats she could do nothing against a stroke from the queen or the fool of the forth. Fear of him carried into ordinary encounters: Ned Meechan of Killinane met something on the racecourse at Ballybrit that seemed to be all round him wherever he turned, and he fled home in such a state that his wife remembered it.

His limits are few, but they are real. An old woman said that anyone who meets him and says at once “The Lord be between us and harm” can pass by safely, and that the one who does not is lost for good. The boy with the bearded lamb was saved by a Mass. The woman near Gort met him face to face and walked home whole. For everyone else the record is blunt, and a man at Kilcolgan put it in two words: once touched, it is prison forever.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Amadán na Bruidhne?

The Amadán na Bruidhne is the fool of the fairy household in Irish folklore, whose touch, called the stroke, was believed to cause paralysis, madness or death. His name means the fool of the fairy palace. Informants in south Galway and Clare described him as the most feared of the fairies because no healer could cure his blow.

Why is June the dangerous month for the Amadán?

Country people told Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats that June is the month the Amadán gives his stroke. Several of the recorded cases, including the boy named Rivers who fell after three knocks at his door, happened in June.

What does the Amadán na Bruidhne look like?

Accounts of the Amadán na Bruidhne disagree. One witness saw a big, strong, half-naked man, a fairy doctor said he dressed like the travelling mummers, and others called him very wide. A woman in the Galway workhouse said he changed his shape every two days and could appear as a beast, and one boy saw him as a lamb with a beard.

Can the Amadán’s stroke be cured?

The Amadán’s stroke was believed to be incurable by ordinary means. Even the famous Clare healer Biddy Early was said to be unable to cure it. The only protection recorded was to say “The Lord be between us and harm” on meeting him, and in one case a Mass saved a boy who had seen him.

Where does the story of the Amadán come from?

Almost all of the English-language record comes from folklore collected in south Galway and on the Clare border by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory around 1900. Yeats published it in The Celtic Twilight (1902) and Gregory in Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920). Yeats also heard that the fool was known in the Scottish Highlands.