Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series

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Title: Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series

Compiler: Lady Gregory

Annotator: W. B. Yeats

Release date: October 18, 2013 [eBook #43973]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43973

Credits: Produced by Douglas L. Alley, III, Barbara Tozier, Bill
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VISIONS AND BELIEFS IN THE WEST OF IRELAND, FIRST SERIES ***

Produced by Douglas L. Alley, III, Barbara Tozier, Bill
Tozier and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net

_By Lady Gregory_

DRAMA

Seven Short Plays
Folk-History Plays, 2 vols.
New Comedies
The Image
The Golden Apple
Our Irish Theatre. A Chapter of Autobiography

IRISH FOLK LORE AND LEGEND

Visions and Beliefs, 2 vols.
Cuchulain of Muirthemne
Gods and Fighting Men
Saints and Wonders
Poets and Dreamers
The Kiltartan Poetry Book

[Illustration: Coole Lake

From a picture by Robert Gregory in Sir Hugh Lane's Collection]

VISIONS AND BELIEFS IN
THE WEST OF IRELAND
COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY
LADY GREGORY: WITH TWO ESSAYS
AND NOTES BY W. B. YEATS

"_There's no doubt at all but that there's the same
sort of things in other countries; but you hear
more about them in these parts because the Irish
do be more familiar in talking of them._"

_FIRST SERIES_

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
=The Knickerbocker Press=
1920

=The Knickerbocker Press, New York=

PREFACE

The Sidhe cannot make themselves visible to all. They are
shape-changers; they can grow small or grow large, they can take what
shape they choose; they appear as men or women wearing clothes of
many colours, of today or of some old forgotten fashion, or they are
seen as bird or beast, or as a barrel or a flock of wool. They go by
us in a cloud of dust; they are as many as the blades of grass. They
are everywhere; their home is in the forths, the lisses, the ancient
round grass-grown mounds. There are thorn-bushes they gather near
and protect; if they have a mind for a house like our own they will
build it up in a moment. They will remake a stone castle, battered by
Cromwell's men, if it takes their fancy, filling it with noise and
lights. Their own country is Tir-nan-Og--the Country of the Young. It
is under the ground or under the sea, or it may not be far from any
of us. As to their food, they will use common things left for them
on the hearth or outside the threshold, cold potatoes it may be, or
a cup of water or of milk. But for their feasts they choose the best
of all sorts, taking it from the solid world, leaving some worthless
likeness in its place; when they rob the potatoes from the ridges
the diggers find but rottenness and decay; they take the strength
from the meat in the pot, so that when put on the plates it does not
nourish. They will not touch salt; there is danger to them in it.
They will go to good cellars to bring away the wine.

Fighting is heard among them, and music that is more beautiful than
any of this world; they are seen dancing on the rocks; they are often
seen playing at the hurling, hitting balls towards the goal. In each
one of their households there is a queen, and she has more power than
the rest; but the greatest power belongs to their fool, the Fool of
the Forth, Amadan-na-Briona. He is their strongest, the most wicked,
the most deadly; there is no cure for any one he has struck.

When they are friendly to a man they give him help in his work,
putting their strength into his body. Or they may tell him where to
find treasure, hidden gold; or through certain wise men or women
who have learned from them or can ask and get their knowledge they
will tell where cattle that have strayed may be found, or they will
cure the sick or tell if a sickness is not to be cured. They will
sometimes work as if against their own will or intention, giving back
to the life of our world one who had received the call to go over to
their own. They call many there, summoning them perhaps through the
eye of a neighbour, the evil eye, or by a touch, a blow, a fall, a
sudden terror. Those who have received their touch waste away from
this world, lending their strength to the invisible ones; for the
strength of a human body is needed by the shadows, it may be in their
fighting, and certainly in their hurling to win the goal. Young men
are taken for this, young mothers are taken that they may give the
breast to newly born children among the Sidhe, young girls that they
may themselves become mothers there.

While these are away a body in their likeness, or the likeness of a
body, is left lying in their place. They may be given leave to return
to their village after a while, seven years it may be, or twice or
three times seven. But some are sent back only at the end of the
years allotted them at the time of their birth, old spent men and
women, thought to have been dead a long time, given back to die and
be buried on the face of the earth.

There are two races among the Sidhe. One is tall and handsome, gay,
and given to jesting and to playing pranks, leading us astray in
the fields, giving gold that turns to withered leaves or to dust.
These ride on horses through the night-time in large companies and
troops, or ride in coaches, laughing and decked with flowers and
fine clothes. The people of the other race are small, malicious,
wide-bellied, carrying before them a bag. When a man or woman is
about to die, a woman of the Sidhe will sometimes cry for a warning,
keening and making lamentation. At the hour of death fighting may be
heard in the air or about the house--that is, when the man in danger
has friends among the shadows, who are fighting on his behalf.

The dead are often seen among them, and will give help in danger to
comrade or brother or friend. Sometimes they have a penance to work
out, and will come and ask the living for help, for prayers, for the
payment of a debt. They may wander in some strange shape, or be bound
in the one place, or go through the air as birds. When the Sidhe pass
by in a blast of wind we should say some words of blessing, for there
may be among them some of our own dead. The dead are of the nature
of the Saints, mortals who have put on immortality, who have known
the troubles of the world. The Sidhe have been, like the Angels, from
before the making of the earth. In the old times in Ireland they were
called gods or the children of gods; now it is laid down they are
those Angels who were cast out of heaven, being proud.

This is the news I have been given of the people of the Sidhe by many
who have seen them and some who have known their power.

A. G.

COOLE, February, 1916.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I.--SEA-STORIES 3

II.--SEERS AND HEALERS 35

BIDDY EARLY 35

MRS. SHERIDAN 70

MR. SAGGARTON 92

"A GREAT WARRIOR IN THE BUSINESS" 103

OLD DERUANE 112

III.--THE EVIL EYE--THE TOUCH--THE PENALTY 127

IV.--AWAY 169

WITCHES AND WIZARDS AND IRISH FOLK-LORE 247

NOTES 265

SEA-STORIES

_"The Celtic Twilight" was the first book of Mr. Yeats's that I read,
and even before I met him, a little time later, I had begun looking
for news of the invisible world; for his stories were of Sligo and
I felt jealous for Galway. This beginning of knowledge was a great
excitement to me, for though I had heard all my life some talk of
the faeries and the banshee_ (_having indeed reason to believe in
this last_), _I had never thought of giving heed to what I, in common
with my class, looked on as fancy or superstition. It was certainly
because of this unbelief that I had been told so little about them.
Even when I began to gather these stories, I cared less for the
evidence given in them than for the beautiful rhythmic sentences in
which they were told. I had no theories, no case to prove, I but
"held up a clean mirror to tradition."_

_It is hard to tell sometimes what has been a real vision and what
is tradition, a legend hanging in the air, a "vanity" as our people
call it, made use of by a story-teller here and there, or impressing
itself as a real experience on some sensitive and imaginative
mind. For tradition has a large place in "the Book of the People"
showing a sowing and re-sowing, a continuity and rebirth as in
nature. "Those," "The Others," "The Fallen Angels" have some of the
attributes of the gods of ancient Ireland; we may even go back yet
farther to the early days of the world when the Sons of God mated
with the Daughters of Men. I believe that if Christianity could be
blotted out and forgotten tomorrow, our people would not be moved at
all from the belief in a spiritual world and an unending life; it has
been with them since the Druids taught what Lucan called "the happy
error of the immortality of the soul." I think we found nothing so
trivial in our search but it may have been worth the lifting; a clue,
a thread, leading through the maze to that mountain top where things
visible and invisible meet._

_To gather folk-lore one needs, I think, leisure, patience,
reverence, and a good memory. I tried not to change or alter
anything, but to write down the very words in which the story had
been told. Sometimes Mr. Yeats was with me at the telling; or I would
take him to hear for himself something I had been told, that he might
be sure I had missed or added nothing. I filled many copybooks, and
came to have a very faithful memory for all sides of folk-lore,
stories of saints, of heroes, of giants and enchanters, as well as
for these visions. For this I have had to "pay the penalty" by losing
in some measure that useful and practical side of memory that is
concerned with names and dates and the multiplication table, and the
numbers on friends' houses in a street._

_It was on the coast I began to gather these stories, and I went
after a while to the islands Inishmor, Inishmaan, Inisheer, and so I
give the sea-stories first._

_I was told by:

A Man on the Height near Dun Conor:_

It's said there's everything in the sea the same as on the land, and
we know there's horses in it. This boy here saw a horse one time out
in the sea, a grey one, swimming about. And there were three men from
the north island caught a horse in their nets one night when they
were fishing for mackerel, but they let it go; it would have broke
the boat to bits if they had brought it in, and anyhow they thought
it was best to leave it. One year at Kinvara, the people were missing
their oats that was eaten in the fields, and they watched one night
and it was five or six of the sea-horses they saw eating the oats,
but they could not take them, they made off to the sea.

And there was a man on the north island fishing on the rocks one
time, and a mermaid came up before him, and was partly like a fish
and the rest like a woman. But he called to her in the name of God to
be off, and she went and left him.

There was a boy was sent over here one morning early by a friend of
mine on the other side of the island, to bring over some cattle that
were in a field he had here, and it was before daylight, and he came
to the door crying, and said he heard thirty horses or more galloping
over the roads there, where you'd think no horse could go.

Surely those things are on the sea as well as on the land. My father
was out fishing one night off Tyrone and something came beside the
boat, that had eyes shining like candles. And then a wave came in,
and a storm rose of a moment, and whatever was in the wave, the
weight of it had like to sink the boat. And then they saw that it was
a woman in the sea that had the shining eyes. So my father went to
the priest, and he bid him always to take a drop of holy water and a
pinch of salt out in the boat with him, and nothing would harm him.

_A Galway Bay Lobster-Seller:_

They are on the sea as well as on the land, and their boats are often
to be seen on the bay, sailing boats and others. They look like our
own, but when you come near them they are gone in an instant. (_Note_
1.)

My mother one time thought she saw our own boat come in to the pier
with my father and two other men in it, and she got the supper ready,
but when she went down to the pier and called them there was nothing
there, and the boat didn't come in till two hours after.

There were three or four men went out one day to fish, and it was a
dead calm; but all of a sudden they heard a blast and they looked,
and within about three mile of the boat they saw twelve men from the
waist, the rest of them was under water. And they had sticks in their
hands and were striking one another. And where they were, and the
blast, it was rough, but smooth and calm on each side.

There's a sort of a light on the sea sometimes; some call it a "Jack
O'Lantern" and some say it is sent by _them_ to mislead them. (_Note_
2.)

There's many of them out in the sea, and often they pull the boats
down. (_Note_ 3.) It's about two years since four fishermen went out
from Aran, two fathers and two sons, where they saw a big ship coming
in and flying the flag for a pilot, and they thought she wanted to be
brought in to Galway. And when they got near the ship, it faded away
to nothing and the boat turned over and they were all four drowned.

There were two brothers of my own went to fish for the herrings, and
what they brought up was like the print of a cat, and it turned with
the inside of the skin outside, and no hair. So they pulled up the
nets, and fished no more that day. There was one of _them_ lying on
the strand here, and some of the men of the village came down of a
sudden and surprised him. And when he saw he was taken he began a
great crying. But they only lifted him down to the sea and put him
back into it. Just like a man they said he was. And a little way out
there was another just like him, and when he saw that they treated
the one on shore so kindly, he bowed his head as if to thank them.

Whatever's on the land, there's the same in the sea, and between the
islands of Aran they can often see the horses galloping about at the
bottom. (_Note_ 4.)

There was a sort of a big eel used to be in Tully churchyard, used to
come and to root up the bodies, but I didn't hear of him of late--he
may be done away with now.

There was one Curran told me one night he went down to the strand
where he used to be watching for timber thrown up and the like.
And on the strand, on the dry sands, he saw a boat, a grand one
with sails spread and all, and it up farther than any tide had ever
reached. And he saw a great many people round about it, and it was
all lighted up with lights. And he got afraid and went away. And four
hours after, after sunrise, he went there again to look at it, and
there was no sign of it, or of any fire, or of any other thing. The
Mara-warra (mermaid) was seen on the shore not long ago, combing out
her hair. She had no fish's tail, but was like another woman.

_John Corley:_

There is no luck if you meet a mermaid and you out at sea, but storms
will come, or some ill will happen.

There was a ship on the way to America, and a mermaid was seen
following it, and the bad weather began to come. And the captain said,
"It must be some man in the ship she's following, and if we knew which
one it was, we'd put him out to her and save ourselves." So they drew
lots, and the lot fell on one man, and then the captain was sorry
for him, and said he'd give him a chance till tomorrow. And the next
day she was following them still, and they drew lots again, and the
lot fell on the same man. But the captain said he'd give him a third
chance, but the third day the lot fell on him again. And when they were
going to throw him out he said, "Let me alone for a while." And he went
to the end of the ship and he began to sing a song in Irish, and when
he sang, the mermaid began to be quiet and to rock like as if she was
asleep. So he went on singing till they came to America, and just as
they got to the land the ship was thrown up into the air, and came down
on the water again. There's a man told me that was surely true.

And there was a boy saw a mermaid down by Spiddal not long ago, but
he saw her before she saw him, so she did him no harm. But if she'd
seen him first, she'd have brought him away and drowned him.

Sometimes a light will come on the sea before the boats to guide them
to the land. And my own brother told me one day he was out and a
storm came on of a sudden, and the sail of the boat was let down as
quick and as well as if two men were in it. Some neighbour or friend
it must have been that did that for him. Those that go down to the
sea after the tide going out, to cut the weed, often hear under the
sand the sound of the milk being churned. There's some didn't believe
that till they heard it themselves.

_A Man from Roundstone:_

One night I was out on the boat with another man, and we saw a big ship
near us with about twenty lights. She was as close to us as that rock
(about thirty yards), but we saw no one on board. And she was like some
of the French ships that sometimes come to Galway. She went on near us
for a while, and then she turned towards the shore and then we knew
that she was not a right ship. And she went straight on to the land,
and when she touched it, the lights went out and we saw her no more.

There was a comrade of mine was out one night, and a ship came after
him, with lights, and she full of people. And as they drew near the
land, he heard them shouting at him and he got afraid, and he went
down and got a coal of fire and threw it at the ship, and in a minute
it was gone.

_A Schoolmaster:_

A boy told me last night of two men that went with poteen to the
Island of Aran. And when they were on the shore they saw a ship
coming as if to land, and they said, "We'll have the bottle ready
for those that are coming." But when the ship came close to the land,
it vanished. And presently they got their boat ready and put out to
sea. And a sudden blast came and swept one of them off. And the other
saw him come up again, and put out the oar across his breast for him
to take hold of it. But he would not take it but said, "I'm all right
again now," and sank down again and was never seen no more.

_John Nagle:_

For one there's on the land there's ten on the sea. When I lived at
Ardfry there was never a night but there was a voice heard crying
and roaring, by them that were out in the bay. A baker he was from
Loughrea, used to give short weight and measure, and so he was put
there for a punishment.

I saw a ship that was having a race with another go suddenly down
into the sea, and no one could tell why. And afterwards one of the
Government divers was sent down to look for her, and he told me he'd
never as long as he'd live go down again, for there at the bottom he
found her, and the captain and the saloon passengers, and all sitting
at the table and eating their dinner, just as they did before.

_A Little Girl:_

One time a woman followed a boat from Galway twenty miles out, and
when they saw that she was some bad thing, wanting some of them,
they drowned her.

_Mrs. Casey:_

I was at home and I got some stories from a man I had suspected of
having newses. And he told me that when he was a youngster he was
at a height where there used to be a great many of them. And all of
a sudden he saw them fly out to where a boat was coming from Duras
with seaweed. And they went in two flights, and so fast that they
swept the water away from each side the boat, and it was left on the
sand, and this they did over and over, just to be humbugging the man
in the boat, and he was kept there a long time. When they first rose
up, they were like clouds of dust, but with all sorts of colours, and
then he saw their faces turned, but they kept changing colour every
minute. (_Note_ 5.) Laughing and humbugging they seemed to be.

My uncle that used to go out fishing for mackerel told me that one
night some sort of a monster came under the boat and it wasn't a
fish, and it had them near upset.

_At an evening gathering in Inishmaan, by a Son of the House:_

There was a man on this island was down on the beach one evening with
his dog, and some black thing came up out of the sea, and the dog
made for it and began to fight it. And the man began to run home and
he called the dog, and it followed him, but every now and again it
would stop and begin to fight again. And when he got to the house he
called the dog in and shut the door, and whatever was outside began
hitting against the door but it didn't get in. But the dog went in
under the bed in the room, and before morning it was dead.

_The Man of the House:_

A horse I've seen myself on the sea and on the rocks--a brown one,
just like another. And I threw a stone at it, and it was gone in a
minute. We often heard there was fighting amongst _these._ And one
morning before daybreak I went down to the strand with some others,
and the whole of the strand, and it low tide, was covered with blood.

_Colman Kane:_

I knew a woman on this island and she and her daughter went down to
the strand one morning to pick weed, and a wave came and took the
daughter away. And a week after that, the mother saw her coming to
the house, but she didn't speak to her.

There was a man coming from Galway here and he had no boatman. And on
the way he saw a man that was behind him in the boat, that was putting
up the sail and taking the management of everything, and he spoke no
word. And he was with him all the way, but when the boat came to land,
he was gone, and the man isn't sure, but he thinks it was his brother.

You see that sand below on the south side. When the men are out with
the mackerel boats at early morning, they often see those sands
covered with boys and girls.

There were some men out fishing in the bay one time, and a man came
and held on to the boat, and wanted them to make room for him to get
in, and after a time he left them. He was one of _those_. And there
was another of them came up on the rocks one day, and called out to
Martin Flaherty that was going out and asked what was his name.

There's said to be another island out there that's enchanted, and
there are some that see it. And it's said that a fisherman landed on
it one time, and he saw a little house, and he went in, and a very
nice-looking young woman came out and said, "What will you say to
me?" and he said, "You are a very nice lady." And a second came and
asked him the same thing and a third, and he made the same answer.
And after that they said, "You'd best run for your life," and so he
did, and his curragh was floating along and he had but just time to
get into it, and the island was gone. But if he had said "God bless
you," the island would have been saved.

_A Fisherman on Kilronan Pier:_

I don't give in to these things myself, but they'd make you believe
them in the middle island. Mangan, that I lodged with there, told me of
seeing a ship when he was out with two other men, that followed them
and vanished. And he said one of the men took to his bed from that
time and died. And Doran told me about the horse he saw, that was in
every way like a horse you'd see on land. And a man on the south island
told me how he saw a calf one morning on the strand, and he thought it
belonged to a neighbour, and was going to drive it up to his field,
when its mother appeared on the sea, and it went off to her.

They are in the sea as well as on the land. That is well known by
those that are out fishing by the coast. When the weather is calm,
they can look down sometimes and see cattle and pigs and all such
things as we have ourselves. And at nights their boats come out and
they can be seen fishing, but they never last out after one o'clock.

The cock always crows on the first of March every year at one
o'clock. And there was a man brought a cock out with him in his boat
to try them. And the first time when it crowed they all vanished.
That is how they were detected.

There are more of them in the sea than on the land, and they
sometimes try to come over the side of the boat in the form of
fishes, for they can take their choice shape.

_Pat O'Hagan:_

There were two fine young women--red-haired women--died in my village
about six months ago. And I believe they're living yet. And there
are some have seen them appear. All I ever saw myself was one day I
was out fishing with two others, and we saw a canoe coming near us,
and we were afraid it would come near enough to take away our fish.
And as we looked it turned into a three-masted ship, and people in
it. I could see them well, dark-coloured and dressed like sailors.
But it went away and did us no harm.

One night I was going down to the curragh, and it was a night in
harvest, and the stars shining, and I saw a ship fully rigged going
towards the coast of Clare where no ship could go. And when I looked
again, she was gone.

And one morning early, I and other men that were with me, and one of
them a friend of the man here, saw a ship coming to the island, and he
thought she wanted a pilot, and put out in the curragh. But when we got
to where she was, there was no sign of her, but where she was the water
was covered with black gulls, and I never saw a black gull before,
thousands and crowds of them, and not one white bird among them. And
one of the boys that was with me took a tarpin and threw it at one of
the gulls and hit it on the head, and when he did, the curragh went
down to the rowlocks in the water--up to that--and it's nothing but a
miracle she ever came up again, but we got back to land. I never went
to a ship again, for the people said it was on account of me helping in
the Preventive Service it happened, and that if I'd hit at one of the
gulls myself, there would have been a bad chance for us. But those were
no right gulls, and the ship was no living ship.

_The Old Man in the Kitchen:_

It's in the middle island the most of them are, and I'll tell you a
thing that I know of myself that happened not long ago. There was a
young girl, and one evening she was missing, and they made search for
her everywhere and they thought that she was drowned or that she had
gone away with some man. And in the evening of the next day there was
a boy out in a curragh, and as he passed by a rock that is out in the
sea there was the girl on it, and he brought her off. And surely she
could not go there by herself. I suppose she wasn't able to give much
account of it, and now she's after going to America. (_Note_ 6.)

And in Aran there were three boys and their uncle went out to a ship
they saw coming, to pilot her into the bay. But when they got to where
she was, there was no ship, and a sea broke over the canoe, and they
were drowned, all fine strong men. But a man they had with them that
was no use or of no account, he came safe to land. And I know a man in
this island saw curraghs and curraghs full of people about the island
of a Sunday morning early, but I never saw them myself. And one Sunday
morning in my time there were scores and scores lying their length by
the sea on the sand below, and they saw a woman in the sea, up to her
waist, and she racking her hair and settling herself and as clean and
as nice as if she was on land. Scores of them saw that.

There's a house up there where the family have to leave a plate of
potatoes ready every night, and all's gone in the morning. (_Note_ 7.)

They are said to have all things the same as ourselves under the
sea, and one day a cow was seen swimming as if for the headland, but
before she got to it she turned another way and went down. And one
time I got a small muc-warra (porpoise) and I went to cut it up to
get what was good of it, for it had about two inches of fat, and when
I cut it open the heart and the liver and every bit of it were for
all the world like a pig you would cut up on land.

There's a house in the village close by this that's haunted. My
sister was sitting near it one day, and it empty and locked, and some
other little girls, and they heard a noise in it, and at the same
time the flags they were sitting on grew red-hot, that they had to
leave them. And another time the woman of the house was sick, and a
little girl that was sitting by the fire in the kitchen saw standing
in the door the sister of the woman that was sick, and she a good
while dead, and she put up her arm, as if to tell her not to notice
her. And the poor woman of that house, she had no luck, nothing but
miscarriages or dead babies. And one child lived to be nine months
old, and there was less flesh on it at the end of the nine months
than there was the day it was born. She has a little girl now that's
near a year old, but her arm isn't the size of that, and she's
crabbed and not like a child as she should be. Many a one that's long
married without having a child goes to the fortune-teller in Galway,
and those that think anything of themselves go to Roundstone.

_A Man near Loughmore:_

I know a woman was washed and laid out, and it went so far that two
half-penny candles were burned over her. And then she sat up, came
back again, and spoke to her husband, and told him how to divide his
property, and to manage the children well. And her step-son began to
question her, and he might have got a lot out of her but her own son
stopped him and said to let her alone. And then she turned over on
her side and died. She was not to say an old woman. It's not often
the old are taken. What use would there be for them? But a woman to
be taken young, you know there's demand for her. It's the people in
the middle island know about these things. There were three boys from
there lost in a curragh at the point near the lighthouse, and for
long after their friends were tormented when they came there fishing,
and they would see ships there when the people of this island that
were out at the same time couldn't see them. There were three or four
out in a curragh near the lighthouse, and a conger-eel came and upset
it, and they were all saved but one, but he was brought down and for
the whole day they could hear him crying and screeching under the
sea. And they were not the only ones, but a fisherman that was there
from Galway had to go away and leave it, because of the screeching.

There was a coast-guard's wife there was all but gone, but she was
saved after. And there's a boy here now was for a long time that
they'd give the world he was gone altogether, with the state he was,
in, and now he's as strong as any boy in the island; and if ever any
one was away and came back again, it was him. Children used often to
be taken, but there's a great many charms in use in these days that
saves them. A big sewing-needle you'll see the woman looking for to
put with a baby, and as long as that's with it, it's safe. But anyway
they're always put back again into the world before they die in the
place of some young person. And even a beast of any consequence if
anything happens to it, no one in the island would taste it; there
might be something in it, some old woman or the like.

There were a few young men from here were kept in Galway for a day,
and they went to a woman there that works the cards. And she told
them of deaths that would come in certain families. And it wasn't a
fortnight after that five boys were out there, just where you see the
curragh now, and they were upset and every one drowned, and they were
of the families that she had named on the cards.

My uncle told me that one night they were all up at that house up
the road, making a match for his sister, and they stopped till near
morning, and when they went out, they all had a drop taken. And
he was going along home with two or three others and one of them,
Michael Flaherty, said he saw people on the shore. And another of
them said that there were not, and my uncle said, "If Flaherty said
that and it not true, we have a right to bite the ear off him, and
it would be no harm." And then they parted, and my uncle had to pass
by the beach, and then he saw whole companies of people coming up
from the sea, that he didn't know how he'd get through them, but they
opened before him and let him pass.

There were men going to Galway with cattle one morning from the beach
down there, and they saw a man up to his middle in the sea--all of
them saw it.

There was a man was down early for lobsters on the shore at the
middle island, and he saw a horse up to its middle in the sea, and
bowing its head down as if to drink. And after he had watched it
awhile it disappeared.

There was a woman walking over by the north shore--God have mercy on
her--she's dead since--and she looked out and saw an island in the
sea, and she was a long time looking at it. It's known to be there,
and to be enchanted, but only few can see it.

There was a man had his horse drawing seaweed up there on the rocks,
the way you see them drawing it every day, in a basket on the mare's
back. And on this day every time he put the load on, the mare would
let its leg slip and it would come down again, and he was vexed and
he had a stick in his hand and he gave the mare a heavy blow. And
that night she had a foal that was dead, not come to its full growth,
and it had spots over it, and every spot was of a different colour.
And there was no sire on the island at that time, so whatever was the
sire must have come up from the sea. (_Note_ 8.)

_A Man Watching the Weed-gatherers:_

There's no doubt at all about the sea-horses. There was a man out at
the other side of the island, and he saw one standing on the rocks
and he threw a stone at it and it went off in the sea. He said it was
grand to see it swimming, and the mane and the tail floating on the
top of the water.

_A Woman from the Connemara Side:_

I was told there was a mare that had a foal, and it had never had
a horse. And one day the mare and foal were down by the sea, and a
horse put up its head and neighed, and away went the foal to it and
came back no more.

And there was a man on this island watched his field one night where
he thought the neighbours' cattle were eating his grass, and what he
saw was horses and foals coming up from the sea. And he caught a foal
and kept it, and set it racing, and no horse or no pony could ever come
near it, till one day the race was on the strand, and away with it into
the sea, and the jockey along with it, and they never were seen again.

_Mrs. O'Dea and Mrs. Daly:_

There was a cow seen come up out of the sea one day and it walked
across the strand, and its udder like as if it had been lately
milked. And Tommy Donohue was running up to tell his father to come
down and see it, and when he looked back it was gone out to sea again.

There was a man here was going to build a new house, and he brought
a wise woman to see would it be in the right place. And she made
five heaps of stones in five places, and said, "Whatever heap isn't
knocked in the night, build it there." And in the morning all the
heaps were knocked but one, and so he built it there. (_Note_ 9.)

One time I was out over by that island with another man, and we saw
three women standing by the shore, beating clothes with a beetle. And
while we looked, they vanished, and then we heard the cry of a child
passing over our heads twenty feet in the air.

I know they go out fishing like ourselves, for Father Mahony told me
so; and one night I was out myself with my brother, beyond where that
ship is, and we heard talk going on, so we knew that a boat was near,
and we called out to let them know we heard them, and then we saw the
boat and it was just like any other one, and the talk went on, but we
couldn't understand what they were saying. And then I turned to light
my pipe, and while I lighted it, the boat and all in it were gone.

_Mrs. Casey:_

I got a story from an old man down by the sea at Tyrone. He says
there was a man went down one night to move his boat from the shore
where it was to the pier. And when he had put out, he found it was
going out to sea, instead of to touch the pier, and he felt it very
heavy in the water, and he looked behind him and there on the back of
the boat were six men in shiny black clothes like sailors, and there
was one like a harvest-man dressed in white flannel with a belt round
his waist. And he asked what they were doing, and the man in white
said he had brought the others out to make away with them there, and
he took and cut their bodies in two and threw them one by one over
the boat, and then he threw himself after them into the sea. And the
boat went under water too, and the poor man himself lost his wits,
but it came up again and he said he had never seen as many people as
he did in that minute under the water. And then he got home and left
the boat, and in the morning he came down to it, and there was blood
in it; and first he washed it and then he painted it, but for all he
could do, he couldn't get rid of the blood.

_Peter Donohue:_

There was a woman, a friend of this man's, living out in the middle
island, and one day she came down to where a man of this island was
putting out his curragh to come back, and she said, "I just saw a
great crowd of them--that's the Sheogue--going over to your island
like a cloud." And when he got home he went up to a house there
beyond, where the old woman used to be selling poteen on the sly. And
while he was there her little boy came running in and cried, "Hide
away the poteen, for the police are on the island! Such a man called
to me from his curragh to give warning, for he saw the road full of
them with the crowd of them and they with their guns and cutlasses
and all the rest." But the man was in the house first knew well what
it was, after what he heard from the woman on the other island, and
that they were no right police, and sure enough no other one ever saw
them. And that same day, my mother had put out wool to dry in front
of where that house is with the three chimneys, near the Chapel.
And I was there talking to some man, one on each side of the yard,
and the wall between us. And the day was as fine as this day is and
finer, and not a breath of air stirring. And a woman that lived near
by had her wool out drying too. And the wool that was in my mother's
yard began to rise up, as if something was under it, and I called to
the other man to help me to hold it down, but for all we could do it
went up in the air, a hundred feet and more, till we could see it no
more. And after a couple of hours it began to drop again, like snow,
some on the thatch and some on the rocks and some in the gardens. And
I think it was a fortnight before my mother had done gathering it.
And one day she was spinning it, I don't know what put it in my mind,
but I asked her did she lose much of that wool. And what she said
was, "If I didn't get more than my own, I didn't get less." That's
true and no lie, for I never told a lie in my life--I think. But the
wool belonging to the neighbouring woman was never stirred at all.

And the woman that had the wool that wasn't stirred, she is the woman
I married after, and that's now my wife.

There was a man, one Power, died in this island, and one night that
was bright there was a friend of his going out for mackerel, and he
saw these sands full of people hurling, and he well knew Power's
voice that he heard among them.

There was a cousin of my own built a new house, and when they were
first in it and sitting round the fire, the woman of the house that
was singing for them saw a great blot of blood come down the chimney
on to the floor, and they thought there would be no luck in the house
and that it was a wrong place. But they had nothing but good luck
ever after.

_Peter Dolan:_

There was a man that died in the middle island, that had two wives.
And one day he was out in the curragh he saw the first wife appear.
And after that one time the son of the second wife was sick, and the
little girl, the first wife's daughter, was out tending cattle, and
a can of water with her and she had a waistcoat of her father's put
about her body, where it was cold. And her mother appeared to her in
the form of a sheep, and spoke to her, and told her what herbs to
find, to cure the step-brother, and sure enough they cured him. And
she bid her leave the waistcoat there and the can, and she did. And
in the morning the waistcoat was folded there, and the can standing
on it. And she appeared to her in her own shape another time, after
that. Why she came like a sheep the first time was that she wouldn't
be frightened. The girl is in America now, and so is the step-brother
that got well. (_Note_ 10.)

_A Galway Woman:_

One time myself, I was up at the well beyond, and looking into it,
a very fine day, and no breath of air stirring, and the stooks were
ripe standing about me. And all in a minute a noise began in them,
and they were like as if knocking at each other and fighting like
soldiers all about me.

_Mary Moran:_

There was a girl here that had been to America and came back, and one
day she was coming over from Liscannor in a curragh, and she looked
back and there behind the curragh was the "Gan ceann" the headless
one. And he followed the boat a great way, but she said nothing. But
a gold pin that was in her hair fell out, and into the sea, that she
had brought from America, and then it disappeared. And her sister was
always asking her where was the pin she brought from America, and she
was afraid to say. But at last she told her, and the sister said,
"It's well for you it fell out, for what was following you would
never have left you, till you threw it a ring or something made of
gold." It was the sister herself that told me this.

Up in the village beyond they think a great deal of these things and
they won't part with a drop of milk on May Eve, and last Saturday
week that was May Eve there was a poor woman dying up there, and she
had no milk of her own, and as is the custom, she went out to get a
drop from one or other of the neighbours. But not one would give it
because it was May Eve. I declare I cried when I heard it, for the
poor woman died on the second day after.

And when my sister was going to America she went on the first of May
and we had a farewell party the night before, and in the night a
little girl that was there saw a woman from that village go out, and
she watched her, and saw her walk round a neighbour's house, and pick
some straw from the roof.

And she told of it, and it happened a child had died in that house
and the father said the woman must have had a hand in it, and there
was no good feeling to her for a long while. Her own husband is lying
sick now, so I hear.

SEERS AND HEALERS

BIDDY EARLY

_In talking to the people I often heard the name of Biddy Early, and
I began to gather many stories of her, some calling her a healer and
some a witch. Some said she had died a long time ago, and some that
she was still living. I was sure after a while that she was dead, but
was told that her house was still standing, and was on the other side
of Slieve Echtge, between Feakle and Tulla. So one day I set out and
drove Shamrock, my pony, to a shooting lodge built by my grandfather
in a fold of the mountains, and where I had sometimes, when a young
girl, stayed with my brothers when they were shooting the wild deer
that came and sheltered in the woods. It had like other places on our
estate a border name brought over from Northumberland, but though we
called it Chevy Chase the people spoke of its woods and outskirts
as Daire-caol, the Narrow Oak Wood, and Daroda, the Two Roads, and
Druim-da-Rod, their Ridge. I stayed the night in the low thatched
house, setting out next day for Feakle "eight strong miles over the
mountain." It was a wild road, and the pony had to splash his way
through two unbridged rivers, swollen with the summer rains. The red
mud of the road, the purple heather and foxglove, the brown bogs
were a contrast to the grey rocks and walls of Burren and Aidhne,
and there were many low hills brown when near, misty blue in the
distance; then the Golden Mountain, Slieve nan-Or, "where the last
great battle will be fought before the end of the world." Then I was
out of Connacht into Clare, the brown turning to green pasture as I
drove by Raftery's Lough Greine._

_I put up my pony at a little inn. There were portraits of John
Dillon and Michael Davitt hanging in the parlour, and the landlady
told me Parnell's likeness had been with them, until the priest had
told her he didn't think well of her hanging it there. There was also
on the wall, in a frame, a warrant for the arrest of one of her sons,
signed by, I think, Lord Cowper, in the days of the Land War. "He got
half a year in gaol the same year Parnell did. He got sick there,
and though he lived for some years the doctor said when he died the
illness he got in gaol had to do with his death."_

_I had been told how to find Biddy Early's house "beyond the little
humpy bridge," and I walked on till I came to it, a poor cottage
enough, high up on a mass of rock by the roadside. There was only a
little girl in the house, but her mother came in afterwards and told
me that Biddy Early had died about twenty years before, and that
after they had come to live in the house they had been "annoyed for
a while" by people coming to look for her. She had sent them away,
telling them Biddy Early was dead, though a friendly priest had said
to her, "Why didn't you let on you were her and make something out of
them?" She told me some of the stories I give below, and showed me
the shed where the healer had consulted with her invisible friends. I
had already been given by an old patient of hers a "bottle" prepared
for the cure, but which she had been afraid to use. It lies still
unopened on a shelf in my storeroom. When I got back at nightfall to
the lodge in the woods I found many of the neighbours gathered there,
wanting to hear news of "the Tulla Woman" and to know for certain if
she was dead. I think as time goes on her fame will grow and some of
the myths that always hang in the air will gather round her, for I
think the first thing I was told of her was, "There used surely to
be enchanters in the old time, magicians and freemasons. Old Biddy
Early's power came from the same thing."_ (_Note_ 11.)

_An Old Woman in the Lodge Kitchen_ says:

Do you remember the time John Kevin beyond went to see Biddy Early,
for his wife, she was sick at the time. And Biddy Early knew
everything, and that there was a forth behind her house, and she
said, "Your wife is too fond of going out late at night."

_I was told by a Gate-keeper:_

There was a man at Cranagh had one of his sheep shorn in the night,
and all the wool taken. And he got on his horse and went to Feakle
and Biddy Early, and she told him the name of the man that did it,
and where it was hidden, and so he got it back again.

There was a man went to Biddy Early, and she told him that the woman
he'd marry would have her husband killed by his brother. And so it
happened, for the woman he married was sitting by the fire with her
husband, and the brother came in, having a drop of drink taken, and
threw a pint at him that hit him on the head and killed him. It was
the man that married her that told me this.

_Mrs. Kearns:_

Did I know any one that was taken by them? Well, I never knew one
that was brought back again. Himself went one time to Biddy Early
for his uncle, Donohue, that was sick, and he found her there and her
fingers all covered with big gold rings, and she gave him a bottle,
and she said: "Go in no house on your way home, or stop nowhere, or
you'll lose it." But going home he had a thirst on him and he came to
a public-house, and he wouldn't go in, but he stopped and bid the boy
bring him out a drink. But a little farther on the road the horse got
a fall, and the bottle was broke.

_Mrs. Cregan:_

It's I was with this woman here to Biddy Early. And when she saw
me, she knew it was for my husband I came, and she looked in her
bottle and she said, "It's nothing put upon him by my people that's
wrong with him." And she bid me give him cold oranges and some other
things--herbs. He got better after.

_Daniel Curtin:_

Did I ever hear of Biddy Early? There's not a man in this countryside
over forty year old that hasn't been with her some time or other.
There's a man living in that house over there was sick one time, and
he went to her, and she cured him, but says she, "You'll have to lose
something, and don't fret after it." So he had a grey mare and she
was going to foal, and one morning when he went out he saw that the
foal was born, and was lying dead by the side of the wall. So he
remembered what she said to him and he didn't fret.

There was one Dillane in Kinvara, Sir William knew him well, and he
went to her one time for a cure. And Father Andrew came to the house
and was mad with him for going, and says he, "You take the cure out
of the hands of God." And Mrs. Dillane said, "Your Reverence, none of
us can do that." "Well," says Father Andrew, "then I'll see what the
devil can do and I'll send my horse tomorrow, that has a sore in his
leg this long time, and try will she be able to cure him."

So next day he sent a man with his horse, and when he got to Biddy
Early's house she came out, and she told him every word that Father
Andrew had said, and she cured the sore. So after that, he left the
people alone; but before it, he'd be dressed in a frieze coat and a
riding whip in his hand, driving away the people from going to her.

She had four or five husbands, and they all died of drink one after
another. Maybe twenty or thirty people would be there in the day
looking for cures, and every one of them would bring a bottle of
whiskey. Wild cards they all were, or they wouldn't have married her.
She'd help too to bring the butter back. Always on the first of May,
it used to be taken, and maybe what would be taken from one man would
be conveyed to another.

_Mr. McCabe:_

Biddy Early? Not far from this she lived, above at Feakle. I got
cured by her myself one time. Look at this thumb--I got it hurted one
time, and I went out into the field after and was ploughing all the
day, I was that greedy for work. And when I went in I had to lie on
the bed with the pain of it, and it swelled and the arm with it, to
the size of a horse's thigh. I stopped two or three days in the bed
with the pain of it, and then my wife went to see Biddy Early and
told her about it, and she came home and the next day it burst, and
you never seen anything like all the stuff that came away from it. A
good bit after I went to her myself, where it wasn't quite healed,
and she said, "You'd have lost it altogether if your wife hadn't been
so quick to come." She brought me into a small room, and said holy
words and sprinkled holy water and told me to believe. The priests
were against her, but they were wrong. How could that be evil doing
that was all charity and kindness and healing?

She was a decent looking woman, no different from any other woman of
the country. The boy she was married to at the time was lying drunk
in the bed. There were side-cars and common cars and gentry and
country people at the door, just like Gort market, and dinner for all
that came, and everyone would bring her something, but she didn't
care what it was. Rich farmers would bring her the whole side of a
pig. Myself, I brought a bottle of whiskey and a shilling's worth
of bread, and a quarter of sugar and a quarter pound of tea. She was
very rich, for there wasn't a farmer but would give her the grass
of a couple of bullocks or a filly. She had the full of a field of
fillies if they'd all been gathered together. She left no children,
and there's no doubt at all that the reason of her being able to do
cures was that she was _away_ seven years. She didn't tell me about
it but she spoke of it to others.

When I was coming away I met a party of country people on a cart from
Limerick, and they asked where was her house, and I told them: "Go on
to the cross, and turn to the left, and follow the straight road till
you come to the little humpy bridge, and soon after that you'll come
to the house."

But the priests would be mad if they knew that I told any one the way.

She died about twelve year ago; I didn't go to the wake myself, or
the funeral, but I heard that her death was natural.

No, Mrs. Early is no relation to Biddy Early--the nuns asked her the
same thing when she was married. A cousin of hers had her hand cut with
a jug that was broke, and she went up to her and when she got there,
Biddy Early said: "It's a thing you never should do, to beat a child
that breaks a cup or a jug." And sure enough it was a child that broke
it, and she beat her for doing it. But cures she did sure enough.

_Bartley Coen:_

There was a neighbour of my own, Andrew Dennehy:

I was knocked up by him one night to go to the house, because he
said _they_ were calling to him. But when they got there, there was
nothing to be found. But some see these things, and some can't. It's
against our creed to believe in them. And the priests won't let on
that they believe in them themselves, but they are more in dread of
going about at night than any of us. They were against, Biddy Early
too. There was a man I knew living near the sea, and he set out to
go to her one time. And on his way he went into his brother-in-law's
house, and the priest came in there, and bid him not to go on. "Well,
Father," says he, "cure me yourself if you won't let me go to her to
be cured." And when the priest wouldn't do that (for the priests can
do many cures if they like to), he went on to her. And the minute
he came in, "Well," says she, "you made a great fight for me on the
way." For though it's against our creed to believe it, she could hear
any earthly thing that was said in every part, miles off. But she had
two red eyes, and some used to say, "If she can cure so much, why
can't she cure her own eyes?"

No, she wasn't _away_ herself. It is said it was from a son of her
own she got the knowledge, a little chap that was astray. And one day
when he was lying sick in the bed he said: "There's such and such a
woman has a hen down in the pot, and if I had the soup of the hen, I
think it would cure me." So the mother went to the house, and when
she got there, sure enough, there was a hen in the pot on the fire.
But she was ashamed to tell what she came for, and she let on to have
only come for a visit, and so she sat down. But presently in the heat
of the talking she told what the little chap had said. "Well," says
the woman, "take the soup and welcome, and the hen too if it will do
him any good." So she brought them with her, and when the boy saw the
soup, "It can't cure me," says he, "for no earthly thing can do that.
But since I see how kind and how willing you are, and did your best
for me, I'll leave you a way of living." And so he did, and taught
her all she knew. That's what's said at any rate.

_Mr. Fahy:_

Well, that's what's believed, that it's from her son Biddy Early got
it. After his death always lamenting for him she was, till he came
back, and gave her the gift of curing.

She had no red eyes, but was a fresh clean-looking woman; sure any
one might have red eyes when they'd got a cold.

She wouldn't refuse even a person that would come from the very
bottom of the black North.

* * * * *

"I was with Biddy Early myself one time, and got a cure from her for
my little girl that was sick. A bottle of whiskey I brought her, and
the first thing she did was to open it and to give me a glass out of
it. "For," says she, "you'll maybe want it my poor man." But I had
plenty of courage in those days."

The priests were against her; often Father Boyle would speak of her
in his sermons. They can all do those cures themselves, but that's a
thing it's not right to be talking about.

_The Little Girl of Biddy Early's House:_

The people do be full of stories of all the cures she did. Once after
we came to live here a carload of people came, and asked was Biddy
Early here, and my mother said she was dead. When she told the priest
he said she had a right to shake a bottle and say she was her, and
get something from them. It was by the bottle she did all, to shake
it, and she'd see everything when she looked in it. Sometimes she'd
give a bottle of some cure to people that came, but if she'd say to
them, "You'll never bring it home," break it they should on the way
home, with all the care they'd take of it.

She was as good, and better, to the poor as to the rich. Any poor
person passing the road, she'd call in and give a cup of tea or a
glass of whiskey to, and bread and what they wanted.

She had a big chest within in that room, and it full of pounds of tea
and bottles of wine and of whiskey and of claret, and all things in
the world. One time she called in a man that was passing and gave
him a glass of whiskey, and then she said to him, "The road you were
going home by, don't go by it." So he asked why not, and she took
the bottle--a long shaped bottle it was--and looked into it, holding
it up, and then she bid him look through it, and he'd see what would
happen him. But her husband said, "Don't show it to him, it might
give him a fright he wouldn't get over." So she only said, "Well, go
home by another road." And so he did and got home safe, for in the
bottle she had seen a party of men that wouldn't have let him pass
alive. She got the rites of the Church when she died, but first she
had to break the bottle.

It was from her brother that she got the power, when she had to go to
the workhouse, and he came back, and gave her the way of doing the
cures.

_The Blacksmith I met near Tulla:_

I know you to be a respectable lady and an honourable one because I
know your brothers, meeting them as I do at the fair of Scariff. No
fair it would be if they weren't there. I knew Biddy Early well, a
nice fresh-looking woman she was. It's to her the people used to be
flocking, to the door and even to the window, and if they'd come late
in the day, they'd have no chance of getting to her, they'd have to
take lodgings for the night in the town. She was a great woman. If
any of the men that came into the house had a drop too much drink
taken, she'd turn them out if they said an unruly word. And if any
of them were fighting or disputing or going to law, she'd say, "Be
at one, and ye can rule the world." The priests were against her and
used to be taking the cloaks and the baskets from the country people
to keep them back from going to her.

I never went to her myself--for you should know that no ill or harm
ever comes to a blacksmith.

_An Old Midwife:_

Tell me now is there anything wrong about you or your son that you
went to that house? I went there but once myself, when my little girl
that was married was bad, after her second baby being born. I went to
the house and told her about it, and she took the bottle and shook it
and looked in it, and then she turned and said something to himself
[her husband] that I didn't hear--and she just waved her hand to me
like that, and bid me go home, for she would take nothing from me.
But himself came out and told that what she was after seeing in the
bottle was my little girl, and the coffin standing beside her. So I
went home, and sure enough on the tenth day after, she was dead.

* * * * *

_The lodge people came rushing out to see the picture of Biddy
Early's house and ask, "Did she leave the power to any one else?" and
I told of the broken bottle. But Mr. McCabe said, "She only had the
power for her own term, and-no one else could get it from her."_

* * * * *

_I asked old Mr. McCabe if he had lost anything when she cured him,
and he said: "Not at that time, but sometimes I thought afterwards it
came on my family when I lost so many of my children. A grand stout
girl went from me, stout and broad, what would ail her to go?"_

_I was told by Mat King:_

Biddy Early surely did thousands of cures. Out in the stable she used
to go, where her _friends_ met her, and they told her all things.
There was a little priest long ago used to do cures,--Soggarthin
Mina, they used to call him,--and once he came in this house he
looked up and said, "There--it's full of them--there they are."

* * * * *

There was a man, one Flaherty, came to his brother-in-law's house one
day to borrow a horse. And the next day the horse was sent back, but
he didn't come himself. And after a few days more they went to ask
for him, but he had never come back at all. So the brother-in-law
went to Biddy Early's and she and some others were drinking whiskey,
and they were sorry that they were near at the bottom of the bottle.
And she said: "That's no matter, there's a man on his way now,
there'll soon be more." And sure enough there was, for he brought
a bottle with him. So when he came in, he told her about Flaherty
having disappeared. And she described to him a corner of a garden
at the back of a house and she said, "Go look and you'll find him
there," and so they did, dead and buried.

Another time a man's cattle was dying, and he went to her and she
said, "Is there such a place as Benburb, having a forth up on the
hill beyond there? for it's there they're gone." And sure enough, it
was towards that forth they were straying before they died.

_An Old Man on the Beach:_

The priests were greatly against Biddy Early. And there's no doubt
it was from the faeries she got the knowledge. But who wouldn't go
to hell for a cure if one of his own was sick? And the priests don't
like to be doing cures themselves. Father Flynn said to me (rather
incoherent in the high wind), if I do them, I let the devil into me.
But there was Father Carey used to do them, but he went wrong, with
the people bringing too much whiskey to pay him--and Father Mahony
has him stopped now.

_Maher of Slieve Echtge:_

I knew a man went to Biddy Early, and while she was in the other room
he made the tongs red hot and laid them down, and when she came back
she took them up and burned herself. And he said, if she had known
anything she'd have known not to touch it, that it was red hot. So
he walked off and asked for no cure.

_The Spinning-Woman:_

Biddy Early was a witch, wherever she got it. There was a priest at
Feakle spoke against her one time, and soon after he was passing
near her house and she put something on the horse so that he made a
bolt into the river and stopped there in the middle, and wouldn't go
back or forward. Some people from the neighbourhood went to her, and
she told them all about the whole place, and that one time there was
a great battle about the castle, and that there is a passage going
from here to the forth beyond on Dromore Hill, and to another place
that's near Maher's house. And she said that there is a cure for all
sicknesses hidden between the two wheels of Ballylee mill. And how
did she know that there was a mill here at all? Witchcraft wherever
she got it; away she may have been in a trance. She had a son, and
one time he went to the hurling beyond at some place in Tipperary,
and none could stand against him; he was like a deer.

* * * * *

I went to Biddy Early one time myself, about my little boy that's now
in America that was lying sick in the house. But on the way to her I
met a sergeant of police and he asked where was I going, and when I
told him, he said, to joke with me, "Biddy Early's dead." "May the
devil die with her," says I. Well, when I got to the house, what do
you think, if she didn't know that, and what I said. And she was vexed
and at the first, she would do nothing for me. I had a pound for her
here in my bosom. But when I held it out she wouldn't take it, but she
turned the rings on her fingers, for she had a ring for every one, and
she said, "A shilling for this one, sixpence for another one." But all
she told me was that the boy was nervous, and so he was, she was right
in that, and that he'd get well, and so he did.

There was a man beyond in Cloon, was walking near the gate the same
day and his little boy with him, and he turned his foot and hurt it,
and she knew that. She told me she slept in Ballylee mill last night,
and that there was a cure for all things in the world between the two
wheels there. Surely she was _away_ herself, and as to her son, she
brought him back with her, and for eight or nine year he lay in the
bed in the house. And he'd never stir so long as she was in it, but no
sooner was she gone away anywhere than he'd be out down the village
among the people, and then back again before she'd get to the house.

She had three husbands, I saw one of them when I was there, but I
knew by the look of him he wouldn't live long. One man I know went to
her and she sent him on to a woman at Kilrush--one of her own sort,
and they helped one another. She said to some woman I knew: "If you
have a bowl broke or a plate throw it out of the door, and don't
make any attempt to mend it, it vexes _them_."

_Mrs. McDonagh:_

Our religion doesn't allow us to go to fortune tellers. They don't
get the knowledge from God, and so it must be from demons.

The priests took the bottle from Biddy Early before she died, and
they found black things in it.

* * * * *

I never went to Biddy Early myself. I think there was a good deal of
devilment in the things she did. The priests can do cures as well as
she did, but they don't like to do them, unless they're curates that
like to get the money.

* * * * *

There was a man in Cloughareeva and his wife was that bad she would
go out in her shift at night into the field. And he went to Biddy
Early and she said, "Within three days a disgraced priest will come
to you and will cure her."

And after three days the disgraced priest that had been put out for
drink came bowling into the house, and they reached down from the
shelf a bottle of whiskey. Father Boyle was mad when he heard of it,
but he cured her all the same.

* * * * *

There was a man on this estate, and he sixty years, and he took to
the bed, and his wife went to Biddy Early and she said, "It can't
be by _them_ he's taken, what use would it be to them, he being so
old." And Biddy Early is the one that should surely know. I went to
her myself one time, to get a cure for myself when I fell coming down
that hill up there, and got a hurt on my knee. And she gave me one
and she told me all about the whole place, and that there was a bowl
broken in the house, and so there was. The priests can do cures by
the same power that she had, but those that have much stock don't
like to be doing them; for they're sure to lose all.

* * * * *

I knew one went to Biddy Early about his wife, and as soon as she saw
him, she said, "On the fourth day a discarded priest will call in and
cure your wife"; and so he did--one Father James.

_Mrs. Nelly:_

The old man here that lost his hair went to Biddy Early but he didn't
want to go, and we forced him and persuaded him. And when he got to
the house she said, "It wasn't of your own free will you came here,"
and she wouldn't do anything for him.

She didn't like either for you to go too late. Dolan's sister was
sick a long time, and when the brother went at the last to Biddy
Early she gave him a bottle with a cure. But on the way home the
bottle was broke, and the car, and the horse got a fright and ran
away. She said to him then, "Why did you go to cut down the bush of
white thorn you see out of the window?" And then she told him an old
woman in the village had overlooked him--Murphy's sister--and she
gave him a bottle to sprinkle about her house. I suppose she didn't
like that bush being interfered with, she had too much charms.

And when Doctor Folan was sent for to see her he was led astray, and
it is beyond Ballylee he found himself. And surely she was _taken_ if
ever any one was.

_An Old Woman:_

I went up to Biddy Early's one time with another woman. A fine stout
woman she was, sitting straight up on her chair. She looked at me and
she told me that my son was worse than what I was, and for myself
she bid me to take what I was taking before, and that's dandelions.
Five leaves she bid me pick and lay them out on the table with three
pinches of salt on the three middle ones. As to my son, she gave me a
bottle for him but he wouldn't take it and he got better without.

The priests were against her, but there was one of them passed near
her house one day, and his horse fell forward. And he sent his boy
to her and she said, "Tell him to spit on the horse and to say,
'God bless it,'" and he did and it rose again. He had looked at it
proud-like without saying "God bless it" in his heart.

_Daniel Shea:_

It was all you could do to get to Biddy Early with your skin whole,
the priests were so set against her. I went to her one time myself,
and it was hard when you got near to know the way, for all the people
were afraid to tell it.

It was about a little chap of my own I went, that some strange thing
had been put upon. When I got to her house there were about fifty to
be attended to before me, and when my turn came she looked in the
bottle, a sort of a common greenish one that seemed to have nothing
in it. And she told me where I came from, and the shape of the
house and the appearance of it, and of the lake you see there, and
everything round about. And she told me of a lime-kiln that was near,
and then she said, "The harm that came to him came from the forth
beyond that." And I never knew of there being a forth there, but
after I came home I went to look, and there sure enough it was.

And she told me how it had come on him, and bid me remember a day
that a certain gentleman stopped and spoke to me when I was out
working in the hayfield, and the child with me playing about. And I
remembered it well, it was old James Hill of Creen, that was riding
past, and stopped and talked and was praising the child. And it was
close by that forth beyond that James Hill was born.

It was soon after that day that the mother and I went to Loughrea,
and when we came back, the child had slipped on the threshold of the
house and got a fall, and he was screeching and calling out that his
knee was hurt, and from that time he did no good, and pined away and
had the pain in the knee always.

And Biddy Early said, "While you're talking to me now the child lies
dying," and that was at twelve o'clock in the day. And she made up a
bottle for me, herbs I believe it was made of, and she said, "Take care
of it going home, and whatever may happen, don't drop it"; and she
wrapped it in all the folds of my handkerchief. So when I was coming
home and got near Tillyra I heard voices over the wall talking, and
when I got to the Roxborough gate there were many people talking and
coming to where we were. I could hear them and see them, and the man
that was with me. But when I heard them I remembered what she said,
and I took the bottle in my two hands and held it, and so I brought it
home safely. And when I got home they told me the child was worse, and
that at twelve o'clock the day before he lay as they thought dying. And
when I brought the bottle to him, he pulled the bed-clothes up over his
head, and we had the work of the world to make him taste it. But from
the time he took it, the pain in the knee left him and he began to get
better, and Biddy Early had told me not to let many days pass without
coming to her again, when she gave me the bottle. But seeing him so
well, I thought it no use to go again, and it was not on May Day, but
it was during the month of May he died. He took to the bed before that,
and he'd be always calling to me to come inside the bed where he was,
and if I went in, he'd hardly let me go. But I got afraid, and I didn't
like to be too much with him.

He was but eight years old when he died, but Ned Cahel that used to
live beyond there then told me privately that when I'd be out of the
house and he'd come in, the little chap would ask for the pipe, and
take it and smoke it, but he'd never let me see him doing it. And he
was old-fashioned in all his ways.

Another thing Biddy Early told me to do was to go out before sunrise
to where there'd be a boundary wall between two or three estates, and
to bring a bottle, and lay it in the grass and gather the dew into
it. But there were hundreds of people she turned away, because she'd
say, "What's wrong with you has nothing to do with my business."

There was a Clare woman with me when I went there, and she told me
there was a boy from a village near her was brought tied in a cart
to Biddy Early, and she said, "If I cure you, will you be willing to
marry me?" And he said he would. So she cured him and married him. I
saw him there at her house. It might be that she had the illness put
upon him first.

The priests don't do cures by the same means, and they don't like to
do them at all. It was in my house that you see that Father Gregan did
one on Mr. Phayre. And he cured a girl up in the mountains after, and
where is he now but in a madhouse. They are afraid of the power they
do them by, that it will be too strong for them. Some say the bishops
don't like them to do cures because the whiskey they drink to give them
courage before they do them is very apt to make drunkards of them. It's
not out of the prayer-book they read, but out of the Roman ritual, and
that's a book you can read evil out of as well as good.

* * * * *

There was a boy of the Saggartons in the house went to Biddy Early
and she told him the house of his bachelor [the girl he would marry]
and he did marry her after. And she cured him of a weakness he had
and cured many, but it was seldom the bottle she'd give could be
brought home without being spilled. I wonder did she go to _them_
when she died. She got the cure among them anyway.

_Mrs. Dillon:_

My mother got crippled in her bed one night--God save the hearers--and
it was a long time before she could walk again with the pain in her
back. And my father was always telling her to go to Biddy Early, and
so at last she went. But she could do nothing for her, for she said,
"What ails you has nothing to do with my business." And she said, "You
have lost three, and one was a grand little fair-haired one, and if
you'd like to see her again, I'll show her to you." And when she said
that, my mother had no courage to look and to see the child she lost,
but fainted then and there. And then she said, "There's a field of corn
beyond your house and a field with hay, and it's not long since that
the little fellow that wears a Llanberis cap fell asleep there on a
cock of hay. And before the stooks of corn are in stacks he'll be taken
from you, but I'll save him if I can." And it was true enough what she
said, my little brother that was wearing a Llanberis cap had gone to
the field, and had fallen asleep on the hay a few days before. But no
harm happened him, and he's all the brother I have living now. Out in
the stable she used to go to meet her _people_.

_Mrs. Locke:_

It was my son was thatching Heniff's house when he got the touch, and
he came back with a pain in his back and in his shoulders, and took
to the bed. And a few nights after that I was asleep, and the little
girl came and woke me and said, "There's none of us can sleep, with
all the cars and carriages rattling round the house." But though I
woke and heard her say that, I fell into a sound sleep again and
never woke till morning. And one night there came two taps at the
window, one after another, and we all heard it and no one there. And
at last I sent the eldest boy to Biddy Early and he found her in the
house. She was then married to her fourth man. And she said he came
a day too soon and would do nothing for him. And he had to walk away
in the rain. And the next day he went back and she said, "Three days
later and you'd have been too late." And she gave him two bottles,
the one he was to bring to a boundary water and to fill it up, and
that was to be rubbed to the back, and the other was to drink. And
the minute he got them he began to get well, and he left the bed and
could walk, but he was always delicate. When we rubbed his back we
saw a black mark, like the bite of a dog, and as to his face, it was
as white as a sheet.

I have the bottle here yet, though it's thirty year ago I got it. She
bid the boy to bring whatever was left of it to a river, and to pour
it away with the running water. But when he got well I did nothing
with it, and said nothing about it--and here it is now for you to
see. I never let on to Father Folan that I went to her, but one time
the Bishop came, MacInerny. I knew he was a rough man, and I went to
him and made my confession, and I said, "Do what you like with me,
but I'd walk the world for my son when he was sick." And all he said
was, "It would have been no wonder if the two feet had been cut off
from the messenger." And he said no more and put nothing on me.

* * * * *

There was a boy I saw went to Biddy Early, and she gave him a bottle
and told him to mind he did not lose it in the crossing of some road.
And when he came to the place it was broke.

* * * * *

Often I heard of Biddy Early, and I knew of a little girl was sick
and the brother went to Biddy Early to ask would she get well. And
she said, "They have a place ready for her, room for her they have."
So he knew she would die, and so she did.

The priests can do things too, the same way as she could, for there
was one Mr. Lyne was dying, a Protestant, and the priest went in and
baptized him a Catholic before he died, and he said to the people
after, "He's all right now, in another world." And it was more than
the baptizing made him sure of that.

* * * * *

Mrs. Brennan, in the house beyond, went one time to Biddy Early,
where the old man was losing his health. And all she told him was to
bid him give over drinking so much whiskey. So after she said that,
he used only to be drinking gin.

* * * * *

There was a boy went to Biddy Early for his father, and she said, "It's
not any of my business that's on him, but it's good for yourself that
you came to me. Weren't you sowing potatoes in such a field one day
and didn't you find a bottle of whiskey, and bring it away and drink
what was in it?" And that was true and it must have been a bottle
_they_ brought out of some cellar and dropped there, for they can bring
everything away, and put in its place what will look like it.

* * * * *

There was a boy near Feakle got the touch in three places, and he
got a great desire to go out night-walking, and he got sick. And they
asked Biddy Early and she said, "Watch the hens when they come in to
roost at night, and catch a hold of the last one that comes." So the
mother caught it, and then she thought she'd like to see what would
Biddy Early do with it. So she brought it up to her house and laid it
on the floor, and it began to rustle its wings, and it lay over and
died. It was from her brother Biddy Early got the cure. He was sick a
long time, and there was a whitethorn tree out in the field, and he'd
go and lie under it for shade from the sun. And after he died, every
day for a year she'd go to the whitethorn tree, and it is there she'd
cry her fill. And then he brought her under and gave her the cure. It
was after that she was in service beyond Kinvara. She did her first
cure on a boy, after the doctors giving him up.

_An Old Man from Kinvara:_

My wife is paralysed these thirty-six years, and the neighbours
said she'd get well if the child died, for she got it after her
confinement, all in a minute. But the child died in a year and eleven
months, and she got no better. And then they said she'd get taken
after twenty-one years, but that passed, and she's just the same way.
And she's as good a Christian as any all the time.

I went to Biddy Early one time about her. She was a very old woman,
all shaky, and the crankiest woman I ever saw. And the husband was
a fine young man, and he lying in the bed. It was a man from Kinvara
half-paralysed I brought with me, and she would do nothing for him at
first, and then the husband bid her do what she could. So she took
the bottle and shook it and looked in it, and she said what was in
him was none of her business. And I had work to get him a lodging
that night in Feakle, for the priests had all the people warned
against letting any one in that had been to her. She wouldn't take
the whiskey I brought, but the husband and myself, we opened it and
drank it between us.

She gave me a bottle for my wife, but when I got to the workhouse,
where I had to put her in the hospital, they wouldn't let me through
the gate for they heard where I had been. So I had to hide the bottle
for a night by a wall, on the grass, and I sent my brother's wife to
find it, and to bring it to her in the morning into the workhouse.
But it did her no good, and Biddy Early told her after it was because
I didn't bring it straight to her, but had left it on the ground for
the night.

* * * * *

Biddy Early beat all women. No one could touch her. I knew a girl,
a friend of my own, at Burren and she was sick a long while and the
doctors could do nothing for her, and the priests read over her but
they could do nothing. And at last the husband went to Biddy Early and
she said, "I can't cure her, and the woman that can cure her lives in
the village with her." So he went home and told this and the women of
the village came into the house and said, "God bless her," all except
one, and nothing would make her come into the house. But they watched
her, and one night when a lot of them were sitting round the fire
smoking, she let a spit fall on the floor. So they gathered that up
(with respects to you), and brought it in to the sick woman and rubbed
it to her, and she got well. It might have done as well if they brought
a bit of her petticoat and burned it and rubbed the ashes on her. But
there's something strange about spits, and if you spit on a child or a
beast it's as good as if you'd say, "God bless it."

_John Curtin:_

I was with Biddy Early one time for my brother. She was out away in
Ennis when we got to the house, and her husband that she called Tommy.
And the kitchen was full of people waiting for her to come in. So then
she came, and the day was rainy, and she was wet, and she went over
to the fire, and began to take off her clothes, and to dry them, and
then she said to her husband: "Tommy, get the bottle and give them
all a drop." So he got the bottle and gave a drink to everyone. But
my brother was in behind the door, and he missed him and when he came
back to the fire she said: "You have missed out the man that has the
best heart of them all, and there he is behind the door." And when my
brother came out she said, "Give us a verse of a song," and he said,
"I'm no songster," but she said, "I know well that you are, and a good
dancer as well." She cured him and his wife after.

There was a neighbour of mine went to her too, and she said: "The
first time you got the touch was the day you had brought a cart of
turf from that bog at Ballinabucky to Scahanagh. And when you were
in the road you got it, and you had to lie down on the creel of turf
till you got to the public road." And she told him that he had a pane
of glass broke in his window and that was true enough. She must have
been away walking with the faeries every night or how did she know
that, or where the village of Scahanagh was?

* * * * *

Mrs. Kenny has been twice to Biddy Early. Once for her brother who
was ill, and light-headed and sent to Galway. And Biddy Early shook
the bottle twice, and she said, "It is none of my business, and it's
a heavy cold that settled in his head." And she would not take the
shilling. A red, red woman she was.

_Mary Glyn:_

I am a Clare woman, but the last fifty years I spent in Connacht.
Near Feakle I lived, but I only saw Biddy Early once, the time she
was brought to the committee and to the courthouse. She lived in a
little house near Feakle that time, and her landlord was Dr. Murphy
in Limerick, and he sent men to evict her and to pull the house
down, and she held them in the door and said: "Whoever will be the
first to put a bar to the house, he'll remember it." And then a man
put his bar in between two stones, and if he did, he turned and got
a fall someway and he broke the thigh. After that Dr. Murphy brought
her to the court, "Faeries and all," he said, for he brought the
bottle along with her. So she was put out, but Murphy had cause to
remember it, for he was living in a house by himself, and one night
it caught fire and was burned down, and all that was left of him
was one foot that was found in a corner of the walls. She had four
husbands, and the priest wouldn't marry her to the last one, and
it was by the teacher that she was married. She was a good-looking
woman, but like another, the day I saw her. My husband went to her
the time Johnny, my little boy, was dying. He had a great pain in his
temple, and she said: "He has enough in him to kill a hundred; but if
he lives till Monday, come and tell me." But he was dead before that.
And she said, "If you came to me before this, I'd not have let you
stop in that house you're in." But Johnny died; and there was a blush
over his face when he was going, and after that I couldn't look at
him, but those that saw him said that _he_ wasn't in it. I never saw
him since, but often and often the father would go out thinking he
might see him. But I know well he wouldn't like to come back and to
see me fretting for him.

We left the house after that and came here. A travelling woman that
came in to see me one time in that house said, "This is a fine airy
house," and she said that three times, and then she said, "But in that
corner of it you'll lose your son," and it happened, and I wish now
that I had minded what she said. A man and his family went into that
house after, and the first summer they were in it, he and his sons
were putting up a stack of hay in the field with pitchforks, and the
pitchfork in his hand turned some way into his stomach and he died.

* * * * *

It is Biddy Early had the great name, but priests were against her.
There went a priest one time to stop her, and when he came near the
door the horse fell that was in his car. Biddy Early came out then
and bid him to give three spits on the horse, and he did that, and it
rose up then and there. It was himself had put the evil eye on it.
"It was yourself did it, you bodach," she said to the priest. And he
said, "You may do what you like from this out, and I will not meddle
with you again."

_Mrs. Crone:_

I was myself digging potatoes out in that field beyond, and a woman
passed by the road, but I heard her say nothing, but a pain came on
my head and I fell down, and I had to go to my bed for three weeks.
My mother went then to Biddy Early. Did you ever hear of her? And
she looked in the blue bottle she had, and she said my name. And she
saw me standing before her, and knew all about me and said, "Your
daughter was digging potatoes with her husband in the field, and a
woman passed by and she said, 'It is as good herself is with a spade
as the man,'" for I was a young woman at the time. She gave my mother
a bottle for me, and I took three drinks of it in the bed, and then I
got up as well as I was before.

_Peter Feeney:_

Biddy Early said to a man that I met in America and that went to her
one time, that this place between Finevara and Aughanish is the most
haunted place in all Ireland.

Surely Biddy Early was _away_ herself. That's what I always heard.
And I hear that at a hurling near Feakle the other day there was a
small little man, and they say he was a friend of hers and has got
her gift.

MRS. SHERIDAN

_Mrs. Sheridan, as I call her, was wrinkled and half blind, and had
gone barefoot through her lifetime. She was old, for she had once met
Raftery, the Gaelic poet, at a dance, and he died before the famine
of '47. She must have been comely then, for he had said to her: "Well
planed you are; the carpenter that planed you knew his trade"; and she
was ready of reply and answered him back, "Better than you know yours,"
for his fiddle had two or three broken strings. And then he had spoken
of a neighbour in some way that vexed her father, and he would let him
speak no more with her. And she had carried a regret for this through
her long life, for she said: "If it wasn't for him speaking as he did,
and my father getting vexed, he might have made words about me like he
did for Mary Hynes and for Mary Brown." She had never been to school
she told me, because her father could not pay the penny a week it would
have cost. She had never travelled many miles from the parish of her
birth, and I am sure had never seen pictures except the sacred ones on
chapel walls; and yet she could tell of a Cromwellian castle built up
and of a drawbridge and of long-faced, fair-haired women, and of the
yet earlier round house and saffron dress of the heroic times, I do not
know whether by direct vision, or whether as Myers wrote: "It may even
be that a World-soul is personally conscious of all its past, and that
individual souls, as they enter into deeper consciousness enter into
something which is at once reminiscence and actuality.... Past facts
were known to men on earth, not from memory only but by written record;
and these may be records, of what kind we know not, which persist in
the spiritual world. Our retrocognitions seem often a recovery of
isolated fragments of thought and feeling, pebbles still hard and
rounded amid the indecipherable sands over which the mighty waters are
'rolling evermore.'"_

_She had never heard of the great mystic Jacob Behmen, and yet when
an unearthly visitor told her the country of youth is not far from
the place where we live, she had come near to his root idea that "the
world standeth in Heaven and Heaven in the World, and are in one
another as day and night."_

_I was told by Mrs. Sheridan:_

There was a woman, Mrs. Keevan, killed near the big tree at Raheen, and
her husband was after that with Biddy Early, and she said it was not
the woman that had died at all, but a cow that died and was put in her
place. All my life I've seen _them_ and enough of them. One day I was
with Tom Mannion by the big hole near his house, and we saw a man and
a woman come from it, and a great troop of children, little boys they
seemed to be, and they went through the gate into Coole, and there we
could see them running and running along the wall. And I said to Tom
Mannion, "It may be a call for one of us." And he said, "Maybe it's for
some other one it is." But on that day week he was dead.

One time I saw the old Colonel standing near the road, I know well
it was him. But while I was looking at him, he was changed into the
likeness of an ass.

I was led astray myself one day in Coole when I went to gather sticks
for the fire. I was making a bundle of them, and I saw a boy beside
me, and a little grey dogeen with him, and at first I thought it was
William Hanlon, and then I saw it was not. And he walked along with me,
and I asked him did he want any of the sticks and he said he did not,
and he seemed as we were walking to grow bigger and bigger. And when
he came to where the caves go underground he stopped, and I asked him
his name, and he said, "You should know me, for you've seen me often
enough." And then he was gone, and I know that he was no living thing.

There was a child I had, and he a year and a half old, and he got
a quinsy and a choking in the throat and I was holding him in my
arms beside the fire, and all in a minute he died. And the men
were working down by the river, washing sheep, and they heard the
crying of a child from over there in the air, and they said, "That's
Sheridan's child." So I knew sure enough that he was _taken_.

Come here close and I'll tell you what I saw at the old castle there
below (Ballinamantane). I was passing there in the evening and I
saw a great house and a grand one with screens (clumps of trees) at
the ends of it, and the windows open--Coole house is nothing like
what it was for size or grandeur. And there were people inside and
ladies walking about, and a bridge across the river. For they can
build up such things all in a minute. And two coaches came driving
up and across the bridge to the castle, and in one of them I saw
two gentlemen, and I knew them well and both of them had died long
before. As to the coaches and the horses I didn't take much notice of
them for I was too much taken up with looking at the two gentlemen.
And a man came and called out and asked me would I come across the
bridge, and I said I would not. And he said, "It would be better for
you if you did, you'd go back heavier than you came." I suppose they
would have given me some good thing. And then two men took up the
bridge and laid it against the wall. Twice I've seen that same thing,
the house and the coaches and the bridge, and I know well I'll see it
a third time before I die. (_Note_ 12.)

One time when I was living at Ballymacduff there was two little boys
drowned in the river there, one was eight years old and the other
eleven years. And I was out in the fields, and the people looking
in the river for their bodies, and I saw a man coming away from it,
and the two boys with him, he holding a hand of each and leading
them away. And he saw me stop and look at them and he said, "Take
care would you bring them from me, for you have only one in your own
house, and if you take these from me, she'll never come home to you
again." And one of the little chaps broke from his hand and ran to
me, and the other cried out to him, "Oh, Pat, would you leave me!" So
then he went back and the man led them away. And then I saw another
man, very tall he was, and crooked, and watching me like this with
his head down and he was leading two dogs the other way, and I knew
well where he was going and what he was going to do with them.

And when I heard the bodies were laid out, I went to the house to
have a look at them, and those were never the two boys that were
lying there, but the two dogs that were put in their places. I knew
this by a sort of stripes on the bodies such as you'd see in the
covering of a mattress; and I knew the boys couldn't be in it, after
me seeing them led away.

And it was at that time I lost my eye, something came on it, and I
never got the sight again. All my life I've seen _them_ and enough of
them. One time I saw one of the fields below full of them, some were
picking up stones and some were ploughing it up. But the next time I
went by there was no sign of it being ploughed at all. They can do
nothing without some live person is looking at them, that's why they
were always so much after me. Even when I was a child I could see
them, and once they took my walk from me, and gave me a bad foot, and
my father cured me, and if he did, in five days after he died.

But there's no harm at all in them, not much harm.

* * * * *

There was a woman lived near me at Ballymacduff, and she used to go
about to attend women; Sarah Redington was her name. And she was
brought _away_ one time by a man that came for her into a hill,
through a door, but she didn't know where the hill was. And there
were people in it, and cradles and a woman in labour, and she helped
her and the baby was born, and the woman told her it was only that
night she was brought away. And the man led her out again and put
her in the road near her home and he gave her something rolled in a
bag, and he bid her not to look at it till she'd get home, and to
throw the first handful of it away from her. But she wouldn't wait to
get home to look at it, and she took it off her back and opened it,
and there was nothing in it but cow-dung. And the man came to her and
said, "You have us near destroyed looking in that, and we'll never
bring you in again among us."

There was a man I know well was away with them, often and often, and
he was passing one day by the big tree and they came about him and he
had a new pair of breeches on, and one of them came and made a slit
in them, and another tore a little bit out, and then they all came
running and tearing little bits till he hadn't a rag left. Just to be
humbugging him they did that. And they gave him good help, for he had
but an acre of land, and he had as much on it as another would have on
a big farm. But his wife didn't like him to be going and some one told
her of a cure for him, and she said she'd try it and if she did, within
two hours after she was dead; killed they had her before she'd try it.
He used to say that where he was brought was into a round very big
house, and Cairns that went with them told me the same. (_Note_ 13.)

Three times when I went for water to the well, the water spilled
over me, and I told Bridget after that they must bring the water
themselves, I'd go for it no more. And the third time it was done
there was a boy, one of the Heniffs, was near, and when he heard what
happened me he said, "It must have been the woman that was at the
well along with you that did that." And I said there was no woman at
the well along with me. "There was," said he; "I saw her there beside
you, and the two little tins in her hand."

One day after I came to live here at Coole, a strange woman came into
the house, and I asked what was her name and she said, "I was in it
before ever you were in it," and she went into the room inside and I
saw her no more.

But Bridget and Peter saw her coming in, and they asked me who she
was, for they never saw her before. And in the night when I was
sleeping at the foot of the bed, she came and threw me out on the
floor, that the joint of my arm has a mark in it yet. And every night
she came, and she'd spite me or annoy me in some way. And at last
we got Father Nolan to come and to drive her out. And as soon as he
began to read, there went out of the house a great blast, and there
was a sound as loud as thunder. And Father Nolan said, "It's well for
you she didn't have you killed before she went."

* * * * *

There's something that's not right about an old cat and it's well not
to annoy them. I was in the house one night, and one came in, and he
tried to bring away the candle that was lighted in the candlestick,
and it standing on the table. And I had a little rod beside me, and I
made a hit at him with it, and with that he dropped the candle and
made at me as if to tear me. And I went on my knees and asked his
pardon three times, and when I asked it the third time he got quiet
all of a minute, and went out at the door.

And as to hares--bid Master Robert never to shoot a hare, for you
wouldn't know what might be in it. There were two women I knew,
mother and daughter, and they died. And one day I was out by the
wood, and I saw two hares sitting by the wall, and the minute I saw
them I knew well who they were. And the mother made as though she'd
kill me, but the daughter stopped her. Bad they must have been to
have been put into that shape, and indeed I know that they weren't
too good. I saw the mother another time come up near the door as if
to see me, and when she got near, she turned herself into a red hare.

The priests can do cures out of their book, and the time the cure is
done is when they turn the second leaf. There was a boy near Kinvara
got a hurt and he was brought into a house and Father Grogan was got
to do a cure on him. And he did it, and within two days the priest's
brother was made a fool of, and is locked up in a madhouse ever
since, and it near seven years ago. (_Note_ 14.)

There was a boy of the Nally's died near a year ago; and when I heard
he was dead I went down to the house, and there I saw him outside and
two men bringing him away, and one of them said to me, "We couldn't
do this but for you being there watching us." That's the last time I
saw any of them.

* * * * *

There was a boy got a fall from a cart near the house beyond, and he
was brought in to Mrs. Raynor's and laid in the bed and I went in to
see him. And he said what he saw was a little boy run across the road
before the cart, and the horse took fright and ran away and threw
him from it. And he asked to be brought to my house, for he wouldn't
stop where he was; "for" says he, "the woman of this house gave me no
drink and showed me no kindness, and she'll be repaid for that." And
sure enough within the year she got the dropsy and died. And he was
carried out of the door backwards, but the mother brought him to her
own house and wouldn't let him come to mine, and 'twas as well, for I
wouldn't refuse him, but I don't want to be annoyed with _them_ any
more than I am.

Did you know Mrs. Byrne that lived in Doolin? Swept she was after
her child was born. And near a year after I saw her coming down the
road near the old castle. "Is that you, Mary?" I said to her, "and
is it to see me you are coming?" But she went on. It was in May when
_they_ are all changing. (_Note_ 15.) There was a priest, Father
Waters, told me one time that he was after burying a boy, one Fahy,
in Kilbecanty churchyard. And he was passing by the place again in
the evening, and there he saw a great fire burning, but whether it
was of turf or of sticks he couldn't tell, and there was the boy he
had buried sitting in the middle of it.

I know that I used to be away among them myself, but how they brought
me I don't know, but when I'd come back, I'd be cross with the husband
and with all. I believe when I was with them I was cross that they
wouldn't let me go, and that's why they didn't keep me altogether,
they didn't like cross people to be with them. The husband would ask
me where I was, and why I stopped so long away, but I think he knew I
was _taken_ and it fretted him, but he never spoke much about it. But
my mother knew it well, but she'd try to hide it. The neighbours would
come in and ask where was I, and she'd say I was sick in the bed--for
whatever was put there in place of me would have the head in under the
bed-clothes. And when a neighbour would bring me in a drink of milk,
my mother would put it by and say, "Leave her now, maybe she'll drink
it tomorrow." And maybe in a day or two I'd meet someone and he'd say,
"Why wouldn't you speak to me when I went into the house to see you?"
And I was a young fresh woman at that time. Where they brought me to
I don't know, or how I got there, but I'd be in a very big house, and
it round, the walls far away that you'd hardly see them, and a great
many people all round about. I saw there neighbours and friends that
I knew, and they in their own clothing and with their own appearance,
but they wouldn't speak to me nor I to them, and when I'd meet them
again I'd never say to them that I saw them there. But the others had
striped clothes of all colours, and long faces, and they'd be talking
and laughing and moving about. What language had they? Irish of course,
what else would they talk?

And there was one woman of them, very tall and with a long face,
standing in the middle, taller than any one you ever saw in this
world, and a tall stick in her hand; she was the mistress. She had
a high yellow thing on her head, not hair, her hair was turned back
under it, and she had a long yellow cloak down to her feet and
hanging down behind. Had she anything like that in the picture in
her hand? [a crown of gold balls or apples.] It was not on her head,
it was lower down here about the body, and shining, and a thing [a
brooch] like that in the picture, but down hanging low like the
other. And that picture you have there in you hand, I saw no one like
it, but I saw a picture like it hanging on the wall. (_Note_ 16.) It
was a very big place and very grand, and a long table set out, but
I didn't want to stop there and I began crying to go home. And she
touched me here in the breast with her stick, she was vexed to see
me wanting to go away. They never brought me away since. Grand food
they'd offer me and wine, but I never would touch it, and sometimes
I'd have to give the breast to a child.

Himself died, but it was _they_ took him from me. It was in the
night and he lying beside me, and I woke and heard him move, and I
thought I heard some one with him. And I put out my hand and what I
touched was an iron hand, like knitting needles it felt. And I heard
the bones of his neck crack, and he gave a sort of a choked laugh,
and I got out of the bed and struck a light and I saw nothing, but I
thought I saw some one go through the door. And I called to Bridget
and she didn't come, and I called again and she came and she said she
struck a light when she heard the noise and was coming, and someone
came and struck the light from her hand. And when we looked in the
bed, himself was lying dead and not a mark on him.

* * * * *

There was a woman, Mrs. Leary, had something wrong with her, and she
went to Biddy Early. And nothing would do her but to bring my son
along with her, and I was vexed. What call had she to bring him with
her? And when Biddy Early saw him she said, "You'll travel far, but
wherever you go you'll not escape them." The woman he went up with
died about six months after, but he went to America, and he wasn't
long there when what was said came true, and he died. They followed
him as far as he went.

And one day since then I was on the road to Gort, and Madden said to
me, "Your son's on the road before you." And I said, "How could that
be, and he dead?" But still I hurried on. And at Coole gate I met a
little boy and I asked did he see any one and he said, "You know
well who I saw." But I got no sight of him at all myself.

I saw the coach one night near Kiltartan Chapel. Long it was and
black, and I saw no one in it. But I saw who was sitting up driving
it, and I knew it to be one of the Miskells that was taken before
that. (_Note_ 17.)

* * * * *

One day I was following the goat to get a sup of milk from her, and
she turned into the field and up into the castle of Lydican and went
up from step to step up the stairs to the top, and I followed and on
the stairs a woman passed me, and I knew her to be Colum's wife. And
when we got to the room at the top, I looked up, and there standing
on the wall was a woman looking down at me, long-faced and tall and
with grand clothes, and on her head something yellow and slippery,
not hair but like marble. (_Note_ 18.) And I called out to ask her
wasn't she afraid to be up there, and she said she was not. And a
shepherd that used to live below in the castle saw the same woman one
night he went up to the top, and a room and a fire and she sitting by
it, but when he went there again there was no sign of her nor of the
room, nothing but the stones as before.

* * * * *

I never saw them on horses; but when I came to live at Peter Mahony's
he used to bring in those red flowers [ragweed] that grow by the
railway, when their stalks were withered, to make the fire. And one
day I was out in the road, and two men came over to me and one was
wearing a long grey dress. And he said to me, "We have no horses to
ride on and have to go on foot, because you have too much fire." So
then I knew it was their horses we were burning. (_Note_ 19.)

* * * * *

I know the cure for anything they can do to you, but it's few I'd
tell it to. It was a strange woman came in and told it to me, and
I never saw her again. She bid me spit and use the spittle, or to
take a graineen of dust from the navel, and that's what you should
do if any one you care for gets a cold or a shivering, or _they_ put
anything upon him.

* * * * *

One time I went up to a forth beyond Raheen to pick up a few sticks,
and I was beating one of the sticks on the ground to break it, and a
voice said from below, "Is it to break down the house you want?" And a
thing appeared that was like a cat, but bigger than any cat ever was.
And another time in a forth a man said, "Here's gold for you, but don't
look at it till you go home." And I looked and I saw horse-dung and I
said, "Keep it yourself, much good may it do you." They never gave me
anything did me good, but a good deal of torment I had from them. And
they're often walking the road, and if you met them you wouldn't know
them from any other person; but I'd know them well enough, but I'd say
nothing--and that's a grand bush we're passing by--whether it belongs
to them I don't know, but wherever they get shelter, there they might
be--but anyway it's a very fine bush--God bless it.

And when you speak of them you should always say the day of the week.
Maybe you didn't notice that I said, "This is Friday" just when we
were hardly in at the gate.

* * * * *

It's very weak I am, and took to my bed since yesterday. _They've_
changed now out of where they were near the castle, and it's inside
Coole demesne they are. It was an old man told me that, I met him on
the road there below. First I thought he was a young man, and then I
saw he was not, and he grew very nice-looking after, and he had plaid
clothes. "We're moved out of that now," he said, "and it's strangers
will be coming in it. And you ought to know me," he said. And when I
looked at him I thought I did.

And one day I was down in Coole I saw their house, more like a big
dairy, with red tiles and a high chimney and a lot of smoke out of
it, and there was a woman at the door and two or three outside. But
they'll do you no harm, for the man told me so. "They needn't be
afraid," he said, "we're good neighbours, but let them not say too
much if the milk might go from the cows now and again."

I was over beyond Raheen one time, and I saw a woman milking and she
at the wrong side of the cow. And when she saw me she got up, and
she had a bucket that was like a plate, and it full of milk and she
gave it to a man that was waiting there, that I thought first was one
of the O'Heas, and they went away. And the cow was a grand fine one,
but who it belonged to I didn't know--maybe to themselves.

* * * * *

It's about a week ago one night some one came into the room in
the dark, and I saw it was my son that I lost--he that went to
America--James. He didn't die, he was whipped away--I knew he wasn't
dead, for I saw him one day on the road to Gort on a coach, and he
looked down and he said, "That's my poor mother." And when he came in
here, I couldn't see him, but I knew him by his talk. And he said,
"It's asleep she is," and he put his two hands on my face and I never
stirred. And he said, "I'm not far from you now." For he is with the
others inside Coole near where the river goes down the swallow hole.
To see me he came, and I think he'll be apt to come again before
long. And last night there was a light about my head all the night
and no candle in the room at all.

* * * * *

Yes, the Sidhe sing, and they have pipers among them, a bag on each
side and a pipe to the mouth, I think I never told you of one I saw.

I was passing a field near Kiltartan one time when I was a girl,
where there was a little lisheen, and a field of wheat, and when I was
passing I heard a piper beginning to play, and I couldn't but begin to
dance, it was such a good tune; and there was a boy standing there, and
he began to dance too. And then my father came by, and he asked why
were we dancing, and no one playing for us. And I said there was, and
I began to search through the wheat for the piper, but I couldn't find
him, and I heard a voice saying, "You'll see me yet, and it will be
in a town." Well, one Christmas eve I was in Gort and my husband with
me, and that night at Gort I heard the same tune beginning again--the
grandest I ever heard--and I couldn't but begin to dance. And Glynn the
chair-maker heard it too, and he began to dance with me in the street,
and my man thought I had gone mad, and the people gathered round us,
for they could see or hear nothing. But I saw the piper well, and he
had plaid clothes, blue and white, and he said, "Didn't I tell you that
when I saw you again it would be in a town?"

* * * * *

I never saw fire go up in the air, but in the wood beyond the tree at
Raheen I used often to see like a door open at night, and the light
shining through it, just as it might shine through the house door,
with the candle and the fire inside, if it would be left open.

Many of _them_ I have seen--they are like ourselves only wearing
bracket clothes (_Note_ 20.), and their bodies are not so strong or
so thick as ours, and their eyes are more shining than our eyes. I
don't see many of them here, but Coole is alive with them, as plenty
as grass; I often go awhile and sit inside the gate there. I saw them
make up a house one time near the natural bridge, and I saw them
coming over the gap twice near the chapel, a lot of little boys, and
two men and a woman, and they had old talk and young talk. One of
them came in here twice, and I gave him a bit of bread, but he said,
"There's salt in it" and he put it away. (_Note_ 21.)

* * * * *

When Annie Rivers died the other day, there were two funerals in it,
a big funeral with a new coffin and another that was in front of
them, men walking, the handsomest I ever saw, and they with black
clothes about their body. I was out there looking at them, and there
was a cow in the road, and I said, "Take care would you drive away
the cow." And one of them said, "No fear of that, we have plenty of
cows _on the other side of the wall_." But no one could see them but
myself. I often saw them and it was they took the sight of my eyes
from me. And Annie Rivers was not in the grand coffin, she was with
_them_ a good while before the funeral.

* * * * *

That time I saw the two funerals at Rivers's that I was telling you
about, I heard Annie call to those that were with her, "You might as
well let me have Bartley; it would be better for the two castles to
meet." And since then the mother is uneasy about Bartley, and he
fell on the floor one day and I know well he is _gone_ since the day
Annie was buried. And I saw others at the funeral, and some that you
knew well among them. And look now, you should send a coat to some
poor person, and your own friends among the dead will be covered, for
you could see the skin here. [_She made a gesture passing her hand
down each arm, exactly the same gesture as old Mary Glynn of Slieve
Echtge had made yesterday when she said, "Have you a coat you could
send me, for my arms are bare?" and I had promised her one._]

* * * * *

Would I have gone among them if I had died last month? I think not. I
think that I have lived my time out, since my father was taken.

He was a young man at that time, and one time I was out in the field,
and I got a knock on the foot, and a lump rose; there is the mark
of it yet. It was after that I was on the road with my father, near
Kinvara, and a man came and began to beat him. And I thought that he
was going to beat me, and I got in near the wall and my father said,
"Spare the girl!" "I will do that, I will spare her," said the man.
He went away then, and within a week my father was dead.

And my mother told me that before the burying, she saw the corpse on
the bed, sitting on the side of the bed, and his feet hanging down. I
saw my father often since then, but not this good while now. He had
always a young appearance when I saw him.

A big woman came to the window and looked in at me, the time I was on
the bed lately. "Rise up out of that," she said. I saw her another
time on the road, and the wind blew her dress open, and I could see
that she had nothing at all on underneath it.

In May they are as thick everywhere as the grass, but there's no fear
at all for you or for Master Robert. I know that, for _one_ told it
to me.

* * * * *

"Tir-nan-og" that is not far from us. One time I was in the chapel
at Labane, and there was a tall man sitting next me, and he dressed
in grey, and after the Mass I asked him where he came from. "From
Tir-nan-og," says he. "And where is that?" I asked him. "It's not far
from you," he said; "it's near the place where you live." I remember
well the look of him and him telling me that. The priest was looking
at us while we were talking together. (_Note_ 22.)

* * * * *

_She died some years ago and I am told:

"There is a ghost in Mrs. Sheridan's house. They got a priest to say
Mass there, but with all that there is not one in it has leave to lay
a head on the pillow till such time as the cock crows."_

MR. SAGGARTON

_I was told one day by our doctor, a good fowler an physician, now,
alas, passed away, of an old man in Clare who had knowledge of "the
Others," and I took Mr. Yeats to see him._

_We found him in his hayfield, and he took us to his thatched
lime-white house and told us many things. A little later we went
there again to verify what I had put down. I remember him as very
gentle and courteous, and that a cloth was spread and tea made for us
by his daughters, he himself sitting at the head of the table._

_Mr. Yeats at that time wore black clothes and a soft black hat, but
gave them up later, because he was so often saluted as a priest.
But this time another view was taken, and I was told after a while
that the curate of the Clare parish had written to the curate of a
Connacht parish that Lady Gregory had come over the border with "a
Scripture Reader" to try and buy children for proselytizing purposes.
But the Connacht curate had written back to the Clare curate that he
had always thought him a fool, and now he was sure of it._

_The old man I have called Mr. Saggarton said:_

Our family diminished very much till at last there were but three
brothers left, and they separated. One went to Ennis and another came
here and the other to your own place beyond. It was a long time before
they could make one another out again. It was my uncle used to go away
among _them_. When I was a young chap, I'd go out in the field working
with him, and he'd bid me go away on some message, and when I'd come
back it might be in a faint I'd find him. It was he himself was taken;
it was but his shadow or some thing in his likeness was left behind.
He was a very strong man. You might remember Ger Kelly what a strong
man he was, and stout, and six feet two inches in height. Well, he and
my uncle had a dispute one time, and he made as if to strike at him,
and my uncle, without so much as taking off his coat, gave one blow
that stretched him on the floor. And at the barn at Bunahowe he and
my father could throw a hundred weight over the collar beam, what no
other could do. (_Note_ 23.) My father had no notion at all of managing
things. He lived to be eighty years, and all his life he looked as
innocent as that little chap turning the hay. My uncle had the same
innocent look; I think they died quite happy.

One time the wife got a touch, and she got it again, and the third
time she got up in the morning and went out of the house and never
said where she was going. But I had her watched, and I told the boy
to follow her and never to lose sight of her, and I gave him the sign
to make if he'd meet any bad thing. So he followed her, and she kept
before him, and while he was going along the road something was up
on top of the wall with one leap--a red-haired man it was, with no
legs and with a thin face. (_Note_ 24.) But the boy made the sign and
got hold of him and carried him till he got to the bridge. At the
first he could not lift the man, but after he made the sign he was
quite light. And the woman turned home again, and never had a touch
after. It's a good job the boy had been taught the sign. Make that
sign with your thumbs if ever when you're walking out you feel a sort
of a shivering in the skin, for that shows there's some bad thing
near, but if you hold your hands like that, if you went into a forth
itself, it couldn't harm you. And if you should any time feel a sort
of a pain in your little finger, the surest thing is to touch it with
human dung. Don't neglect that, for if they're glad get one of us,
they'd be seven times better pleased to get the like of you.

Youngsters they take mostly to do work for them, and they are death
on handsome people, for they are handsome themselves. To all sorts
of work they put them, and digging potatoes and the like, and they
have wine from foreign parts, and cargoes of gold coming in to them.
Their houses are ten times more beautiful and ten times grander than
any house in this world. And they could build one of them up in that
field in ten minutes. Clothes of all colours they wear, and crowns
like that one in the picture, and of other shapes. (_Note_ 25.) They
have different queens, not always the same. The people they bring
away must die some day; as to themselves, they were living from past
ages, and they can never die till the time when God has His mind made
up to redeem them.

And those they bring away are always glad to be brought back again.
If you were to bring a heifer from those mountains beyond and to put
it into a meadow, it would be glad to get back again to the mountain,
because it is the place it knows.

Coaches they make up when they want to go driving, with wheels and
all, but they want no horses. There might be twenty of them going out
together sometimes, and all full of them.

They are everywhere around us, and may be within a yard of us now in
the grass. But if I ask you, "What day is tomorrow," and you said,
"Thursday," they wouldn't be able to overhear us. They have the power
to go in every place, even on to the book the priest is using.

There was one John Curran lived over there towards Bunahowe, and he
had a cow that died, and they were striving to rear the calf--boiled
hay they were giving it, the juice the hay was boiled in. And you
never saw anything to thrive as it did. And one day some man was
looking at it and he said, "You may be sure the mother comes back
and gives it milk." And John Curran said, "How can that be, and she
dead?" But the man said, "She's not dead, she's in the forth beyond.
And if you go towards it half an hour before sunrise you'll find
her, and you should catch a hold of her and bring her home and milk
her, and when she makes to go away again, take a hold of her tail
and follow her." So he went out next morning, half an hour before
sunrise, up toward the forth, and brought her home and milked her,
and when the milking was done she started to go away and he caught a
hold of the tail and was carried along with her. And she brought him
into the forth, through a door. And behind the door stood a barrel,
and what was in the barrel is what they put their finger in, and
touch their forehead with when they go out, for if they didn't do
that all people would be able to see them. And as soon as he got in,
there were voices from all sides. "Welcome, John Curran, welcome,
John Curran." And he said: "The devil take you, how well you know my
name; it's not a welcome I want, it's my cow to bring home again."
So in the end he got the cow and brought her home. And he saw there
a woman that had died out of the village about ten years before, and
she suckling a child. (_Note_ 26.)

Surely I knew Biddy Early, and my uncle was a friend of hers. It
was from the same power they got the cures. My uncle left me the
power, and I was well able to do them and did many, but my stock
was all dying and what could I do? So I gave a part of the power to
Mrs. Tobin that lives in Gort, and she can cure a good many things.
Biddy Early told me herself that where she got it was when she was a
servant girl in a house, there was a baby lying in the cradle, and he
went on living for a few years. But he was friendly to her and used
to play tunes for her and when he went away he gave her the bottle
and the power. She had but to look in it and she'd see all that had
happened and all that was going to happen. But he made her make a
promise never to take more than a shilling for any cure she did,
and she would not have taken fifty pounds if you offered it to her,
though she might take presents of bread and wine and such things.

The cure for all things in the world? Surely she had it and knew
where it was. And I knew it myself too--but I could not tell you of
it. Seven parts I used to make it with, and one of them is a thing
that's in every house.

* * * * *

There's a lake beyond there, and my uncle one day told us by name of
a man that would be drowned there at twelve o'clock that day. And so
it happened.

* * * * *

One time I was walking on the road to Galway, near the sea, and
another man along with me. And I saw in a field beside the road
a very small woman walking down towards us, and she smiling and
carrying a can of water in her hand, and she was dressed in a blue
spencer. So I asked the other man did he see her, and he said he did
not, and when I came up to the wall she was gone.

* * * * *

One time myself when I went to look for a wife, I went to the house,
and there was a hen and some chickens before the door. Well, after I
went home one of the chickens died. And what do you think they said,
but that it was I overlooked it.

* * * * *

They hate me because I do cures, and they hated Biddy Early too. The
priests do them but not in the same way--they do them by the power of
Almighty God.

* * * * *

My wife got a touch from them, and they have a watch on her ever
since. It was the day after I married and I went to the fair at
Clarenbridge. And when I came back the house was full of smoke, but
there was nothing on the hearth but cinders, and the smoke was more
like the smoke of a forge. And she was within lying on the bed, and
her brother was sitting outside the door crying. So I went to the
mother and asked her to come in, and she was crying too. And she knew
well what had happened, but she didn't tell me, but she sent for the
priest. And when he came he sent me for Geoghegan and that was only
an excuse to get me away, and what he and the mother tried to bring
her to do was to face death, and they knew I wouldn't allow that if
I was there. But the wife was very stout and she wouldn't give in to
them. So the priest read more, and he asked would I be willing to
lose something, and I said, so far as a cow or a calf I wouldn't mind
losing that. Well, she partly recovered, but from that day, no year
went by but I lost ten lambs maybe or other things. And twice they
took my children out of the bed, two of them I have lost. And the
others they gave a touch to. That girl there,--see the way she is,
and can't walk. In one minute it came on her out in the field, with
the fall of a wall. (_Note_ 27.)

It was one among _them_ that wanted the wife. A woman and a boy we
often saw come to the door, and she was the matchmaker. And when we
would go out, they would have vanished.

* * * * *

Biddy Early's cure that you heard of, it was the moss on the water
of the mill-stream between the two wheels of Ballylee. It can cure
all things brought about by _them_, but not any common ailment. But
there is no cure for the stroke given by a queen or a fool. There
is a queen in every house or regiment of them. It is of those they
steal away they make queens for as long as they live or that they are
satisfied with them.

There were two women fighting at a spring of water, and one hit the
other on the head with a can and killed her. And after that her
children began to die. And the husband went to Biddy Early and as
soon as she saw him she said, "There's nothing I can do for you, your
wife was a wicked woman, and the one she hit is a queen among them,
and she is taking your children one by one and you must suffer till
twenty-one years are up." And so he did.

The stroke of a fool, there's no cure for either. There are many
fools among them dressed in strange clothes like one of the mummers
that used to be going through the country. But it might be the fools
are the wisest after all. There are two classes, the Dundonians that
are like ourselves, and another race, more wicked and more spiteful.
Very small they are and wide, and their belly sticks out in front, so
that what they carry they don't carry it on the back, but in front,
on the belly in a bag. (_Note_ 28.)

* * * * *

They were fighting when Johnny Casey died; that's what often happens.
Everyone has friends among them, and the friends would be trying to
save you when the others would be trying to bring you away. Youngsters
they pick up here and there, to help them in their fights and in their
work. They have cattle and horses, but all of them have only three legs.

They don't have children themselves, only the women that are brought
away among them, they have children, but they don't live for ever,
like the Dundonians.

The handsome they like, and the good dancers. And if they get a boy
amongst them, the first to touch him, he belongs to her.

* * * * *

There was a boy was a splendid dancer, and straight and firm, for
they don't like those that go to right or left as they walk. Well,
one night he was going to a house where there was a dance, and when
he was about half-way to it, he came to another house, where there
was music and dancing going on. So he turned in, and there was a room
all done up with curtains and with screens, and a room inside where
the people were sitting, and it was only those that were dancing sets
that came to the outside room.

* * * * *

As to their treasure, it's best to be without it. There was a man
living by a forth, and where his house touched the forth, he built a
little room and left it for them, clean and in good order, the way
they'd like it. And whenever he'd want money, for a fair or the like,
he'd find it laid on the table in the morning. And when he had it
again, he'd leave it there, and it would be taken away in the night.
But after that going on for a time he lost his son.

* * * * *

There was a room at Crags where things used to be thrown about, and
everyone could hear the noises there. They had a right to clear it
out and settle it the way they'd like it. You should do that in your
own big house. Set a little room for them--with spring water in it
always--and wine you might leave--no, not flowers--they wouldn't want
so much as that--but just what would show your good will.

Now I have told you more than I told my wife.

"A GREAT WARRIOR IN THE BUSINESS"

_It was on the bounds of Connemara I heard of this healer, and went to
see his wife in her little rock-built cabin among the boulders, to ask
if a cure could be done for Mr. Yeats, who was staying at a friend's
house near, and who was at that time troubled by uncertain eyesight._

_One evening later we walked beside the sea to the cottage where we
were to meet the healer; a storm was blowing and we were glad when
the door was opened and we found a bright turf fire._

_He was short and broad, with regular features, and his hair was
thick and dark, though he was an old man. He wore a flannel-sleeved
waistcoat, and his trousers were much patched on the knees. He sat
on a low bench in the wide chimney nook, holding a soft hat in his
hands which kept nervously moving. The woman of the house came over
now and then to look at the iron tripod on the hearth. She, like the
healer, spoke only Irish. The man of the house sat between us and
interpreted, holding a dip candle in his hands. A dog growled without
ceasing at one side of the hearth, a reddish cat sat at the other.
The woman seemed frightened and angry at times as the old man spoke,
and clutched the baby to her breast._

_I was told by the man of the house, Coneely:_

There's a man beyond is a great warrior in this business, and no man
within miles of the place will build a house or a cabin or any other
thing without him going there to say if it's in a right place.

It was Fagan cured me of a pain I had in my arm, I couldn't get rid
of. He gave me a something to drink, and he bid me go to a quarry and
to touch some of the stones that were lying outside it and not to
touch others of them. Anyway I got well.

And one time down by the hill we were gathering in the red seaweed,
and there was a boy there that was leading a young horse, the same
way he'd been leading him a year or more. But this day of a sudden he
made a snap to bite him, and secondly he reared as if to jump on top
of him, and thirdly turned around and made at him with the hoofs. And
the boy threw himself to one side and escaped, but with the fright he
got he went into his bed and stopped there. And the next day Fagan
came and told him everything that had happened, and he said, "I saw
thousands on the strand near where it was last night."

_Fagan's wife said to me in her house:_

Are you _right_? You are? Then you're my friend. Come here close and
tell me is there anything himself can do for you?

I do the fortunes no more since I got great abuse from the priest for
it. Himself got great abuse from the priest too--Father Haverty--and
he gave him plaster of Paris,--I mean by that he spoke soft and
blathered him, but he does them all the same, and Father Kilroy gave
him leave when he was here.

It was from his sister he got the cure. Taken she was when her baby
was born. She died in the morning and the baby at night. We didn't
tell John of it for a month after, where he was away, caring horses.
But he knew of it before he came home, for she followed him there one
day he was out in the field, and when he didn't know her she said,
"I'm your sister Kate." And she said, "I bring you a cure that you
may cure both yourself and others." And she told him of the herb and
the field he'd find it growing, and that he must choose a plant with
seven branches, the half of them above the clay and the half of them
covered up. And she told him how to use it.

Twenty years she's gone, but she's not dead yet, but the last time he
saw her he said that she was getting grey. Every May and November he
sees her, he'll be seeing her soon now. When her time comes to die,
she'll be put in the place of some other one that's taken, and so
she'll get absolution. (_Note_ 29.)

He has cured many. But sometimes they are vexed with him, for some
cure he has done, when he interferes with some person they're meaning
to bring away. And many's the good beating they gave him out in the
fields for doing that.

Myself they gave a touch to, here in the thigh, so that I lost my
walk; vexed with me they are for giving up the throwing of the cup.

A nurse she's been all the time among them. And don't believe those
that say they have no children. A boy among them is as clever as any
boy here, but he must be matched with a woman from earth. And the
same way with their women, they must get a husband here. And they
never can give the breast to a child, but must get a nurse from here.

One time I saw them myself, in a field and they hurling. Bracket caps
they wore and bracket clothes that were of all colours.

Some were the same size as ourselves and some looked like gossoons
that didn't grow well. But himself has the second sight and can see
them in every place.

There's as many of them in the sea as on the land, and sometimes they
fly like birds across the bay.

The first time he did a cure it was on some poor person like
ourselves, and he took nothing for it, and in the night the sister
came and bid him not to do it any more without a fee. And that time
we lost a fine boy.

They'll all be watching round when a person is dying; and suppose it
was myself, there'd be my own friends crying, crying, and themselves
would be laughing and jesting, and glad I'd go. (_Note_ 30.)

There is always a mistress among them. When one of us goes among them
they would all be laughing and jesting, but when that tall mistress you
heard of would tip her stick on the ground, they'd all draw to silence.

* * * * *

Tell me the Christian name of your friend you want the cure for.
"William Butler," I'll keep that. (_Note_ 31.) And when himself
gathers the herb, if it's for a man, he must call on the name of some
other man, and call him a king--Righ--and if it's for a woman he must
call on the name of some other woman and call her a queen that is
calling on the king or the queen of the plant.

_Fagan said to W. B. Yeats and to me:_

It's not from _them_ the harm came to your eyes. I see them in all
places--and there's no man mowing a meadow that doesn't see them at
some time or other. As to what they look like, they'll change colour
and shape and clothes while you look round. Bracket caps they always
wear. There is a king and a queen and a fool in each house of them,
that is true enough--but they would do you no harm. The king and the
queen are kind and gentle, and whatever you'll ask them for they'll
give it. They'll do no harm at all if you don't injure them. You might
speak to them if you'd meet them on the road, and they'd answer you, if
you'd speak civil and quiet and show respect, and not be laughing or
humbugging--they wouldn't like that. One night I was in bed with the
wife beside me, and the child near me, near the fire. And I turned and
saw a woman sitting by the fire, and she made a snap at the child, and
I was too quick for her and got hold of it, and she was at the door and
out of it in one minute, before I could get to her.

Another time in the field a woman came beside me, and I went on to a
gap in the wall and she was in it before me. And then she stopped me
and she said: "I'm your sister that was taken; and don't you remember
how I got the fever first and you tended me, and then you got it
yourself, and one had to be taken and I was the one." And she taught me
the cure, and the way to use it. And she told me that she was in the
best of places, and told me many things that she bound me not to tell.
And I asked was it here she was kept ever since, and she said it was,
but she said, "In six months I'll have to move to another place, and
others will come where I am now, and it would be better for you if we
stopped here, for the most of us here now are your neighbours and your
friends." And it was she gave me the second sight. (_Note_ 32.)

Last year I was digging potatoes and a man came by, one of _them_,
and one that I knew well before. And he said, "You have them this
year, and we'll have them the next two years." And you know the
potatoes were good last year and you see that they are bad now, and
have been made away with. (_Note_ 33.) And the sister told me that
half the food in Ireland goes to them, but that if they like they can
make out of cow-dung all they want, and they can come into a house
and use what they like and it will never be missed in the morning.

* * * * *

_The old man suddenly stooped and took a handful of hot ashes in
his hand, and put them in his pocket. And presently he said he'd be
afraid tonight going home the road. When we asked him why, he said
he'd have to tell what errand he had been on._

_He said one eye of W. B. Y.'s was worse than the other, and asked if
he had ever slept out at nights. We asked if he goes to enquire of_
them (_the Others_) _what is wrong with those who came to him and he
said, "Yes, when it has to do with their business--but in this case
it has nothing to do with it."_ (_Note_ 34.)

_Coneely said next day:_

I walked home with the old man last night, he was afraid to go by
himself. He pointed out to me on the way a graveyard where he had got
a great beating from _them_ one night. He had a drop too much taken
after being at a funeral, and he went there and gathered the plant
wrong. And they came and punished him, that his head is not better of
it ever since.

He told me the way he knows in the gathering of the plant what is
wrong with the person that is looking for a cure. He has to go on
his knees and say a prayer to the king and the queen and the gentle
and the simple among them, and then he gathers it, and if there are
black leaves about it, or white ones, but chiefly a black leaf folded
down, he knows the illness is some of their business; but for this
young man the plant came fresh and green and clean. He has been among
them and has seen the king and the queen, and he says that they are
no bigger than the others, but the queen wears a wide cap, and the
others have bracket caps.

He never would allow me to build a shed there beside the house,
though I never saw anything there myself.

OLD DERUANE

_Old Deruane lived in the middle island of Aran, Inishmaan, where I
have stayed more than once. He was one of the evening visitors to the
cottage I stayed in, when the fishers had come home and had eaten, and
the fire was stirred and flashed on the dried mackerel and conger eels
hanging over the wide hearth, and the little vessel of cod oil had a
fresh wick put in it and lighted. The men would sit in a half-circle
on the floor, passing the lighted pipe from one to another; the women
would find some work with yarn or wheel. The talk often turned on the
fallen angels or the dead, for the dwellers in those islands have not
been moulded in that dogma which while making belief in the after-life
an essential, makes belief in the shadow-visit of a spirit yearning
after those it loved a vanity, a failing of the great essential, common
sense, and sets down one who believes in such things as what Burton
calls in his Anatomy "a melancholy dizzard."_

_I was told by Old Deruane:_

I was born and bred in the North Island, and ten old fathers of mine
are buried there.

I can speak English, because I went to earn in England in the
hard times, and I was for five quarters in a country town called
Manchester; and I have threescore and fifteen years.

I knew two fine young women were brought away after childbirth, and
they were seen after in the North Island going about with _them_. One
of them I saw myself there, one time I was out late at night going to
the east village. I saw her pattern walking on the north side of the
wall, on the road near me, but she said nothing. And my body began
to shake, and I was going to get to the south side of the wall, to
put it between us; but then I said, "Where is God?" and I walked on
and passed her, and she looked aside at me but she didn't speak. And
I heard her after me for a good while, but I never looked back, for
it's best not to look back at them.

And there was another woman had died, and one evening late I was
coming from the schoolmaster, for he and I are up to one another, and
he often gives me charity. And then I saw her or her pattern walking
along that field of rock you passed by just now. But I stopped and I
didn't speak to her, and she went on down the road, and when she was
about forty fathoms below me I could hear her abusing some one, but
no one there. I thought maybe it was that she was vexed at me that
I didn't question her. She was a young woman too. I'll go bail they
never take an old man or woman--what would they do with them? If by
chance they'd come among them they'd throw them out again.

Another night I was out and the moon shining, I knew by the look of it
the night was near wore away. And when I came to the corner of the road
beyond, my flesh began to shake and my hair rose up, and every hair was
as stiff as that stick. So I knew that some evil thing was near, and
I got home again. This island is as thick as grass with them, or as
sand; but good neighbours make good neighbours, and no woman minding a
house but should put a couple of the first of the potatoes aside on the
dresser, for there's no house but they'll visit it some time or other.
Myself, I always brush out my little tent clean of a night before I lie
down, and the night I'd do it most would be a rough night. How do we
know what poor soul might want to come in?

I saw them playing ball one day when the slip you landed at was being
made, and I went down to watch the work. There were hundreds of them
in the field at the top of it, about three feet tall, and little caps
on them; but the men that were working there, they couldn't see
them. (_Note_ 35.) And one morning I went down to the well to leave
my pampooties in it to soak--it was a Sabbath morning and I was going
to Mass--and the pampooties were hard and wore away my feet, and I
left them there. And when I came back in a few minutes they were
gone, and I looked in every cleft, but I couldn't find them. And when
I was going away, I felt _them_ about me, and coming between my two
sticks that I was walking with. And I stopped and looked down and
said, "I know you're there," and then I said, "_Gentlemen_, I know
you're here about me," and when I said that word they went away. Was
it they took my pampooties? Not at all--what would they want with
such a thing as pampooties? It was some children must have taken
them, and I never saw them since.

One time I wanted to settle myself clean, and I brought down my
waistcoat and a few little things I have, to give them a rinse in
the sea-water, and I laid them out on a stone to dry, and I left
one of my sticks on them. And when I came back after leaving them
for a little time, the stick was gone. And I was vexed at first to
be without it, but I knew that they had taken it to be humbugging
me, or maybe for their own use in fighting. For there is nothing
there is more fighting among than them. So I said, "Welcome to it,
_Gentlemen_, may it bring you luck; maybe you'll make more use of it
than ever I did myself."

One night when I was sleeping in my little tent, I heard a great noise
of fighting, and I thought it was down at Mrs. Jordan's house, and that
maybe the children were troublesome in the bed, she having a great
many of them. And in the morning as I passed the house I said to her,
"What was on you in the night?" And she said there was nothing happened
there, and that she heard no noise. So I said nothing but went on; and
when I came to the flag-stones beyond her house, they were covered with
great splashes and drops of blood. So I said nothing of that either,
but went on. What time of the year? Wait till I think, it was this very
same time of the year, the month of May.

One time I was out putting seed in the ground, and the ridges all
ready and the seaweed spread in them; and it was a fine day, but I
heard a storm in the air, and then I knew by signs that it was they
were coming. And they came into the field and tossed the seaweed and
the seed about, and I spoke to them civil and then they went in to
a neighbour's field, and from that down to the sea, and there they
turned into a ship, the grandest that ever I saw.

There was a man on this island went out with two others fishing in his
curragh, and when they were about a mile out they saw a ship coming
towards them, and when they looked again, instead of having three masts
she had none, and just when they were going to take up the curragh to
bring it ashore, a great wave came and turned it upside down. And the
man that owned her got such a fright that he couldn't walk, and the
other two had to hold him under the arms to bring him home. And he went
to his bed, and within a week after, he was dead.

One night I heard a crying down the road, and the next day, there was
a child of Tom Regan's dead. And it was a few months after that, that
I heard a crying again. And the next day another of his children was
gone.

There was a fine young man was buried in the graveyard below, and
a good time after that, there was work being done in it, and they
came on his coffin, and the mother made them open it, and there was
nothing in it at all but a broom, and it tied up with a bit of a rope.

There was a man was passing by that Sheoguy place below, "Breagh" we
call it. And he saw a man come riding out of it on a white horse. And
when he got home that night there was nothing for him or for any of
them to eat, for the potatoes were not in yet. And in the morning he
asked the wife was there anything to eat, and she said a neighbour
had sent in a pan of meal. So she made that into stirabout, and he
took but a small bit of it out of her hand to leave more for the
rest. And then he took a sheet, and bid her make a bag of it, and he
got a horse and rode to the place where he saw the man ride out, for
he knew he was the master of _them_. And he asked for the full of the
bag of meal, and said he'd bring it back again when he had it. And
the man brought the bag in, and filled it for him and brought it out
again. And when the oats were ripe, the first he cut, he got ground
at the mill and brought it to the place and gave it in. And the man
came out and took it, and said whatever he'd want at any time, to
come to him and he'd get it.

In a bad year they say they bring away the potatoes and that may be so.
They want provision, and they must get them at one place or another.

_Mr. McArdle joins in and says:_

This I can tell you and be certain of, and I remember well that the
man in the third house to this died after being sick a long time. And
the wife died after, and she was to be buried in the same place, and
when they came to the husband's coffin they opened it, and there was
nothing in it at all, neither brooms nor anything else.

There's a boy, I know him well, that was up at that forth above the
house one day, and a blast of wind came and blew the hat off him. And
when he saw it going off in the air he cried out, "Do whatever is
pleasing to you, but give me back my cap!" And in the moment it was
settled back again on to his head.

_Old Deruane goes on:_

There are many can do cures, because they have something walking
with them, what one may call a ghost from among the Sheogue. A few
cures I can do myself, and this is how I got them. I told you that
I was for five quarters in Manchester, and where I lodged were two
old women in the house, from the farthest end of Mayo, for they were
running from Mayo at the time because of the hunger. And I knew that
they were likely to have a cure, for St. Patrick blessed the places
he was not in more than the places he was in, and with the cure he
left and the fallen angels, there are many in Mayo can do them.

Now it's the custom in England never to clean the table but once
in the week and that on a Saturday night. And on that night all is
set out clean, and all the crutches of bread and bits of meat and
the like are gathered together in a tin can, and thrown out in the
street, and women that have no other way of living come round then
with a bag that would hold two stone, and they pick up all that's
thrown out in the street, and live on it for a week. And often I
didn't eat the half of what was before me, and I wouldn't throw it
out, but I'd bring it to the two old women that were in the house, so
they grew very fond of me.

Well, when the time came that I thought to draw towards home, I brought
them one day to a public-house and made a drop of punch for them, and
then I picked the cure out of them, for I was wise in those days.

Those that get a touch I could save from being brought away, but I
couldn't bring back a man that's away, for it's only those that have
been living among them for a while that can do that. There was a
neighbour's child was sick, and I got word of it, and I went to the
house, for the woman there had showed me kindness. And I went in to the
cradle and I lifted the quilt off the child's face and you could see by
it, and I knew the sign, that there was some of their work there. And
I said, "You are not likely to have the child long with you, Ma'am."
And she said, "Indeed I know I won't have him long." So I said nothing
but I went out, and whatever I did, and whatever I got there, I brought
it again and gave it to the child, and he began to get better. And the
next day I brought the same thing again, and gave it the child, and I
looked at it and I said to the mother, "He'll live to comb his hair
grey." And from that time he got better, and now there's no stronger
child in the island, and he the youngest in the house.

After that the husband got sick, and the woman said to me one day,
"If there's anything you can do to cure him, have pity on me and on
my children, and I'll give you what you'll wish." But I said, "I'll
do what I can for you, but I'll take nothing from you except maybe
a grain of tea or a glass of porter, for I wouldn't take money for
this, and I refused £2 one time for a cure I did." So I went and I
brought back the cure, and I mixed it with flour and made it into
three little pills that it couldn't be lost, and gave them to him,
and from that time he got well.

There's a woman lived down the road there, and one day I went in to
the house, when she was after coming from Galway town, and I asked
charity of her. And it was in the month of August when the bream
fishing was going on, and she said, "There's no one need be in want
now, with fresh fish in the sea and potatoes in the gardens"; and
gave me nothing. But when I was out the door she said, "Well, come
back here." And I said, "If you were to offer me all you brought from
Galway, I wouldn't take it from you now."

And from that time she began to pine and to wear away and to lose her
health, and at the end of three years, she walked outside her house
one day, and when she was two yards from her own threshold she fell
on the ground, and the neighbours came and lifted her up on a door
and brought her into the house, and she died.

I think I could have saved her then--I think I could, when I saw her
lying there. But I remembered that day, and I didn't stretch out a
hand and I spoke no word.

* * * * *

I'm going to rise out of the cures and not to do much more of them,
for _they_ have given me a touch here in the right leg, so that it's
the same as dead. And a woman of my village that does cures, she is
after being struck with a pain in the hand.

Down by the path at the top of the slip from there to the hill,
that's the way they go most nights, hundreds and thousands of them.
There are two old men in the island got a beating from them; one of
them told me himself and brought me out on the ground, that I'd see
where it was. He was out in a small field, and was after binding up
the grass, and the sky got very black over him and very dark. And he
was thrown down on the ground, and got a great beating, but he could
see nothing at all. He had done nothing to vex them, just minding his
business in the field.

And the other was an old man too, and he was out on the roads, and
they threw him there and beat him that he was out of his mind for a
time.

One night sleeping in that little cabin of mine, I heard them ride
past, and I could hear by the feet of the horses that there was a
long line of them.

* * * * *

This is a story was going about twenty years ago. There was a curate
in the island, and one day he got a call to the other island for the
next day. And in the evening he told the servant maid that attended him
to clean his boots good and very good, for he'd be meeting good people
where he was going. And she said, "I will, Holy Father, and if you'll
give me your hand and word to marry me for nothing, I'll clean them
grand." And he said "I will; whenever you get a comrade I'll marry you
for nothing, I give you my hand and word." So she had the boots grand
for him in the morning. Well, she got a sickness after, and after seven
months going by, she was buried. And six months after that, the curate
was in his parlour one night and the moon shining, and he saw a boy and
a girl outside the house, and they came to the window, and he knew it
was the servant girl that was buried. And she said, "I have a comrade
now, and I came for you to marry us as you gave your word." And he
said, "I'll hold to my word since I gave it," and he married them then
and there, and they went away again. (_Note_ 36.)

III

THE EVIL EYE--THE TOUCH--THE
PENALTY

III

THE EVIL EYE--THE TOUCH--THE
PENALTY

_"Some friendly Teyâmena, sorry to see my suffering plight, said to
me: 'This is because thou hast been eye-struck--what! you do not
understand 'eye-struck'? Certainly they have looked in your eyes,
Khalîl. We have lookers_ (_God cut them off!_) _among us, that with
their only_ (_malignant_) _eye-glances may strike down a fowl flying;
and you shall see the bird tumble in the air with loud shrieking
kâk-kâ-kâ-kâ-kâ. Wellah their looking can blast a palm-tree so that
you shall see it wither away. These are things well ascertained by
many faithful witnesses."_--DOUGHTY'S _Travels in the Arabian Desert_.

* * * * *

_There is one visit I have always been a little remorseful about. It
was in Mayo where I had gone to see the broken walls and grass-grown
hearthstone that remain of the house where Raftery the poet was born.
I was taken to see an old woman near, and the friend who was with me
asked her about "Those." I could see she was unwilling to speak, and
I would not press her, for there are some who fear to vex invisible
hearers; so we talked of America where she had lived for a little
while. But presently she said, "All I ever saw of_ them _myself was one
night when I was going home, and they were behind in the field watching
me. I couldn't see them but I saw the lights they carried, two lights
on the top of a sort of dark oak pole. So I watched them and they
watched me, and when we were tired watching one another the lights all
went into one blaze, and then they went away and it went out." She told
also one or two of the traditional stories, of the man who had a hump
put on him, and the woman "taken" and rescued by her husband, who she
had directed to seize the horse she was riding with his left hand._

_Then she gave a cry and took up her walking stick from the hearth,
burned through, and in two pieces, though the fire had seemed to be but
a smouldering heap of ashes. We were very sorry, but she said "Don't be
sorry. It is well it was into it the harm went." I passed the house two
or three hours afterwards; shutters and door were closed, and I felt
that she was fretting for the stick that had been "to America and back
with me, and had walked every part of the world," and through the loss
of which, it may be, she had "paid the penalty."_

_I told a neighbour about the doctor having attended a man on the
mountains--and how after some time, he found that one of the children
was sick also, but this had been hidden from him, because if one had
to die they wanted it to be the child._

_"That's natural," he said. "Let the child pay the penalty if it has
to be paid. That's a thing that might happen easy enough."_

_I was told by M. McGarity:_

There was a boy of the Cloonans I knew was at Killinane thatching
Henniff's house. And a woman passed by, and she looked up at him, but
she never said, "God bless the work." And Cloonan's mother was in
the road to Gort and the woman met her and said, "Where did your son
learn thatching?" And that day he had a great fall and was brought
home hurt, and the mother went to Biddy Early. And she said, "Didn't
a red-haired woman meet you one day going into Gort and ask where
did your son learn thatching? And didn't she look up at him as she
passed? It was then it was done." And she gave a bottle and he got
well after a while. (_Note_ 37.)

* * * * *

Some say the evil eye is in those who were baptized wrong, but I
believe it's not that, but if, when a woman is carrying, some one
that meets her says, "So you're in that way," and she says, "The
devil a fear of me," as even a married woman might say for sport or
not to let on, the devil gets possession of the child at that moment,
and when it is born it has the evil eye.

_Margaret Bartly:_

There was a woman below in that village where I lived to my grief and
my sorrow, and she used to be throwing the evil eye, but she is in
the poor-house now--Mrs. Boylan her name is. Four she threw it on,
not children but big men, and they lost the walk and all, and died.
Maybe she didn't know she had it, but it is no load to any one to say
"God bless you." I faced her one time and told her it would be no
load to her when she would see the man in the field, and the horses
ploughing to say "God bless them," and she was vexed and she asked
did I think she had the evil eye, and I said I did. So she began
to scold and I left her. That was five years ago, and it is in the
poor-house in Ballyvaughan she is this two years; but she can do no
harm there because she has lost her sight.

_Mrs. Nelly of Knockmogue:_

There was a girl lived there near the gate got sick. And after
waiting a long time and she getting no better the mother brought in
a woman that lived in the bog beyond, that used to do cures. And
when she saw the girl, she knew what it was, and that she had been
overlooked. And she said, "Did you meet three men on the road one
day, and didn't one of them, a dark one, speak to you and give no
blessing?" And she said that was so. And she would have done a cure
on her, but we had a very good priest at that time, Father Hayden, a
curate, and he used to take a drop of liquor and so he had courage
to do cures. And he said this was a business for him, and he cured
her, and the mother gave him money for it.

It was by herbs that woman used to do cures, and whatever power she
got in the gathering of them, she was able to tell what would happen.
But she was in great danger all her life from gathering the herbs, for
_they_ don't like any one to be cured that they have put a touch on.

_Mrs. Clerey:_

I can tell you what happened to two sons of mine. A woman that passed
by them said, "You've often threatened me by night, and my curse is
on you now." And the one answered her back but the other didn't. And
after that they both took sick, but the one that didn't answer her
was the worst. And they pined a long time. And I brought the one
that was so bad over to Kilronan to the priest and he read over him.
It was a lump in his mouth he had, that you could hardly put down a
spoonful of milk, and there was a good doctor there and he sliced
it, and he got well. But the priest often told me that but for what
he did for him he would never have got well. For there's no doubt
there's _some_ in the world it's not well to talk with.

The time my son got the pain, he came in roaring and said he got
a stab in the knee. It was surely some evil thing that put it on
him. There are some that have the evil eye, and that don't know it
themselves. Father McEvilly told me that. He said a woman that was
carrying, and that was not married, but that got married while she
was carrying, she might put the evil eye on you, and not know it at
all. And he said anyway it would be no great load to say "God bless
you" to any one you might meet.

The priests can do cures if they like, but those that have stock
don't like to be doing it, Father Folan won't do it, but Father
McEvilly would.

One time my brother got a great pain, and my father sent me to Father
Gallagher, to ask could he cure and read the Mass of the Holy Ghost
over him. But when I asked him he called out, "I won't do that, I
won't read for any one." He was afraid to go as far as that for fear
it might fall on his stock, that he had a great deal of.

_James Fahey:_

Do you think the _drohuil_ is not in other places besides Aran? My
mother told me herself that she was out at a dance one evening, and
there was a fine young man there and he dancing till he had them all
tired; and a woman that was sitting there said "He can do what he
likes with his legs," and at that instant he fell dead. My mother
told me that herself, and she heard the woman say it, and so did many
others that were there.

_Frank McDaragh:_

There's none can do cures well in this island like Biddy Early used to
do. I want to know of some good man or woman in that line to go to, for
that little girl of my own got a touch last week. Coming home from Mass
she was, and she felt a pain in her knee, and it ran down to the foot
and up again, and since then the feet are swelled, you might see them.

_Mrs. Meade:_

And about here they all believe in the faeries--and I hear them
say--but I don't give much heed to it--that Mrs. Hehir the butcher's
sister that died last week--but I don't know much about it. But
anyhow she was married three years, and had a child every year, and
this time she died. And when the coffin was leaving the house, the
young baby began to scream, and to go into convulsions, for all the
world as if it was put on the fire.

_Another says about this same woman, Mrs. Hehir:_

It's overlooked she was when she went out for a walk with a scholar
from the seminary that is going to be a priest, and she without a shawl
over her head. It's then she was overlooked; they seeing what a fine
handsome woman she was, she was took away to be nurse to _themselves_.

_Mrs. Quade:_

A great pity it was about Mrs. Hehir and she leaving three young
orphans. But sure they do be saying a great big black bird flew into
the house and around about the kitchen--and it was the next day the
sickness took her.

_The Doctor:_

Mrs. Hehirs was a difficult case to diagnose, and I could not give it
a name. At the end she was flushed and delirious; and when one of the
women attending her said, "She looks so well you wouldn't think it
was herself that was in it at all," I knew what was in their minds.
Afterwards I was told that the day the illness began she had been
churning, and a strange woman came in and said, "Give me a hold of
the staff and I'll do a bit of the churning for you." But she refused
and the woman said, "It's the last time you'll have the chance of
refusing anyone that asks you" and went out, and she was not seen
again, then or afterwards.

_J. Madden:_

There's one thing should never be done, and that's to say "That's
a fine woman," or such a thing and not to say "God bless her." I
never believed that till a man that lives in the next holding to my
own told me what happened to a springer he had. She was as fine a
creature as ever you seen, and one day a friend of his came in to see
him, and when he was going away, "That's a grand cow," says he, but
he didn't say "God bless it." Well, the owner of the cow went into
the house and he sat down by the fire and lit a pipe, and when he
had the pipe smoked out he came out again, and there she was lying
down and not able to stir. So he remembered what happened and he
went after his friend, and found him in a neighbour's house. And he
brought him back with him, and made him go into the field and say,
"God bless it," and spit on the cow. And with that she got up and
walked away as well as before.

_John McManus:_

They can only take a child or a horse or such things through the eye
of a sinner. If his eye falls on it, and he speaks to praise it and
doesn't say "God bless it," they can bring it away then. But if you
say it yourself in your heart, it will do as well.

* * * * *

There was a man lived about a mile beyond Spiddal, and he was one day
at a play, and he was the best at the hurling and the throwing and
every game. And a woman of the crowd called out to him, "You're the
straightest man that's in it." And twice after that a man that was
beside him and that heard that said, saw him pass by with his coat on
before sunrise. And on the fifth day after that he was dead.

He left four or five sons and some of them went to America and the
eldest of them married and was living in the place with his wife.
And he was going to Galway for a fair, and his wife was away with
her father and mother on the road to Galway and she bid him to come
early, that she'd have some commands for him to do. So it was before
sunrise when he set out, and he was going over a little side road
through the fields, and he came on the biggest fair he ever saw, and
the most people in it. And they made a way for him to pass through
and a man with a big coat and a tall hat came out from them and
said, "Do you know me?" And he said, "Are you my father?" And the
man said, "I am, and but for me you'd be sorry for coming here, but
I saved you, but don't be coming out so early in the morning again."
And he said, "It was a year ago that Jimmy went to America. And that
was time enough." And then he said, "And it was you that drove your
sister away, and gave her no fortune." And that was true enough.

* * * * *

One time there was two brothers standing in a gap in that field
you're looking at. And a woman passed by, I wouldn't like to tell you
her name, for we should speak no evil of her and she's dead now,--the
Lord have mercy on her. And when she passed they heard her say in
Irish, "The devil take you," but whether she knew they were there or
not, I don't know. And the elder of the brothers called out, "The
devil take yourself as well." But the younger one said nothing. And
that night the younger one took sick, and through the night he was
calling out and talking as if to people in the room. And the next day
the mother went to a woman that gathered herbs, the mother of the
woman that does cures by them now, and told her all that happened.

And she took a rag of an old red coat, and went down to the last
village, and into the house of the woman that had put it, the evil
eye, on him. And she sat there and was talking with her, and watched
until she made a spit on the floor, and then she gathered it up on
the rag and came to the sick man in the bed and rubbed him with it,
and he got well on the minute.

It was hardly ever that woman would say "God bless the work" as she
passed, and there were some would leave the work and come out on the
road and hold her by the shoulder till she'd say it.

_A Man on the Boat:_

There are many can put on the _drohuil_. I knew a child in our
village and a neighbour came in and said, "That's a fine child"; and
no sooner was he gone than the child got a fit. So they brought him
back and made him spit on the child and it got well after. Those that
have that power, I believe it's born with them, and it's said they
can do it on their own children as well as on ours.

* * * * *

There was a boy called Faherty, nephew to Faherty that keeps the
licensed house, and he was a great one for all games, and at every
pattern, and whenever anything was going on. And one time he went
over to Kilronan where they had some sports, and it the 24th of June.
And they were throwing the weight, and he took it up and he threw it
farther than the police or any that were there; and the second time
he did the same thing. And when he was going to throw it the third
time, his uncle came to him and said "It's best for you to leave it
now; you have enough done." But he wouldn't mind him, and threw it
the third time, and farther than they all.

And the next year at that time on the 24th of June, he was stretched
on his bed, and he died. And some one was talking about the day he did
so much at Kilronan, and the father said: "I remember him coming into
the house after that, and he put up his arm on the dresser as if there
was something ailed him." And the boy spoke from his bed and said, "You
ought to have said 'God bless you' then. If my mother had been living
then she'd have said it, and I wouldn't be lying here now."

* * * * *

There were two other fine young men died in the same year, and one
night after, the three of them appeared to a sick man, Jamsie Power,
on the south island, and talked with him. But they didn't stay long
because, they said, they had to go on to the coast of Clare.

* * * * *

My own first-born child wasn't spared. He was born in February and
all the neighbours said they never saw so fine a child. And one night
towards the end of March, I was in the bed, and the child on my
arm between me and the wall, sleeping warm and well, and the wife
was settling things about the house. And when she got into bed, she
wanted to take the child, and I said, "Don't stir him, where he's
so warm and so well"; but she took him in her own arm. And in the
morning he was dead. And up to the time he was buried, you'd say he
wasn't dead at all, so fresh and so full in the face he looked.

There was a neighbour about the same time had a child and it was
in the bed with them, but it was sick. And one night he was sure
he heard some one say outside the house, "It's time he should be
stretched out to me." So he got up and opened the window, and he
threw a vessel of dirty water over whatever was outside, and he heard
no more, and his child got well and grew up strong.

_An Island Woman:_

And there's some people the fishermen wouldn't pass when they are
going to the boats, but would turn back again if they'd meet them.
One day two boys of mine, Michael and Danny, were down on the rocks,
bream-fishing with lines, and I had a job of washing with the wife of
the head coast-guard. But when it came to one o'clock something came
over me, and I thought the boys might have got the hunger, and I went
to Mrs. Patterson and said I must leave work for that day, and I went
and bought a three-halfpenny loaf and brought it down to where they
were fishing, and when I got there I saw that Michael the younger one
was limping, and I said, "It must be from the hunger you're not able
to walk." "Oh, no," he said, "but it's a pain I got in my heel, and I
can't put it to the ground." And when we got home he went into his bed,
and he didn't leave it for three months. And one day I said to him,
"What was it happened you, did you meet any one on the road that day
that said anything to you?" And he said, "I did, I met a woman of the
village and she said, 'It's good to be you and to have a fine basket of
bream,' and she said no more than that, and that very minute the pain
came on my heel. But I won't tell you her name, for fear there'd be a
row." But I made him tell me, and I promised never to say a word to her
and I never did; but he's not the first she did that to.

_An Old Man with a Basket:_

They can put the _drohuil_ here and I suppose in all parts, and you
should watch not to let any one meet you unless they would say, "God
bless you," and spit.

* * * * *

There was a woman in this island lost her walk for a year and a half,
till they went to Galway to a woman that throws the cups, and she bid
them go into the next house where there was a black man living, and
give him tobacco to be smoking, and take up the spit and rub his leg.
And she got well after that.

There was another man in that island besides that neighbour of mine
that would give the _drohuil_--the evil eye. Tom Griffith his name was.
There was one Flanagan came back from Clare one day with three bonifs
he bought there. And Griffith came out as he passed and said, "No
better bonifs than those ever came into the island." And when Flanagan
came home, there was a little hill in the front of his house and two of
them fell down against it on their side. And when Mrs. Flanagan came
out to see the bonifs, there was only one of them living before her.

* * * * *

There's a man in this island now puts the evil eye--the _drohuil_.
It's about four years since I heard of him doing it last. There was
a nice young woman he passed and he said, "You're the best walker in
Aran." And that day she got a pain in her leg and she took to her bed,
and there she lay for six months, and then she sent for him, and he was
made--with respects to you--to throw a spit on her. And after that she
got well and got up again. And there was a child died about the same
time, and the friends said it was he did it. Ned Buckley is his name.
Devil a foot he ever goes to a wedding or such like; they wouldn't ask
him, they'd be afraid of him. But he goes to Mass--at least he did in
his bloom--but he's an old man now. Does the priest know about him?
It's not likely he does. There's no one would like to go and make an
attack on him like that. And anyway the priests don't like any one to
speak to them of such things, they'd sooner not hear about them.

_Mrs. Folan:_

There was one of my brothers overlooked, no doubt at all about that.
He was the best rower of a canoe that ever was, and there was a match
at Kinvara today and he won it, and there was a match at Ballyvaughan
tomorrow and he was in it, and the foam was as high as mountains,
that the hooker could hardly stand, and he won there. And when he was
come to the pier and the people all running to carry him in their
arms, the way the jockey is carried after a race, he was ruz up his
own height off the ground, and no one could see what did it.

He was wrong in the head after that, and he would sit by the hearth
without speaking. My mother that would be out binding the wheat would
say to me now and again "There he is coming across to us," and she
put it on me to think it, but I could see nothing, for it is not
everyone can see those things. Then she would ask the father when we
went in, did he stir from the fireside, and when he said he never
stirred she knew it was his shadow she saw and that he had not long
to live, and it was not long till he was gone.

_Mr. Stephens:_

There was a man coming along the road from Gort to Garryland one
night, and he had a drop taken, and before him on the road he saw a
pig walking. And having a drop in, he gave a shout and made a kick at
it and bid it get out of that.

And from the time he got home, his arm had swelled from the shoulder
to be as big as a bag, and he couldn't use his hand with the pain in
it. And his wife brought him after a few days to a woman that used to
do cures at Rahasane.

And on the road all she could do would hardly keep him from lying
down to sleep on the grass. And when they got to the woman, she knew
all that happened, and says she: "It's well for you that your wife
didn't fall asleep on the grass, for if you had done that but for an
instant, you'd be a gone man."

_Mrs. Casey:_

There was a woman lived near Ballinasloe and she had two children,
and they both died, one after the other. And when the third was born,
she consulted an old woman, and she said to watch the cradle all day
where it was standing by the side of the fire. And so she did, and
she saw a sort of a shadow come into it, and give the child a touch.
And she came in, and drove it away. And the second day the same thing
happened, and she was afraid that the third time the child would go,
the same as the others. So she went to the old woman again, and she
bid her take down the hanger from the chimney, and the tongs and the
waistcoat of the child's father and to lay them across the cradle,
with a few drops of water from a blessed well. So she did all this
and laid these three things in the cradle, but she saw the shadow or
whatever it was come again, and she ran in and drove it away.

But when she told the old woman she said "You need trouble yourself
no more about it being touched or not, for no harm will come to it if
you keep those three things on it for twelve days." So she did that,
and reared eight children after, and never lost one.

_An Old Woman from Kinvara:_

Did I know any one was taken? My own brother was, and no mistake
about it. It was one day he was out following two horses with the
plough, and it was about five o'clock, for a gentleman was passing
when he got the touch, and one of his tenants asked him the time, and
he said five o'clock. And what way it came I don't know, but he fell
twice on the stones--God bless the hearers and the place I'm telling
it in. And at ten o'clock the next morning he was dead in his bed.
Young he was, not twenty year, and nothing ailed him when he went
out, but the place he was ploughing in that day was a bad pass. Sure
and certain I am it's by _them_ he was taken. I used often to hear
crying in the field after, but I never saw him again.

_A Connemara Woman:_

There was a boy going to America, and when he was going he said to
the girl next door "Wherever I am, when you are married I'll come
back to the wedding"; and not long after he went to America he died.
And when the girl was married and all the friends and neighbours
in the house, he appeared in the room, but no one saw him but his
comrade he used to have here, and the girl's brother saw him too,
but no one else. And the comrade followed him and went close to him
and said, "Is it you indeed?" And he said, "It is, and from America
I came tonight." And he asked, "How long did that journey take?" and
he said, "Three-quarters of an hour," and then he went away. And the
comrade was never the better of it, or he got the touch or the other
called him, very true friends as they were, and he soon died. But the
girl is now middle-aged and is living in that house we are just after
passing and is married to one Kelly.

Whether all that die go among them I can't say, but it is said they
can take no one without the touch of a Christian hand, or the want of
a blessing from a Christian that would be noticing them.

_A North Galway Woman:_

There are many young women taken in childbirth. I lost a sister of my
own in that way.

There's a place in the river at Newtown where there's stepping-stones
in the middle you can get over by, and one day she was crossing,
and there in the middle of the river, and she standing on a stone,
she felt a blow on the face. And she looked round to see who gave
it and there was no one there, so then she knew what had happened,
and she came to the mother's house, and she carrying at the time. I
was a little slip at that time, with my books in my hand coming from
school, and I ran in and said to my mother, "Here's Biddy coming,"
and she said, "What would bring her at this time of day?" But she
came in and sat down on a chair and she opened the whole story, and
my mother said to quiet her, "It was only a pain in the ear you got,
and you thought it was a blow." And she said, "I never got a blow
that hurted me like that." And the next day, and every day after
that, the ear would swell a little in the afternoon, and then she
began to eat nothing, and five minutes after her baby was born she
died. And my mother used to watch for her for three or four years
after, thinking she'd come back, but she never did.

* * * * *

There was a forth near our house in Meath, and when I was a baby a
woman was carrying me in her arms, and she walked down the four steps
that led into it, and there was a nice garden around it, and she
slipped and fell, and my cheek struck against one of the steps--you can
see the mark yet that I got there. And the woman told my mother and
said, "It's a wonder the child wasn't taken altogether then and there."

One day I was out digging in the field for my brothers, and there
was a sort of a half-ditch between the oats and the potatoes, and I
was digging it down, and of a sudden a sleep came on me and I lay
down. And I suppose I had been asleep about twenty minutes when I was
waked with a hard clout on the face. And I thought it was one of my
brothers and I called out, "You have no right to give me a clout like
that." But my brother was away down the field, and came when he heard
me calling. And I felt a pain in my side as well, and I went into the
house and didn't leave it for two months after with pleurisy, and the
pain never left me till after I was married. I suppose I must have
been on some way of theirs, or some place that belonged to them and
that was known to be an enchanted place, and my father used often to
see it lighted up with candles.

_A Man Herding Sheep:_

I'll tell you now what happened to a little one of my own. She was
just five years. And the day I'm speaking of she was running to
school down the path before me, as strong and as funny as the day she
was born, and laughing and looking back at me. And that night she
went to bed as well as ever she was. And it was about eleven o'clock
in the night she awoke and gave a great cry, and she said there was
a great pain in her knee, and it was in no other part of her. And in
the morning she had it yet, and her walk had gone, and I lifted her
and brought her out into the street, and she couldn't walk one step
if you were to give her the three isles of Aran. And she lived for
two nights after that.

When the doctor came and I told him, he said it was the strangest
case he ever heard of, and the schoolmistress said, "I thought if I'd
brought that child to the hill beyond and threw her down into the sea
it would do her no harm, she was that strong."

But if such things happen, it happened to her, and touched she was.
It was not death, it was being took away.

_An Old Woman in an Aran village:_

I'll tell you what happened a son of my own that was so strong and so
handsome and so good a dancer, he was mostly the pride of the island.
And he was that educated that when he was twenty-six years, he could
write a letter to the Queen. And one day a pain came in the thigh,
and a little lump came inside it, and a hole in it that you could
hardly put the point of a pin in, and it was always drawing. And he
took to his bed and was there for eleven months. And every night when
it would be twelve o'clock, he would begin to be singing and laughing
and going on. And what the neighbours said was, that it was at that
hour there was some other left in his place. I never went to any one
or any witchcraft, for my husband wouldn't let me but left it to the
will of God; and anyway at the end of the eleven months he died.

And his sister was in America, and the same thing came to her there,
a little lump by the side of the face, and she came home to die. But
she died quiet and was like any other in the night.

And a daughter-in-law of mine died after the second birth, and even
the priest said it was not _dead_ she was, he that was curate then. I
was surprised the priest to say that, for they mostly won't give in
to it, unless it's one that takes a drop of drink.

_An Old Man in the Kitchen:_

I had a son that it was mostly given in to in Aran to be the best
singer to give out a couple of verses, so that he'd hardly go out of
the house but some one would want to be bringing him into theirs. And
he took sick of a sudden, with a pain in the shoulder. I went to the
doctor and he says, "Does your wife take tea?" "She does when she can
get it;" says I, and he told me then to put the spout of the kettle
to where the pain was. And after that he went to Galway Hospital, but
he got no better there and a Sister of Mercy said to him at last,
"I'm thinking by the look of you, your family at home is poor."
"That's true enough," says he. Then says she: "It's best for you to
stop here, and they'll be free from the cost of burying you." But
he said he'd sooner go die at home, if he had but two days to live
there. So he came back and he didn't last long. It's always the like
of him that's taken, that are good for singing or dancing or for any
good thing at all. And young women are often taken in that way, both
in the middle island and in this.

_Patrick Madden:_

I'll tell you how I lost the first son I had. He was just three years
old and as fine and as strong as any child you'd see. And one day my
wife said she'd bring the child to her mother's house to stop the
evening with her, for I was going out. And there was a neighbour of
ours, a man that lived near us, and no one was the better of being
spoken to by him. And as they were passing his house he came out,
and he said, "That's the finest child that's in the island." And a
woman that was passing at the same time stopped and said, "It was the
smallest that ever I saw the day it was born, God bless it." And the
mother knew what she meant, and she wanted to say "God bless him,"
but it was like as if a hand took and held her throat, and choked
her that she couldn't say the words. And when I came to the mother's
house, and began to make fun with the child, I saw a round mark on
the side of his head, the size of a crown piece. And I said to the
wife, "Why would you beat the child in the head, why don't you get
a little rod to beat him if he wants it?" And she said that she had
never touched him at all.

And at that time I was very much given to playing cards, and that
night I went out to a friend's house to play. And the wife before
she went to bed broiled a bit of fish and put it on a plate with
potatoes, and put it in a box in the room, for fear it might be
touched by a cat or a rat or such like. But I was late coming in and
didn't mind to eat it. And the next night I was out again. And when
we were playing cards we'd play first with tobacco and we'd go on to
tea, and we'd end up with whiskey. And the next morning when the wife
opened the box she laughed and she said "You didn't drink your tea
when you were out last night, for I see you have your dinner eaten."
And I said, "Why should you say that? I never touched it." And she
held up the plate and showed me that the potatoes were taken off it;
but the fish wasn't touched, for it was a bit of a herring and salty.

Well, the child was getting sick all the day, and I didn't go out
that evening. And in the night we could hear the noise as if of
scores of rats, going about the room. And every now and again I
struck a light, but so soon as the light was in it we'd hear nothing.
But the noise would begin again as soon as it was dark, and sometimes
it would seem as if they came up on the bed, and I could feel the
weight of them on my chest as if they would smother me.

And in the morning I chanced to open the box where the dinner used to
be put, and it as big a box as any in Aran, and when I opened it I
saw it was all full of blood, up the sides and to the top, that you
couldn't put your hand in without it getting bloody. I said nothing
but shut the lid down again. But after, when I came into the house,
I saw the wife rubbing at it with a thing they call flannel they got
at Killinny, and I asked her what was she doing, and she said, "I'm
cleaning the box, where it's full of blood." And after that I gave up
the child and I had no more hope for its life. But if they had told
me that about the neighbour speaking to him, I'd have gone over, and
I'd have killed him with my stick, but I'd have made him come and
spit on him. After that we didn't hear the noise the same again, but
we heard like the sound of a clock all through the night and every
night. And the child got a swelling under the feet, and he couldn't
put a foot to the ground. But that made little difference to him, for
he didn't hold out a week.

* * * * *

I lost another son after--but he died natural, there was nothing of
that sort. And I have one son remaining now, and one day he went to
sleep out in a field and that's a bad thing to do. And the sister
found him there, and when she woke him he couldn't get up hardly, or
move his hand, and she had to help him to the house.

_Pat Doherty:_

I know a gentleman too got the touch, one of the Butlers. It was on
a day he made a great leap he got it. And he went to the bed and for
three or four days he couldn't stir, and red marks came out over him
shaped like a bow. And then I went for the priest and brought him to
see him, and when he heard of the marks, "I'm as bad as that myself,"
he said, making fun; "for I'm after making a journey in a curragh."
But when the clothes were stripped back and he saw his skin, "Oh,
murder!" he said, and he put on his stole and got out a book. And he
said, "Did you hear what I did to the man at Iona? He went to the
well with a tin can for water, and when he got to the well, a few
yards away from it, it was spilled. And he went back and filled it
again, and the second time at the well it was spilled, and he fell
along with it, and he got a little cut in the fall, and he began to
bleed, and all the people said as much blood as would be in three men
came away from him. And they sent for me, and the minute I came the
bleeding stopped, and he was all right again and the cut closed up."

And then he put his head down and what he read I don't know, but he
hardly got to the turn of the road outside the house, when the boy
stood up from the bed and asked for something to eat.

* * * * *

Another time I was drawing turf that came in the boats from Connemara
to Kilronan pier. And of a sudden there came a swelling in my arm,
and it was next day the size of an egg, and it turned black. And I
couldn't lift the arm, and Healy the coast-guard said to me to go to
Doctor Lydon. And I said I would, but in the way I met with Father
Jordan and I showed it to him. And he said; "What do you want with
your Healy and your Lydons? Let me see it." And he pressed his hand
on it two or three times like that, and the swelling began to go, and
when I got home they were clearing weed on the shore, and I was able
to go down and to give them a hand with it.

_A Piper:_

There was a cousin of my own used to feel some heavy thing coming on
him in the bed in the night time. And he went to the friars at Esker
to take it off of him, and they took it off. But Father Williams
said, "If this is gone from you some other thing will be put on you."
And sure enough it wasn't a twelvemonth after, he was carting planks
and the horse fell, and the planks fell on his foot and broke it in
two pieces. And after that again he got a fall, over some stones, and
he died with throwing off blood.

I had a fall myself in Galway the other day that I couldn't move
my arm to play the pipes if you gave me Ireland. And a man said to
me--and they are very smart people in Galway--that two or three got a
fall and a hurt in that same place. "There is places in the sea where
there is drowning," he said, "and places on the land as well where
there do be accidents, and no man can save himself from them, for it
is the Will of God."

_Mrs. Scanlon:_

Some people call Mrs. Tobin "Biddy Early." She has done a good many
cures. Her brother was _away_ for a while and it was from him she
got the knowledge. I believe that it's before sunrise that she
gathers the herbs, anyway no one ever saw her gathering them. (_Note_
38.) She has saved many a woman from being brought away when their
child was born, by whatever she does. She told me herself that one
night when she was going to the lodge gate to attend the woman there,
three magpies came before her and began roaring into her mouth, to
try to drive her back. Father Folan must know about her, but he is a
dark man and says nothing, and anyway the priests know as much, and
are as much in dread as any one else.

I wish I had sent for her for my own little boy. It's often he asked
me to bring him to the friars at Loughrea. But he never would tell
how or where he got the touch. It came like a lump in the back, and
he got weaker and smaller till you could put him into a tin can, and
he twenty years. Often I asked him about it, but he'd say nothing. I
believe that they are afraid to tell or they would be worse treated.
I asked him was it at the jumping, for they used to be jumping over a
pole, and he said it was not, and that he never took a jump that was
too much for him.

But some that saw his back said he had been beat. And when the Doctor
came in to see him, he was lying on the bed, and he turned him over
and looked at him and said, "If he had all Lady Gregory's estate he
couldn't live a week." And sure enough within five days he died. And
many of the neighbours said they never heard such a storm of wind as
rose about the house that night. I never saw him since, and I went
late and early, in the mill and down by the river. But it's maybe a
hundred or two hundred miles he was brought away.

_Tom Flatley:_

There is a priest now, a curate down in Cloughmore, is doing great
cures. There is often silence between him and the parish priest, Father
Rock, for he wouldn't like him to be doing them. There was a little
chap went to bed one night as well as yourself, and in the morning he
rose up with one of his ears as deaf as that he wouldn't hear you if
he died. And the mother brought him to Father Dolan and he came out as
well a

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