Dullahan

The Dullahan (Irish: Dubhlachan; dúlachán, ) is a type of legendary creature in Irish folklore. He is depicted as a headless rider on a black horse, or as a coachman, who carries his own head. As it not widely attested in native sources, including no references to it on the extensive website of the Irish Folklore Commission Dúchas.ie, there is doubt as to whether the Dullahan was originally a part of the Irish oral tradition.

Etymology

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

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

The Dullahan is also called Colainn Gan Cheann, meaning "without a head" in Irish.

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

Folk Beliefs

Description

He is depicted as a Headless Horseman, stereotypically on a black horse, and he is either a headless body without a head or he carries his own head in his hand or under his arm. The severed head has a revolting apperance, 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.

According to the modern storyteller Tony Locke of County Mayo, the 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".

There are also legends and tales mentioning the "Headless Coach" (also called "Coach-a-bower"; Irish: cóiste bodhar), with the Dullahan as its presumed driver. 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. However William Butler Yeats explained that "the 'deaf coach' was so called because of its rumbling sound". According to one witness, only the silent shadow of the horse-drawn hearse, i.e, the "Soundless Coach" was seen passing by.

In Croker's poem "The Death Coach", the carriage axle is made of a human spine and the wheel-spokes are constructed from thigh bones. A later writer prosifying this description supplied additional details, so that the "two hollow skulls" used as lanterns on the carriage are set with candles, and the hammercloth made of pall material "mildew'd by damps" is embellished as being chewed away by worms.

Behavior

A Dullahan appears as a mounted horseman or a coachman driving a horse-drawn carriage out of graveyards. 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.

He arrives, driving the Death Coach, at the doorstep of a person whose death is approaching. According to Croker, the appearance of the "Headless Coach" foreshadows imminent death or misfortune. In "Hanlon's Mill", Michael (Mick) Noonan is returning from his trip to a shoemaker at Ballyduff, Co. Cork, and during his journey, he sees a black coach drawn by six headless black horses, driven by a headless coachman clad in black. The next morning, Mick receives news from the huntsman that Master Wrixon of Ballygibblin had a fit and died.

Croker reports that in one legend, a Headless Coach would run back and forth from Castle Hyde to a glen/valley beyond the village of Ballyhooly, in County Cork. Nearby in the town of Doneraile, 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 of blood by the coachman.

There are rumours that golden objects can force the Dullahan to disappear.

Sight

A modern commentator stated that the Dullahan has the ability to see with the severed head and can "use it to scan the countryside for mortals about to die".

In contrast, the headless coach in the tale "The Harvest Dinner" is described as a "blind (thief)", and Croker assumed he lacks sight.

Whip

The Dullahan allegedly uses a human spine as a whip according to a number of modern-day (21st century) commentators.

The headless coachman merely bears a "long whip" in Croker's tale "The Harvest Dinner", with which he lashes the horses so furiously, he almost strikes a witness blind in an eye (the would-be-victim regarded it as deliberate assault). Croker deduced that the headless creature, as a way of habit, attempts to destroy his witness's eye or eyes with his whip, reasoning that the coachman's wrath turns to the onlooker because he lacks the ability to look due to his headlessness.

Folk Tales

Croker's Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1828) contained a section on "The Dullahan" devoted to the lore of headless beings.

The tale "The Good Woman" recounts a peasant's encounter with a cloaked female who turns out to be a Dullahan. A peasant named Larry Dodd, a resident of "White Knight's Country" at the foot the Galtee Mountains (Galtymore), travels (westward) to Cashel where he buys a nag, intending to sell it at Kildorrery fair that June evening. He offers a ride to a cloaked female, and when he grabs her to exact a kiss as payment for the ride, he discovers her to be a Dullahan. After losing consciousness, in the church ruins he finds a wheel of torture set with severed heads (skulls) and headless Dullahans, both men and women and nobles and commoners of various occupations. Larry is offered a drink, and when he is about to compliment it, his head is severed mid-sentence. His head reverts when he regains his senses. He loses his horse to the Dullahans.

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

In popular culture

• The fantasy film Darby O'Gill and the Little People features a Dullahan who drives the Death Coach. When it arrives, it calls out Darby's name in place of his daughter, and although he enters the coach, he is saved by the king of the leprechauns.
• In the anime Durarara!!, one of the main characters, Celty Sturluson, is a Dullahan that came to Japan from Ireland in search of her stolen head.
• Irish author Derek Landy's novel Skulduggery Pleasant: Mortal Coil features a Dullahan who drives the Coach-a-Bowers, which is pulled by four headless horses, and is summoned to collect any human who has heard the call of a banshee.
• In The Misadventures of Myndil Plodostirr by author Michelle Franklin, Mr Dullahan, who was named by Myndil, is a dullahan that lost its horse and whip and now protects an abbey in Ulaid.
• In the game Warframe, a playable Dullahan-inspired character named Dagath has the ability to summon ghostly horses at will and is equipped with a blade-and whip weapon inspired by the spine imagery in folklore.
• In the manga Berserk, a Dullahan makes a cameo at the end of Millennium Falcon Arc in Vol. 34.

See also

• Cephalophore
• Headless Rider urban legend

Explanatory notes

References

Citations

General and cited references

External links