Ireland and India may seem far apart, with apparently little in common in terms of culture, language and tradition. Yet appearances can be deceiving: there are, in fact, remarkable similarities between the cultures that, once noticed, are impossible to ignore. They point to a shared kinship thousands of years ago that upends the concept of separation between eastern and western cultures.
When Christy Moore sings the classic Irish folk song Tippin’ It Up to Nancy he may not be aware that it derives from an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables known as the Panchatantra (Five Treatises), and yet it appears to. Moore’s version, which he learned from the Co Roscommon Traveller singer John Reilly, tells of an unfaithful wife who asks the chemist how to make her husband blind so that he won’t know about her infidelity. The chemist says: “Give him eggs and marrowbones and make him suck them all.
Before he has the last one sucked, he won’t see you at all.” Sure enough, the husband goes blind and says he’ll drown himself in the river. His wife offers to show him the way, but he pushes her in instead.
In the Sanskrit version, which dates from more than 2,000 years ago, an account is given of an unfaithful wife who asks the statue of a goddess at a river how to blind her husband. By way of reply she hears the words, “If you never stop giving him such food as butter and butter-cakes, then he will presently go blind.” She does as advised, and her husban.
