The Snakes and Norah by Jane Barlow
Joe Kenny, a young farmer living with his family on a storm-battered isthmus beside Lough Fintragh, finds an ornate locked box washed up after a violent December storm that has wrecked his hay and drowned a calf. Already courting Rose O'Meara, he resolves to keep the box secret and give it to her as a Christmas gift, imagining its unknown contents as fabulously precious. When he leaves it briefly on the yard wall to tend his pigs, it vanishes, and he later discovers Tom O'Meara, Rose's brother and suitor to Joe's sister Mary, holding it, claiming to have "found" it himself. After a heated quarrel rooted in the awkward fact that each is courting the other's sister, the two young men grudgingly agree to split the gift jointly between Rose and Mary and present it together on Christmas Eve. That evening, in the Kennys' kitchen, Tom fumbles through an ungainly speech explaining the shared gift, and the box is pried open before the assembled family — Joe, his mother, his sisters Mary and Norah, and the O'Mearas. To everyone's disappointment, it proves entirely empty, a finely finished but seemingly worthless satinwood-lined box. Rose and Mary put a brave face on the anticlimax, while the courting couples soon drift outside together, leaving the eldest sister, Norah — unmarried, overlooked, and quietly resentful of her siblings' good fortune — alone in the kitchen. Idly running her fingers over the box's lining, Norah triggers a hidden spring: a false bottom releases a secret drawer padded in pink wadding, containing a magnificent gold snake necklace set with jewels. Startled and covetous, she conceals it just as the others return, and rather than reveal her discovery, she succumbs to jealousy and self-justifying reasoning — telling herself the box belonged to no one in particular and that she deserves some good luck of her own for once. She hides the necklace in her pocket, wracked afterward by guilt, suspicion, and fear of discovery, feigning toothache to explain her distraction. Unable to bear the secret, she decides to slip out that night and hide the necklace among the rocks along the shore, safely away from the house. Crossing the dark, storm-tossed isthmus alone, she is gripped by superstitious dread of the Piast, a legendary monstrous serpent said to inhabit the unfathomable depths of Lough Fintragh and to lure victims to their deaths with its glowing eyes. Catching sight of two glowing eyes and hearing a flapping commotion nearby — in reality only a disoriented seal that had been swept into the lough during the storm and was now returning to the sea — Norah panics, convinced the Piast itself is upon her. Fleeing in blind terror, she collides with her brother Joe, mistakes him for the monster, and in her frenzied attempt to escape falls and strikes her head on the rocks, knocking herself unconscious. She is carried home insensible and does not fully regain consciousness until after Christmas Day has passed. The necklace, still clutched tightly in her fist, becomes the subject of neighborhood speculation, with most assuming she simply found it washed up on the shore. When she recovers enough to be questioned, Norah finds that her memory of the intervening events — from her discovery of the necklace to her fall — has been wiped away by the accident, leaving her unable to explain how she came by it. Two lasting consequences follow from the episode. First, cleansed of the guilt and covetousness that drove her concealment (since she no longer recalls having stolen the necklace for herself), Norah insists that it rightfully belongs to Mary and Rose, and when a Dr. Mason sells it in Dublin for a surprising sum, she refuses to keep any share, dividing the proceeds entirely between the two other young women. Second, she is left with an intense, permanent dread of the isthmus itself, refusing ever again to cross it, even with company — a phobia that isolates her from much of the surrounding community, marks her as "quare" among her neighbors, and contributes over the years to her settling into life as a solitary spinster. Though Norah herself no longer connects her terror to the lake-monster of legend, having lost the memory of the glowing eyes that frightened her, local imagination is less forgetful. Over time, neighbors piece together and embellish an account of her accident into a full-blown story of a terrifying encounter with the Piast, and this version of events becomes the enduring local legend. The tale concludes by noting that travelers along the desolate shingle shore of Lough Fintragh still quicken their pace, uneasy at the thought that whatever creature frightened Norah Kenny that Christmas Eve might yet be stirring beneath the dark, sunless waters of the lough.
By Jane Barlow · First published 1897 · Genre: Gothic Fiction, Irish Regional Literature, Literary Realism · 5,429 words
First lines
The Kennys' little farmstead was a somewhat amphibious one, occupying the southern end of the isthmus which keeps the Atlantic foam from riding into Lough Fintragh, a small, dark-watered nook niched in the shadow of steep mountain slopes. Another murkier shadow brooded over it in the opinion of the Kennys, who, like most of their neighbours, at least half-believed that its recesses harboured a monstrous in-dweller.
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The Snakes and Norah is listed on Textopian as a short story by Jane Barlow, dated 1897 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Short story
- Author: Jane Barlow
- Date: 1897 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Gothic Fiction, Irish Regional Literature, Literary Realism, Psychological Drama, Folklore and Mythology
- Length: 5,429 words
- Structure: 1 section, 40 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Snakes and Norah by Jane Barlow
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
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Genres
- Gothic Fiction — The narrative features the Piast lake monster legend, atmospheric descriptions of dark waters and stormy nights, mysterious supernatural elements, and an atmosphere of dread culminating in a frightening encounter that leaves psychological scars.
- Irish Regional Literature — Strong Irish setting with authentic dialect and vernacular speech throughout, cultural details of rural Irish farm life, local customs and social structures, and deep engagement with Irish coastal landscape and community.
- Literary Realism — Grounded depiction of rural Irish agricultural life with realistic economic concerns, social hierarchies, family dynamics, and character motivations despite supernatural elements; psychological depth in character portrayal.
- Psychological Drama — Central focus on Norah's internal moral conflict, guilt, paranoia, and conscience; exploration of jealousy and resentment; detailed examination of how a single decision shapes an entire life trajectory.
Tags
Irish literature · children's fiction · folklore · rural life · fantasy · animal characters · fairy-tale elements · adventure · nature · superstition · family relationships · village setting