Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Second Series
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Title: Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Second Series
Compiler: Lady Gregory
Annotator: W. B. Yeats
Release date: October 18, 2013 [eBook #43974]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VISIONS AND BELIEFS IN THE WEST OF IRELAND, SECOND SERIES ***
_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: Ballylee Castle
From a sepia drawing by Robert Gregory]
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._"
_SECOND SERIES_
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
=The Knickerbocker Press=
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920
BY
LADY GREGORY
=The Knickerbocker Press, New York=
CONTENTS
PAGE
I.--HERBS, CHARMS, AND WISE WOMEN 3
II.--ASTRAY, AND TREASURE 29
III.--BANSHEES AND WARNINGS 45
IV.--IN THE WAY 65
V.--THE FIGHTING OF THE FRIENDS 77
VI.--THE UNQUIET DEAD 89
VII.--APPEARANCES 111
VIII.--BUTTER 189
IX.--THE FOOL OF THE FORTH 195
X.--FORTHS AND SHEOGUEY PLACES 205
XI.--BLACKSMITHS 239
XII.--MONSTERS AND SHEOGUEY BEASTS 245
XIII.--FRIARS AND PRIEST CURES 281
SWEDENBORG, MEDIUMS, AND THE DESOLATE PLACES 295
NOTES 343
I
HERBS, CHARMS, AND WISE WOMEN
I
HERBS, CHARMS, AND WISE WOMEN
_There is a saying in Irish, "An old woman without learning, it is
she will be doing charms"; and I have told in "Poets and Dreamers"
of old Bridget Ruane who came and gave me my first knowledge of the
healing power of certain plants, some it seemed having a natural and
some a mysterious power. And I said that she had "died last winter,
and we may be sure that among the green herbs that cover her grave
there are some that are good for every bone in the body and that are
very good for a sore heart."_
_As to the book she told me of that had come from the unseen and
was written in Irish, I think of Mrs. Sheridan's answer when I asked
in what language the strange unearthly people she had been among had
talked: "Irish of course--what else would they talk?" And I remember
also that when Blake told Crabb Robinson of the intercourse he had had
with Voltaire and was asked in what tongue Voltaire spoke he said, "To
my sensations it was English. It was like the touch of a musical key.
He touched it probably in French, but to my ear it became English."_
_I was told by her:_
There is a Saint at the Oratory in London, but I don't know his name,
and a girl heard of him in London, and he sent her back to Gort, and
he said, "There's a woman there that will cure you," and she came to
me, and I cured her in two days. And if you could find out the name
of that Saint through the Press, he'd tell me his remedies, and all
the world would be cured. For I can't do all cures though there are
a great many I can do. I cured Pat Carty when the doctor couldn't do
it, and a woman in Gort that was paralysed and her two sons that were
stretched. For I can bring back the dead with the same herbs our Lord
was brought back with--the _slanlus_ and the _garblus_. But there are
some things I can't do. I can't help anyone that has got a stroke
from the Queen or the Fool of the Forth.
I know a woman that saw the Queen one time, and she said she looked
like any Christian. I never heard of any that saw the Fool but one
woman that was walking near Gort, and she called out, "There's the
Fool of the Forth coming after me." So her friends that were with
her called out though they could see nothing, and I suppose he went
away at that for she got no harm. He was like a big strong man, and
half-naked--that's all she said about him.
It was my brother got the knowledge of cures from a book that was
thrown down before him on the road. What language was it written in?
What language would it be but Irish. Maybe it was God gave it to him,
and maybe it was the _other people_. He was a fine strong man, and
he weighed twenty-five stone--and he went to England, and then he
cured all the world, so that the doctors had no way of living. So one
time he got on a ship to go to America, and the doctors had bad men
engaged to shipwreck him out of the ship; he wasn't drowned but he
was broken to pieces on the rocks, and the book was lost along with
him. But he taught me a good deal out of it. So I know all herbs,
and I do a good many cures, and I have brought a great many children
home, home to the world--and never lost one, or one of the women that
bore them. I was never away myself, but I am a cousin of Saggarton,
and his uncle was away for twenty-one years.
* * * * *
This is _dwareen_ (knapweed) and what you have to do with this is to
put it down, with other herbs, and with a bit of threepenny sugar, and
to boil it and to drink it for pains in the bones, and don't be afraid
but it will cure you. Sure the Lord put it in the world for curing.
And this is _corn-corn_ (small aromatic tansy); it's very good for
the heart--boiled like the others.
This is _atair-talam_ (wild camomile), the father of all herbs--the
father of the ground. This is very hard to pull, and when you go for
it, you must have a black-handled knife.
And this is _camal-buide_ (loosestrife) that will keep all bad things
away.
This is _cuineul-Muire_ (mullein), the blessed candle of our Lady.
This is _fearaban_ (water buttercup) and it's good for every bone of
your body.
This is _dub-cosac_ (lichen), that's good for the heart, very good
for a sore heart. Here are the _slanlus_ (plantain) and the _garblus_
(dandelion) and these would cure the wide world, and it was these
brought our Lord from the Cross, after the ruffians that was with the
Jews did all the harm to Him. And not one could be got to pierce His
heart till a dark man came and said, "Give me the spear, and I'll
do it," and the blood that sprang out touched his eyes and they got
their sight.
And it was after that, His Mother and Mary and Joseph gathered their
herbs and cured His wounds. These are the best of the herbs, but they
are all good, and there isn't one among them but would cure seven
diseases. I'm all the days of my life gathering them, and I know them
all, but it isn't easy to make them out. Sunday evening is the best
time to get them, and I was never interfered with. Seven "Hail Marys"
I say when I'm gathering them, and I pray to our Lord and to St.
Joseph and St. Colman. And there may be _some_ watching me, but they
never meddled with me at all.
_Mrs. Quaid:_
Monday is a good day for pulling herbs, or Tuesday, not Sunday. A
Sunday cure is no cure. The _cosac_ (lichen) is good for the heart,
there was Mineog in Gort, one time his heart was wore to a silk
thread, and it cured him. The _slanugad_ (rib-grass) is very good,
and it will take away lumps. You must go down when it's growing on
the scraws, and pull it with three pulls, and mind would the wind
change when you are pulling it or your head will be gone. Warm it on
the tongs when you bring it and put it on the lump. The _lus-mor_
(mullein) is the only one that's good to bring back children that are
away. But what's better than that is to save what's in the craw of a
cock you'll kill on St. Martin's Eve and put it by and dry it, and
give it to the child that's away.
There's something in green flax I know, for my mother often told me
about one night she was spinning flax, before she was married and she
was up late. And a man of the faeries came in. She had no right to
be sitting up so late, they don't like that. And he told her to go
to bed, for he wanted to kill her, and he couldn't touch her while
she was handling the flax. And every time he'd tell her to go to bed,
she'd give him some answer, and she'd go on pulling a thread of the
flax, or mending a broken one, for she was wise, and she knew that at
the crowing of the cock he'd have to go. So at last the cock crowed,
and he was gone, and she was safe then, for the cock is blessed.
_Mrs. Ward:_
As to the _lus-mor_, whatever way the wind is blowing when you begin to
cut it, if it changes while you're cutting it, you'll lose your mind.
And if you're paid for cutting it, you can do it when you like, but if
not _they_ mightn't like it. I knew a woman was cutting it one time,
and a voice, an enchanted voice, called out, "Don't cut that if you're
not paid, or you'll be sorry." But if you put a bit of this with every
other herb you drink, you'll live for ever. My grandmother used to put
a bit with everything she took, and she lived to be over a hundred.
_An Old Man on the Beach:_
I wouldn't give into those things, but I'll tell you what happened
to a son of my own. He was as fine and as stout a boy as ever you
saw, and one day he was out with me, and a letter came and told of
the death of some one's child that was in America, and all the island
gathered to hear it read. And all the people were pressing to each
other there. And when we were coming home, he had a bit of a kippeen
in his hand, and getting over a wall he fell, and some way the
kippeen went in at his throat, where it had a sharp point and hurt
the palate of his mouth, and he got paralysed from the waist up.
There was a woman over in Spiddal, and my wife gave me no ease till I
went to her, and she gave me some herb for him. He got better after,
and there's no man in the island stronger and stouter than what he is
but he never got back the use of his left hand, but the strength he
has in the other hand is equal to what another man would have in two.
Did the woman in Spiddal say what gave him the touch? Oh well, she
said all sorts of things. But I wouldn't like to meddle too much with
such as her, for it's by witchcraft I believe it's done. There was a
woman of the same sort over in Roundstone, and I knew a man went to
her about his wife, and first she said the sickness had nothing to
do with _her_ business, but he said he came too far to bring back an
answer like that. So she went into a little room, and he heard her
call on the name of all the devils. So he cried out that that was
enough, and she came out then and made the sign of the Cross, but he
wouldn't stop in it.
But a priest told me that there was a woman in France used to cure
all the dumb that came to her, and that it was a great loss and a
great pity when she died.
_Mrs. Cloonan:_
I knew some could cure with herbs; but it's not right for any one
that doesn't understand them to be meddling with them. There was a
woman I knew one time wanted a certain herb I knew for a cure for her
daughter, and the only place that herb was to be had was down in the
bottom of a spring well. She was always asking me would I go and get
it for her, but I took advice, and I was advised not to do it. So
then she went herself and she got it out, a very green herb it was,
not watercress, but it had a bunch of green leaves. And so soon as
she brought it into the house, she fell as if dead and there she lay
for two hours. And not long after that she died, but she cured the
daughter, and it's well I didn't go to gather the herb, or it's on me
all the harm would have come.
I used to be gathering an herb one time for the Bishop that lived at
Loughmore, dandelion it was. There are two sorts, the white that has
no harm in it, that's what I used to be gathering, and the red that
has a _pishogue_ in it, but I left that alone.
_Old Heffernan:_
The best herb-doctor I ever knew was Conolly up at Ballyturn. He
knew every herb that grew in the earth. It was said that he was away
with the faeries one time, and when I knew him he had the two thumbs
turned in, and it was said that was the sign they left on him. I had
a lump on the thigh one time and my father went to him, and he gave
him an herb for it but he told him not to come into the house by the
door the wind would be blowing in at. They thought it was the evil
I had, that is given by _them_ by a touch, and that is why he said
about the wind, for if it was the evil, there would be a worm in it,
and if it smelled the herb that was brought in at the door, it might
change to another place. I don't know what the herb was, but I would
have been dead if I had it on another hour, it burned so much, and I
had to get the lump lanced after, for it wasn't the evil I had.
Conolly cured many a one. Jack Hall that fell into a pot of water
they were after boiling potatoes in, and had the skin scalded off him
and that Doctor Lynch could do nothing for, he cured.
He boiled down herbs with a bit of lard, and after that was rubbed on
three times, he was well.
And Pat Cahel that was deaf, he cured with the _rib-mas-seala_, that
herb in the potatoes that milk comes out of. His wife was against
him doing the cures, she thought that it would fall on herself. And
anyway, she died before him. But Connor at Oldtown gave up doing
cures, and his stock began to die, and he couldn't keep a pig, and
all he had wasted away till he began to do them again; and his son
does cures now, but I think it's more with charms than with herbs.
_John Phelan:_
The _bainne-bo-bliatain_ (wood anemone) is good for the headache, if
you put the leaves of it on your head. But as for the _lus-mor_ it's
best not to have anything to do with that.
_Mrs. West:_
Dandelion is good for the heart, and when Father Prendergast was curate
here, he had it rooted up in all the fields about, to drink it, and see
what a fine man he is. _Garblus_; how did you hear of that? That is the
herb for things that have to do with the faeries. And when you'd drink
it for anything of that sort, if it doesn't cure you, it will kill you
then and there. There was a fine young man I used to know and he got
his death on the head of a pig that came at himself and another man at
the gate of Ramore, and that never left them, but was at them all the
time till they came to a stream of water. And when he got home, he took
to his bed with a headache, and at last he was brought a drink of the
_garblus_ and no sooner did he drink it than he was dead. I remember
him well. Biddy Early didn't use herbs, but let people say what they
like, she was a sure woman. There is something in flax, for no priest
would anoint you without a bit of tow. And if a woman that was carrying
was to put a basket of green flax on her back, the child would go from
her, and if a mare that was in foal had a load of flax put on her, the
foal would go the same way.
_Mrs. Allen:_
I don't believe in faeries myself, I really don't. But all the people
in Kildare believe in them, and I'll tell you what I saw there one
time myself. There was a man had a splendid big white horse, and he
was leading him along the road, and a woman, a next-door neighbour,
got up on the wall and looked at him. And the horse fell down on his
knees and began to shiver, and you'd think buckets of water were
poured over him. And they led him home, but he was fit for nothing,
and everyone was sorry for the poor man, and him being worth ninety
pounds. And they sent to the Curragh and to every place for vets, but
not one could do anything at all. And at last they sent up in to the
mountains for a faery doctor, and he went into the stable and shut
the door, and whatever he did there no one knows, but when he came
out he said that the horse would get up on the ninth day, and be as
well as ever. And so he did sure enough, but whether he kept well, I
don't know, for the man that owned him sold him the first minute he
could. And they say that while the faery doctor was in the stable,
the woman came to ask what was he doing, and he called from inside,
"Keep her away, keep her away." And a priest had lodgings in the
house at the same time, and when the faery doctor saw him coming,
"Let me out of this," says he, and away with him as fast as he could.
And all this I saw happen, but whether the horse only got a chill or
not I don't know.
_James Mangan:_
My mother learned cures from an Ulster woman, for the Ulster women
are the best for cures; but I don't know the half of them, and what
I know I wouldn't like to be talking about or doing, unless it might
be for my own family. There's a cure she had for the yellow jaundice;
and it's a long way from Ennistymon to Creevagh, but I saw a man come
all that way to her, and he fainted when he sat down in the chair,
he was so far gone. But she gave him a drink of it, and he came in a
second time and she gave it again, and he didn't come a third time
for he didn't want it. But I don't mind if I tell you the cure and it
is this: take a bit of the dirt of a dog that has been eating bones
and meat, and put it on top of an oven till it's as fine as powder
and as white as flour, and then pound it up, and put it in a glass of
whiskey, in a bottle, and if a man is not too far gone with jaundice,
that will cure him.
There was one Carthy at Imlough did great cures with charms and his
son can do them yet. He uses no herbs, but he'll go down on his knees
and he'll say some words into a bit of unsalted butter, and what
words he says, no one knows. There was a big man I know had a sore
on his leg and the doctor couldn't cure him, and Doctor Moran said
a bit of the bone would have to come out. So at last he went to Jim
Carthy and he told him to bring him a bit of unsalted butter the next
Monday, or Thursday, or Saturday, for there's a difference in days.
And he would have to come three times, or if it was a bad case, he'd
have to come nine times.
But I think it was after the third time that he got well, and now he
is one of the head men in Persse's Distillery in Galway.
_A Slieve Echtge Woman:_
The wild parsnip is good for gravel, and for heartbeat there's nothing
so good as dandelion. There was a woman I knew used to boil it down,
and she'd throw out what was left on the grass. And there was a fleet
of turkeys about the house and they used to be picking it up. And at
Christmas they killed one of them, and when it was cut open they found
a new heart growing in it with the dint of the dandelion.
My father went one time to a woman at Ennis, not Biddy Early, but one
of her sort, to ask her about three sheep he had lost.
And she told him the very place they were brought to, a long path
through the stones near Kinvara. And there he found the skins, and he
heard that the man that brought them away had them sold to a butcher in
Loughrea. So he followed him there, and brought the police, and they
found him--a poor looking little man, but he had £60 within in his box.
There was another man up near Ballylee could tell these things too.
When Jack Fahy lost his wool, he went to him, and next morning there
were the fleeces at his door.
Those that are _away_ know these things. There was a brother of my
own took to it for seven years--and we at school. And no one could
beat him at the hurling and the games. But I wouldn't like to be
mixed with that myself.
* * * * *
There was one Moyra Colum was a great one for doing cures. She was
called one time to see some sick person, and the man that came for
her put her up behind him, on the horse. And some youngsters began
to be humbugging him, and humbugging is always bad. And there was a
young horse in the field where the youngsters were and it began to
gallop, and it fell over a stump and lay on the ground kicking as if
in a fit. And then Moyra Colum said, "Let me get down, for I have
pity for the horse." And she got down and went into the field, and
she picked a blade of a herb and put it to the horse's mouth and in
one minute it got up well.
Another time a woman had a sick cow and she sent her little boy to
Moyra Colum, and she gave him a bottle, and bade him put a drop of
what was in it in the cow's ear. And so he did and in a few minutes
he began to feel a great pain in his foot. So when the mother saw
that, she took the bottle and threw it out into the street and broke
it, and she said, "It's better to lose the cow than to lose my son."
And in the morning the cow was dead.
* * * * *
The herbs they cure with, there's some that's natural, and you could
pick them at all times of the day; there's a very good cure for
the yellow jaundice I have myself, and I offered it to a woman in
Ballygrah the other day, but some people are so taken up with pride
and with conceit they won't believe that to cure that sickness you
must take what comes from your own nature. She's dead since of it,
I hear. But I'll tell you the cure, the way you'll know it. If you
are attending a funeral, pick out a few little worms from the earth
that's thrown up out of the grave, few or many, twenty or thirty if
you like. And when you go home, boil them down in a sup of new milk
and let it get cold; and believe me, that will cure the sickness.
* * * * *
There's one woman I knew used to take a bit of tape when you'd go to
her, and she'd measure it over her thumb like this; and when she had
it measured she'd know what was the matter with you.
* * * * *
For some sicknesses they use herbs that have no natural cure, and
those must be gathered in the morning early. Before twelve o'clock?
No, but before sunrise. And there's a different charm to be said over
each one of them. It is for any sort of pain these are good, such as
a pain in the side. There's the _meena madar_, a nice little planteen
with a nice little blue flowereen above on it, that's used for a
running sore or an evil. And the charm to be said when you're picking
it has in it the name of some old curer or magician, and you can say
that into a bit of tow three times, and put it on the person to be
cured. That is a good charm. You might use that yourself if it was
any one close to you was sick, but for a stranger I'd recommend you
not do it. _They_ know all things and who are using it, and where's
the use of putting yourself in danger?
_James Mangan:_
My mother learned to do a great many cures from a woman from the
North (Note 1) and some I could do myself, but I wouldn't like to be
doing them unless for those that are nearest me; I don't want to be
putting myself in danger.
For a swelling in the throat it's an herb would be used, or for the
evil a poultice you'd make of herbs. But for a pain in the ribs or in
the head, it's a charm you should use, and to whisper it into a bit
of tow, and to put it on the mouth of whoever would have the pain,
and that would take it away. There's a herb called _rif_ in your own
garden is good for cures. And this is a good charm to say in Irish:
A quiet woman.
A rough man.
The Son of God.
The husk of the flax.
_The Old Man on the Beach:_
In the old times all could do _druith_--like free-masonry--and the
ground was all covered with the likeness of the devil; and with
_druith_ they could do anything, and could put the sea between you
and the road. There's only a few can do it now, but all that live in
the County Down can do it.
_Mrs. Quaid:_
There was a girl in a house near this was pining away, and a travelling
woman came to the house and she told the mother to bring the girl
across to the graveyard that's near the house before sunrise and to
pick some of the grass that's growing over the remains. And so she did,
and the girl got well. But the mother told me that when the woman had
told her that, she vanished away, all in a minute, and was seen no more.
* * * * *
I have a charm myself for the headache, I cured many with it. I used to
put on a ribbon from the back of the head over the mouth, and another
from the top of the head under the chin and then to press my hand on
it, and I'd give them great relief and I'd say the charm. But one time
I read in the Scriptures that the use of charms is forbidden, so I had
it on my conscience, and the next time I went to confession I asked
the priest was it any harm for me to use it, and I said it to him in
Irish. And in English it means "Charm of St. Peter, Charm of St. Paul,
an angel brought it from Rome. The similitude of Christ, suffering
death, and all suffering goes with Him and into the flax." And the
priest didn't say if I might use it or not, so I went on with it, for
I didn't like to turn away so many suffering people coming to me.
I know a charm a woman from the North gave to Tom Mangan's mother,
she used to cure ulcers with it and cancers. It was with unsalted
butter it was used, but I don't know what the words were.
_John Phelan:_
If you cut a hazel rod and bring it with you, and turn it round about
now and again, no bad thing can hurt you. And a cure can be made for
bad eyes from the ivy that grows on a white-thorn bush. I know a boy
had an ulcer on his eye and it was cured by that.
_Mrs. Creevy:_
There was Leary's son in Gort had bad eyes and no doctor could cure
him. And one night his mother had a dream that she got up and took
a half-blanket with her, and went away to a blessed well a little
outside Gort, and there she saw a woman dressed all in white, and she
gave her some of the water, and when she brought it to her son he got
well. So the next day she went there and got the water, and after
putting it three times on his eyes, he was as well as ever he was.
* * * * *
There was a woman here used to do cures with herbs--a midwife she
was. And if a man went for her in a hurry, and on a horse, and he'd
want her to get up behind him, she'd say, "No," that she was never
on horseback. But no matter how fast he'd go home, there she'd be
close after him.
* * * * *
There was a child was sick and it was known itself wasn't in it. And
a woman told the mother to go to a woman she told her of, and not to
say anything about the child but to say, "The calf is sick" and to
ask for a cure for it. So she did and the woman gave her some herb,
and she gave it to the child and it got well.
* * * * *
There was a man from Cuillean was telling me how two women came from
the County Down in his father's time, mother and daughter, and they
brought two spinning wheels with them, and they used to be in the
house spinning. But the milk went from the cow and they watched and
saw it was through charms. And then all the people brought turf and
made a big fire outside, and stripped the witch and the daughter to
burn them. And when they were brought out to be burned the woman
said, "Bring me out a bit of flax and I'll show you a pishogue." So
they brought out a bit of flax and she made two skeins of it, and
twisted it some way like that (interlacing his fingers) and she put
the two skeins round herself and the daughter, and began to twist it,
and it went up in the air round and round and the two women with it,
and the people all saw them going up, but they couldn't stop them.
The man's own father saw that himself.
* * * * *
There was a woman from the County Down was living up on that mountain
beyond one time, and there was a boy in the house next to mine that
had a pain in his heart, and was crying out with the pain of it. And
she came down, and I was in the house myself and I saw her fill the
bowl with oatenmeal, and she tied a cloth over it, and put it on the
hearth. And when she took it off, all the meal was gone out of one
side of the bowl, and she made a cake out of what was left on the
other side, and ate it. And the boy got well.
* * * * *
There was a woman in Clifden did many cures and knew everything. And
I knew two boys were sent to her one time, and they had a bottle of
poteen to bring her, but on the road they drank the poteen. But they
got her another bottle before they got to the house, but for all that
she knew well, and told them what they had done.
* * * * *
There's some families have a charm in them, and a man of those
families can do cures, just like King's blood used to cure the evil,
but they couldn't teach it to you or to me or another.
* * * * *
There's a very good charm to stop bleeding; it will stop it in a
minute when nothing else can, and there's one to take bones from the
neck, and one against ulcers.
_Kevin Ralph:_
I went to Macklin near Loughrea myself one time, when I had an ulcer
here in my neck. But when I got to him and asked for the charm, he
answered me in Irish, "The Soggarth said to me, any man that will use
charms to do cures with will be damned." I persuaded him to do it
after, but I never felt that it did me much good. Because he took no
care to do it well after the priest saying that of him. But there's
some will only let it be said in an outhouse if there's a cure to be
done in the house.
_A Woman in County Limerick:_
It is twenty year ago I got a pain in my side, that I could not
stoop; and I tried Siegel's Syrup and a plaster and a black blister
from the doctor, and every sort of thing and they did me no good.
And there came in a man one day, a farmer I knew, and he said, "It's
a fool you are not to go to a woman living within two miles of you
that would cure you--a woman that does charms." So I went to her nine
times, three days I should go and three stop away, and she would
pass her hand over me, and would make me hold on to the branch of
an apple tree up high, that I would hang from it, and she would be
swinging me as you would swing a child. And she laid me on the grass
and passed her hands over me, and what she said over me I don't know.
And at the end of the nine visits I was cured, and the pain left me.
At the time she died I wanted to go lay her out but my husband would
not let me go. He said if I was seen going in, the neighbours would
say she had left me her cures and would be calling me a witch. She
said it was from an old man she got the charm that used to be called
a wizard. My father knew him, and said he could bring away the wheat
and bring it back again, and that he could turn the four winds of
heaven to blow upon your house till they would knock it.
_A Munster Midwife:_
Is it true a part of the pain can be put on the man? It is to be sure,
but it would be the most pity in the world to do it; it is a thing I
never did, for the man would never be the better of it, and it would
not take any of the pain off the woman. And shouldn't we have pity upon
men, that have enough troubles of their own to go through?
_Mrs. Hollaran:_
Did I know the pain could be put on a man? Sure I seen my own mother
that was a midwife do it. He was such a Molly of an old man, and he
had no compassion at all on his wife. He was as if making out she had
no pain at all. So my mother gave her a drink, and with that he was
on the floor and around the floor crying and roaring. "The devil take
you," says he, and the pain upon him; but while he had it, it went
away from his wife. It did him no harm after, and my mother would
not have done it but for him being so covetous. He wanted to make out
that she wasn't sick.
_Mrs. Stephens:_
At childbirth there are some of the old women are able to put a part
of the pain upon the man, or any man. There was a woman in labour
near Oran, and there were two policemen out walking that night, and
one of them went into the house to light his pipe. There were two
or three women in it, and the sick woman stretched beyond them, and
one of them offered him a drink of the tea she had been using, and
he didn't want it but he took a drink of it, and then he took a coal
off the hearth and put it on his pipe to light it and went out to
his comrade. And no sooner was he there than he began to roar and to
catch hold of his belly and he fell down by the roadside roaring. But
the other knew something of what happened, and he took the pipe, and
it having a coal on it, and he put it on top of the wall and fired a
shot of the gun at it and broke it; and with that the man got well of
the pain and stood up again.
* * * * *
No woman that is carrying should go to the house where another woman
is in labour; if she does, that woman's pain will come on her along
with her own pain when her time comes.
* * * * *
A child to come with the spring tide, it will have luck.
II
ASTRAY, AND TREASURE
II
ASTRAY, AND TREASURE
_Mr. Yeats in his dedication of "The Shadowy Waters" says of some of
our woods:_
"_Dim Pairc-na-tarav where enchanted eyes
Have seen immortal mild proud shadows walk;
Dim Inchy wood that hides badger and fox
And martin-cat, and borders that old wood
Wise Biddy Early called the wicked wood._"
_I have heard many stories of people led astray in these by invisible
power, though I myself, although born at midnight, have lived many
hours of many years in their shades and shelters, and as the saying
is have "never seen anything worse than myself."_
_Last May a friend staying with us had gone out early in the
afternoon, and had not come back by eight o'clock dinner-time. As
half-hours passed we grew anxious and sent out messengers riding and
on foot, searching with lanterns here and there in the woods and on
Inchy marsh, towards which he had been seen going. It was not till
long after the fall of darkness that he returned, tired out with so
many hours of wandering, and with no better explanation than "Yeats
talks of the seven woods of Coole, but I say there are seventy times
seven." It was in dim Inchy and the wicked wood it borders he had
gone astray; and many said that was natural, for they have a bad
name, and May is a month of danger. Yet some unbelievers may carry
their credulity so far as to believe that the creator of Father
Keegan's dreams may himself have dreamed the whole adventure._
_I was told by An Army Man who had been through the Indian Mutiny:_
It's only yesterday I was talking to a man about _the others_, and he
told me that the castle of Ballinamantane is a great place for them,
for it's there a great stand was made long ago in one of their last
fights. And one night he was making his way home, and only a field
between him and his house, when he found himself turned around and
brought to another field, and then to another--seven in all. And he
remembered the saying that you should turn your coat and that they'd
have no power over you, and he did so, but it did him no good. For
after that he was taken again, and found himself in the field over
beyond. And he had never a one drop taken, but was quite sober that
night.
What did they do it for? It might be that he had trespassed on one of
their ways; but it's most likely that there was some sort of a rogue
among them that turned and did it for sport.
_Mrs. Cloonan:_
The other evening I was milking the cow over in Inchy, and a
beggar-woman came by, with a sack of potatoes and such things on her
back. She makes her living selling ballads in Gort, and then begging
afterwards. So she sat down beside me, and she said "I don't like to
go on through the wood." So I asked did she ever see anything there.
"I did," says she, "three years ago, one night just where the old
house is the Dooleys used to live in. There came out of the end of it
a woman all in white, and she led me astray all the night, and drove
me that I had no time to turn my clothes--and my feet were black with
the blows she gave me, and though it was three years ago, I feel the
pain in them yet."
_Mrs. Coniffe_ says:
I was in Inchy the other day late, and I met an old beggarman, and
I asked him was he ever led astray there. And he said, "Not in this
wood, but in the wood beyond, Garryland. It was one night I was
passing through it, and met a great lot of them--laughing they were
and running about and drinking wine and wanting me to drink with
them. And they had cars with them, and an old woman sitting on a sort
of an ass-car. And I had a scapular round my neck, and I thought that
would make me independent, but it did not, for it was on the highroad
outside I found myself put at last."
_A Mason:_
My father was led astray one time, when he was coming home from a
neighbour's house, and he was led here and there till he didn't know
what way he was going. And then the moon began to shine out and he
saw his shadow, and another shadow along with it ten feet in length.
So with that he ran, and when he got to the wood of Cloon he fell
down in a faint.
* * * * *
And I was led astray one night, going across to a neighbour's
house--just the length of a field away, and where I could find my way
blindfolded. Into the ditch I was led, and to some other field, and I
put my hand to the ground, and it was potato ground, and the drills
made, but the seed not put in. And if it wasn't at last that I saw a
light from Scalp, it's away I'd have been brought altogether.
_John Rivers:_
Once I was led astray in that field and went round and round and
could find no way out--till at last I thought of the old Irish
fashion of turning my waistcoat, and did so. And then I got out the
gate in one minute.
* * * * *
And one night I was down at the widow Hayley's--I didn't go much
there--she used to have the place full of loafers, and they playing
cards. But this night I stopped a bit, and then I went out. And the
way I was put I could not say, but I found myself in the field with
an eight-foot wall behind me--and there I had to stop till some of
the men came and found me and brought me out.
_A Girl of the Feeneys:_
One time my brother when he was coming home late one evening was
put asleep in spite of himself, on the grass, at this corner
we're passing. None of the boys like to be coming home late, from
card-playing or the like, unless there's two or three of them
together. And if they go to a wake, they wouldn't for all the world
come home before the cock crows. There were many led astray in that
hollow beyond, where you see the haycocks. Old Tom Stafford was led
astray there by something like a flock of wool that went rolling
before him, and he had no power to turn but should follow it. Michael
Barrett saw the coach one time driving across Kiltartan bog, and it
was seen to many others besides.
As to Michael Barrett, I believe it's mostly in his own head they
are. But I know this that when he pulled down the chimney where he
said that the piper used to be sitting and playing, he lifted out
stones, and he an old man, that I could not have lifted myself when I
was young and healthy.
_A Clare Woman:_
As to treasure, there was a man here dreamt of some buried things--of
a skeleton and a crock of money. So he went to dig, but whether he
dreamed wrong or that he didn't wait for the third dream, I don't
know, but he found the skeleton, skull and all, but when he found
the crock there was nothing in it, but very large snail-shells. So
he threw them out in the grass, and next day when he went to look
at them they were all gone. Surely there's something that's watching
over that treasure under ground.
But it doesn't do to be always looking for money. There was Whaney the
miller, he was always wishing to dream of money like other people. And
so he did one night, that it was hid under the millstone. So before it
was hardly light he went and began to dig and dig, but he never found
the money, but he dug till the mill fell down on himself.
So when any one is covetous the old people say, "Take care would you
be like Whaney the miller."
* * * * *
Now I'll tell you a story that's all truth. There was a farmer man
living there beyond over the mountains, and one day a strange man
came in and asked a night's lodging. "Where do you come from?" says
the farmer. "From the county Mayo," says he, and he told how he had a
dream of a bush in this part of the world, and gave a description of
it, and in his dream he saw treasure buried under it. "Then go home,
my poor man," said the farmer, "for there's no such place as that
about here." So the man went back again to Mayo. But the bush was all
the time just at the back of the house, and when the stranger was
gone, the farmer began to dig, and there, sure enough, he found the
pot of gold, and took it for his own use.
But all the children he had turned silly after that; there was one
of them not long ago going about the town with long hair over his
shoulders.
And after that, a poor scholar, such as used to be going about in
those times, came to the house, and when he had sat down, the lid of
the pot the gold was found in was lying by the fire. And he took it
up and rubbed it, and there was writing on it, in Irish, that no one
had ever been able to read. And the poor scholar made it out, "This
side of the bush is no better than the other side." So he went out to
dig, and there he found another pot on the other side just the same
as the first pot and he brought it away with him, and what became of
him after is unknown.
_John Phelan:_
There was a man in Gort, Anthony Hynes, he and two others dreamed of
finding treasure within the church of Kilmacduagh. But when they got
there at night to dig, something kept them back, for there's always
something watching over where treasure is buried. I often heard
that long ago in the nursery at Coole, at the cross, a man that was
digging found a pot of gold. But just as he had the cover took off,
he saw old Richard Gregory coming, and he covered it up, and was
never able again to find the spot where it was.
But there's dreams and dreams. I heard of a man from Mayo went to
Limerick, and walked two or three times across the bridge there. And
a cobbler that was sitting on the bridge took notice of him, and
knew by the look of him and by the clothes he wore that he was from
Mayo, and asked him what was he looking for. And he said he had a
dream that under the bridge of Limerick he'd find treasure. "Well,"
says the cobbler, "I had a dream myself about finding treasure, but
in another sort of a place than this." And he described the place
where he dreamed it was, and where was that, but in the Mayo man's
own garden. So he went home again, and sure enough, there he found a
pot of gold with no end of riches in it. But I never heard that the
cobbler found anything under the bridge at Limerick.
* * * * *
I met a woman coming out one day from Cloon, and she told me that
when she was a young girl, she went out one day with another girl to
pick up sticks near a wood. And she chanced to lay hold on a tuft
of grass, and it came up in her hand and the sod with it. And there
was a hole underneath full of half-crowns, and she began to fill her
apron with them, and as soon as she had the full of her apron she
called to the other girl, and the minute she came there wasn't one to
be seen. But what she had in her apron she kept.
_A Travelling Man:_
There was a sister of mine, Bridget her name was, dreamed three
nights of treasure that was buried under the bush up there, by
the chapel, a mile to the east; you can see the bush there, blown
slantwise by the wind from the sea. So she got three men to go along
with her and they brought shovels to dig for it. But it was the woman
should have lifted the first sod and she didn't do it, and they saw,
coming down from the mountains of Burren, horses and horses, bearing
horse-soldiers on them, and they came around the bush, and the
soldiers held up their shovels, and my sister and the men that were
with her made away across the field.
The time I was in America, I went out to the country to see Tom
Scanlon, my cousin, that is a farmer there and had any amount of land
and feeding for the cows, and we went out of the house and sat down
on a patch of grass the same as we're sitting on now. And the first
word he said to me was, "Did Bridget, your sister, ever tell you of
the dream she had, and the way we went digging at the bush, for I was
one of the men that was along with her?" "She did often," says I.
"Well," says he, "all she told you about it was true."
* * * * *
There were two boys digging for razor fish near Clarenbridge, and
one of them saw, as he was digging, a great lot of gold. So he said
nothing, the way the other boy would know nothing about it. But when
he came back for it it was gone.
* * * * *
There was another boy found gold under a flagstone he lifted. But
when he went back next day to get it, all the strength he had
wouldn't lift the flag.
_The Army Man:_
There was a forth sometime or other there inside the gate, and one
Kelly told me that he was coming by it one night and saw all the hollow
spread with gold, and he had not the sense to take it up, but ran away.
* * * * *
A friend I had near Athenry had more sense. He saw the ground spread
with gold and he took up the full of his pockets and paid his rent next
day and prospered ever after, as everyone does that gets the faery gold.
* * * * *
Another man I knew of had a dream of a place where there was three
crocks of gold. And in the morning he went to dig and found the
crocks sure enough, and nothing in them but oyster shells. That was
because he went to dig after the first dream. He had a right to wait
till he had dreamed of it three times.
* * * * *
A girl the same way dreamt of gold hid in a rock and did not wait for
the third dream, but went at once, and all she found was the full of an
ass-cart near of sewing needles, and that was a queer thing to find in
a rock. No, they don't always hinder you, they help you now and again.
* * * * *
There was a working man used to be digging potatoes for me, and
whenever he was in want of money, he found it laid on his window-sill
in the night. But one day he had a drop of drink taken, he told
about it, and never a penny more did he find after that.
* * * * *
Sure, there's an old castle beyond Gort, Fiddane it's called, and
there you'd see the gold out bleaching, but no one would like to go
and take it. And my mother told me one time that a woman went up in
the field beyond where the liss is, to milk the cow, and there she
saw on the grass a crock full of gold. So she left the bit she had
for holding the cow beside it, and she ran back to the house for to
tell them all to come out and see it. But when they came the gold was
nowhere to be seen, but had vanished away. But in every part of the
field there was a bit of rope like the one she left beside the crock,
so that she couldn't know what spot it was in at all.
She had a right to have taken it, and told no one. They don't like to
have such things told.
_Mrs. Coniffe:_
That bush you took notice of, the boy told me that it is St.
Bridget's bush, and there is a great lot of money buried under it;
they know this from an old woman that used to be here a long time
ago. Three men went one time to dig for it and they dug and dug all
the day and found nothing and they went home and to bed. And in the
night whatever it was came to them, they never got the better of
it, but died within a week. And you'd be sorry to see--as the boy
did--the three coffins carried out of the three houses. And since
then no other person has ever gone to look for the money.
That's no wonder for you to know a faery bush. It grows a different
shape from a common one, and looks different someway.
* * * * *
As to hidden gold, I knew a man, Patrick Connell, dreamed he found it
beneath a bush. But he wasn't willing to go look for it, and his sons
and his friends were always at him to tell where it was, but he would
tell them nothing. But at last his sons one day persuaded him to go
with them and to dig for it. So they took their car, and they set
out. But when they came to a part of the road where there's a small
little ditch about a foot wide beside it, he was walking and he put
his foot in it and they had to bring him home, for his leg was broke.
So there was no more digging for treasure after that.
_A Neighbour:_
There's crocks of gold in all the forths, but there's cats and things
guarding them. And if any one does find the gold, he doesn't live
long afterwards. But sometimes you might see it and think that it was
only a heap of dung. It's best to leave such things alone.
III
BANSHEES AND WARNINGS
III
BANSHEES AND WARNINGS
"_Then Cuchulain went on his way, and Cathbad that had followed him
went with him. And presently they came to a ford, and there they
saw a young girl, thin and white-skinned and having yellow hair,
washing and ever washing, and wringing out clothing that was stained
crimson red, and she crying and keening all the time. 'Little Hound,'
said Cathbad, 'Do you see what it is that young girl is doing?
It is your red clothes she is washing, and crying as she washes,
because she knows you are going to your death against Maeve's great
army.'_"--"Cuchulain of Muirthemne."
* * * * *
_From Cuchulain's day, or it may be from a yet earlier time, that
keening woman of the Sidhe has been heard giving her lamentable
warning for those who are about to die. Rachel had not yet been heard
mourning for her children when the white-skinned girl whose keening
has never ceased in Ireland washed red clothes at the ford. It was
she or one of her race who told King Brian he was going to meet his
death at Clontarf; though after the defeat of the old gods that
warning had often been sent by a more radiant messenger, as when
Columcille at the dawn of the feast of Pentecost "lifted his eyes and
saw a great brightness and an angel of God waiting there above him."
And Patrick himself had his warning through his angel, Victor, who
met him on the road at midday and bade him go back to the barn where
he had lodged the night before, for it was there he had to die. Such
a messenger may have been at hand at the death of that Irish born
mystic, William Blake, when he "burst out into singing of the things
he saw in Heaven, and made the rafters ring." And a few years ago
the woman of a thatched house at the foot of Echtge told me "There
were great wonders done in the old times; and when my father that
worked in the garden there above was dying, there came of a sudden
three flashes of light into the room, the brightest light that ever
was seen in the world; and there was an old man in the room, one
Ruane, and I leaned back on him for I had like to faint. And people
coming the road saw the light, and up at Mick Inerney's house they
all called out that our house was in flames. And when they came and
heard of the three flashes of light coming into the room and about
the bed they all said it was the angels that were his friends that
had come to meet him." When Raftery died, the blind poet who wandered
through our townlands a hundred years ago, some say there were flames
about the house all through the night, "and those were the angels
waking him." Yet his warning had not been sent through these white
messengers but through a vision that had come to him once in Galway,
when Death himself had appeared "thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful;
the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tears down his
cheeks" and had told him he had but seven years to live. And though
Raftery spoke back to him in scornful verse, there are some who say
he spent those last seven years in praying and in making his songs
of religion. To some it is a shadow that brings the warning, or a
noise of knocking or a dream. At the hour of a violent death nature
itself will show sympathy; I have been told on a gloomy day that it
had darkened because there was a man being hanged; and a woman who
had travelled told me that once at Bundoran she had "seen the waves
roaring and turning" and she knew later it was because at that very
time two young girls had been drowned._
_I was told by Steve Simon:_
I will tell you what I saw the night my wife died. I attended the
neighbours up to the road, for they had come to see her, but she said
there was no fear of her, and she would not let them stop because she
knew that they were up at a wake the night before.
So when I left them I was going back to the house, and I saw the
shadow of my wife on the road before me, and it was as white as
drifted snow. And when I came into the house, there she was dying.
_Mrs. Curran:_
My cousin Mary that lives in the village beyond told me that she was
coming home yesterday week along the road, and she is a girl would
not be afraid to walk the whole world with herself. And it was late,
and suddenly there was a man walking beside her, inside the field, on
the other side of the wall.
And at first she was frightened, but then she felt sure it was her
cousin John that was dying, and then she wasn't afraid, for she knew
her cousin would do her no harm. And after a while he was gone, and
when she got near home and saw the lights she was frightened, and
when she got into the house she was in a sort of a faint. And next
day, this day week, her cousin was dead.
_Old Simon:_
I heard the Banshee crying not long ago, and within three days a boy
of the Murphy's was killed by his own horse and he bringing his cart
to Kinvara. And I heard it again a few nights ago, but I heard of no
death since then. What is the Banshee? It is of the nature of the
Hyneses. Six families it cries for, the Hyneses and the Fahys and I
forget what are the others.
* * * * *
I heard her beside the river at Ballylee one time. I would stand
barefooted in the snow listening to the tune she had, so nice and so
calm and so mournful.
* * * * *
I would yield to dreams because of some things were dreamed to me
in my lifetime and that turned out true. I dreamed one time that I
saw my daughter that was in America dead, and stretched and a table
laid out with the corpse. She came home after, and at the end of five
months she wasted and died. And there I saw her stretched as in the
dream, and it was on my own table.
* * * * *
One time I was walking the road and I heard a great crying and
keening beside me, a woman that was keening, and she conveyed me
three miles of the road. And when I got to the door of the house I
looked down and saw a little woman, very broad and broad faced--about
the bigness of the seat of that table--and a cloak about her. I
called out to her that was my first wife--the Lord be with her--and
she lighted a candle and I came in weak and lay upon the floor, and I
was till 12 o'clock that night lying in the bed.
A man I was talking to said it was the Banshee, and it cries for
three families, the Fahys and the O'Briens and another I forget
which. My grandmother was a Fahy, and I suppose, father or mother, it
follows the generations. I heard it another time and my daughter from
America coming into the house that night. It was the most mournful
thing ever you heard, keening about the house for the same term as
before, till 12 o'clock of night. And within five months my daughter
from America was dead.
_John Cloran:_
There was a man near us that was ploughing a field, and he found an
iron box, and they say there was in it a very old Irish book with all
the knowledge of the world in it. Anyway, there's no question you
could ask him he couldn't answer. And what he says of the Banshee is,
that it's Rachel mourning still for every innocent of the earth that
is going to die, like as she did for our Lord when the king had like
to kill Him. But it's only for them that's sprung from her own tribe
that she'll raise her voice.
_Mrs. Smith:_
As for the Banshee, where she stops is in the old castle of
Esserkelly on the Roxborough estate. Many a one has seen her there
and heard her wailing, wailing, and she with a red petticoat put
about her head. There was a family of the name of Fox in Moneen, and
never one of that family died but she'd be heard keening them.
_The Spinning Woman:_
The Banshee is all I ever saw myself. It was when I was a slip of a
girl picking potatoes along with the other girls, we heard crying,
crying, in the graveyard beyond at Ryanrush, so we ran like foals to
see who was being buried, and I was the first, and leaped up on the
wall. And there she was and gave me a slap on the jaw, and she just
like a countrywoman with a red petticoat. Often they hear her crying
if any one is going to die in the village.
_A Seaside Woman:_
One time there was a man in the village was dying and I stood at the
door in the evening, and I heard a crying--the grandest cry ever you
heard--and I said "Glynn's after dying and they're crying him." And
they all came to the door and heard it. But my mother went out after
that and found him gasping still.
Sure enough it was the Banshee we heard that evening.
And out there where the turf-boat is lying with its sail down,
outside Aughanish, there the Banshee does always be crying, crying,
for some that went down there some time.
* * * * *
At Fiddoon that strip of land between Tyrone and Duras something
appears and cries for a month before any one dies. A great many are
taken away sudden there; and they say that it's because of that thing.
* * * * *
The Banshee cries every time one of the Sionnacs dies. And when the
old Captain died, the crows all left the place within two days, and
never came back for a year.
_A Connemara Woman:_
There was a boy from Kylemore I met in America used to be able to
tell fortunes. He used to be telling them when the work would be
done, and we would be having afternoon tea. He told me one time I
would soon be at a burying, and it would be a baby's burying, and I
laughed at that. But sure enough, my sister's baby, that was not born
at the time, died about a month after, and I went to its burying.
_A Herd:_
Crying for those that are going to die you'd hear of often enough.
And when my own wife was dying, the night she went I was sitting by
the fire, and I heard a noise like the blow of a flail on the door
outside. And I went to see what it was, but there was nothing there.
But I was not in any way frightened, and wouldn't be if she came back
in a vision, but glad to see her I would be.
_A Miller:_
There was a man that was out in the field and a flock of stares
(starlings) came about his head, and it wasn't long after that he died.
* * * * *
There's many say they saw the Banshee, and that if she heard you
singing loud she'd be very apt to bring you away with her.
_A Connemara Woman:_
One night the clock in my room struck six and it had not struck for
years, and two nights after--on Christmas night--it struck six again,
and afterwards I heard that my sister in America had died just at
that hour. So now I have taken the weights off the clock, that I
wouldn't hear it again.
_Mrs. Huntley:_
It was always said that when a Lord ---- died, a fox was seen about the
house. When the last Lord ---- lay dying, his daughter heard a noise
outside the house one night, and opened the hall-door, and then she
saw a great number of foxes lying on the steps and barking and running
about. And the next morning there was a meet at some distant covert--it
had been changed there from hard by where it was to have taken place
on account of his illness--and there was not a single fox to be found
there or in any other covert. And that day he died.
_J. Hanlon:_
There was one Costello used to be ringing the bell and pumping water
and such things at Roxborough, and one day he was at the fair of
Loughrea. And as he started home he sent word to my grandfather "Come
to the corner of the old castle and you'll find me dead." So he set
out, and when he got to the corner of the castle, there was Costello
lying dead before him.
* * * * *
And once going to a neighbour's house to see a little girl, I saw her
running along the path before me. But when I got to the house she was
in bed sick, and died two days after.
_Pat. Linskey:_
Well, the time my own wife died I had sent her into _Cloon_ to get
some things from the market, and I was alone in the house with the
dog. And what do you think but he started up and went out to the hill
outside the house, and there he stood a while howling, and it was
the very next day my wife died.
Another time I had shut the house door at night and fastened it, and
in the morning it was standing wide open. And as I knew by the dates
afterwards that was the very night my brother died in India.
Sure I told Stephen Green that, when he buried his mother in England,
and his father lying in Kilmacduagh. "You should never separate,"
says I, "in death a couple that were together in life, for sure as
fate, the one'll come to look for the other."
And when there's one of them passing in the air you might get a blast
of holy wind you wouldn't be the better of for a long time.
_Mrs. Curran:_
I was in Galway yesterday, and I was told there that the night before
those four poor boys were drowned, there were four women heard crying
out on the rocks. Those that saw them say that they were young, and
they were out of this world. And one of those boys was out at sea all
day, the day before he was drowned. And when he came in to Galway in
the evening, some boy said to him "I saw you today standing up on the
high bridge." And he was afraid and he told his mother and said "Why
did they see me on the high bridge and I out at sea?" And the next
day he was drowned. And some say there was not much at all to drown
them that day.
_A Man near Athenry:_
There is often crying heard before a death, and in that field beside
us the sound of washing clothes with a beetle is sometimes heard
before a death.
I heard crying in that field near the forth one night, and not long
after the man it belonged to died.
_An Aran Man:_
I remember one morning, St. Bridget's Eve, my son-in-law came into
the house, where he had been up that little road you see above. And
the wife asked him did he see any one, and he said "I saw Shamus
Meagher driving cattle." And the wife said, "You couldn't see him,
for he's out laying spillets since daybreak with two other men." And
he said, "But I did see him, and I could have spoke with him." And
the next day--St. Bridget's Day--there was confessions in the little
chapel below and I was in it, and Shamus Meagher, and it was he that
was kneeling next to me at the Communion. But the next morning he
and two other men that had set the spillets went on in their canoe
to Kilronan for salt, for they had come short of salt and had a good
deal of fish taken. And that day the canoe was upset, and the three
of them were drowned.
_A Piper:_
My father and my mother were in the bed one night and they heard a
great lowing and a noise of the cattle fighting one another, that
they thought they were all killed, and they went out and they were
quiet then. But they went on to the next house where they heard a
lowing, and all the cattle of that house were fighting one another,
and so it was at the next. And in the morning a child, one Gannon,
was dead--or taken he was.
_An Old Man in Aran:_
When I was in the State of Maine, I knew a woman from the County
Cork, and she had a little girl sick. And one day she went out behind
the house and there she saw the fields full of _those_--full of them.
And the little girl died.
And when I was in the same State, I was in the house where there
was a child sick. And one night I heard a noise outside, as if of
hammering. And I went out and I thought it came from another house
that was close by that no one lived in, and I went and tried the door
but it was shut up.
And I went back and said to the woman, "This is the last night you'll
have to watch the child." And at 12 o'clock the next evening it died.
* * * * *
They took my hat from me one time. One morning just at sunrise I was
going down to the sea, and a little storm came, and took my hat off
and brought it a good way, and then it brought it back and returned
it to me again.
_An Old Midwife:_
I do be dreaming, dreaming. I dreamt one night I was with my daughter
and that she was dead and put in the coffin. And I heard after, the
time I dreamt about her was the very time she died.
_A Woman near Loughrea:_
There are houses in Cloon, and Geary's is one of them, where if the
people sit up too late the warning comes; it comes as a knocking at
the door. Eleven o'clock, that is the hour. It is likely it is some
that lived in the house are wanting it for themselves at that time.
And there is a house near the Darcys' where as soon as the potatoes
are strained from the pot, they must put a plateful ready and leave
it for the night, and milk and the fire on the hearth, and there is
not a bit left at morning. Some poor souls that come in, looking for
warmth and for food.
* * * * *
There is a woman seen often before a death sitting by the river and
racking her hair, and she has a beetle with her and she takes it and
beetles clothes in the river. And she cries like any good crier; you
would be sorry to be listening to her.
_Old King:_
I heard the Banshee and saw her. I and six others were card playing in
the kitchen at the big house, that is sunk into the ground, and I saw
her up outside of the window. She had a white dress and it was as if
held over her face. They all looked up and saw it, and they were all
afraid and went back but myself. Then I heard a cry that did not seem
to come from her but from a good way off, and then it seemed to come
from herself. She made no attempt to twist a mournful cry but all she
said was, "Oh-oh, Oh-oh," but it was as mournful as the oldest of the
old women could make it, that was best at crying the dead.
Old Mr. Sionnac was at Lisdoonvarna at that time, and he came home a
few days after and took to the bed and died. It is always the Banshee
has followed the Sionnacs and cried them.
_Mrs. King:_
There was a boy of the Naughtons died not far from this, a fine young
man. And I set out to go to the burying, and Mrs. Burke along with
me. But when we came to the gate we could hear crying for the dead,
and I said "It's as good for us wait where we are, for they have
brought the corp out and are crying him." So we waited a while and
no one came, and so we went on to the house, and we had two hours to
wait before they brought out the corp for the burying, and there had
been no crying at all till he was brought out. We knew then who it
was crying, for if the boy was a Naughton, it is in a house of the
Kearns he died, and the Banshee always cries for the Kearns.
_A Doctor:_
There's a boy I'm attending now, and the first time I went to him,
the mother came out of the house with me and said "It's no use to do
anything for him, I'm going to lose him." And I asked her why did she
say that, and she said "Because the first night he took ill I heard
the sound of a chair drawing over to the fire in the kitchen, and it
empty, and it was the faeries were coming for him." The boy wouldn't
have had much wrong with him, but his brother had died of phthisis,
and when he got a cold he made sure he would die too, and he took to
the bed. And every day his mother would go in and cry for an hour
over him, and then he'd cry and then the father would cry, and he'd
say "Oh, how can I leave my father and my mother! Who will there be
to mind them when I'm gone?" One time he was getting a little better
they sent him over on a message to Scahanagh, and there's a man there
called Shanny that makes coffins for the people. And the boy saw
Shanny looking at him, and he left his message undone and ran home
and cried out "Oh, I'm done for now! Shanny was looking at me to see
what size coffin I'd take!" And he cried and they all cried and all
the village came in to see what was the matter.
_The Old Army man:_
As to the invisible world, I hear enough about it, but I have seen
but little myself. One night when I was at Calcutta I heard that
one Connor was dead--a man that I had been friendly with--so I went
to the house. There was a good many of us there, and when it came to
just before midnight, I heard a great silence fall, and I looked from
one to another to see the silence. And then there came a knock at
the window, just as the clock was striking twelve. And Connor's wife
said, "It was just at this hour last night there came a knock like
that and immediately afterwards he died." And the strange thing is,
it was a barrack-room and on the second story, so that no one could
reach it from the street.
* * * * *
In India, before Delhi, there was an officer's servant lodged in the
same house as me, and was thrown out of his cot every night. And as
sure as midnight came, the dogs couldn't stop outside but would come
shrinking and howling into the house. Yes indeed, I believe the faeries
are in all countries, all over the world; but the banshee is only in
Ireland, though sometimes in India I would think of her when I'd hear
the hyenas laughing. Keening, keening, you can hear her, but only for
the old Irish families, but she'll follow them even as far as Dublin.
IV
IN THE WAY
IV
IN THE WAY
_An old Athenry man who had been as a soldier all through the Indian
Mutiny and had come back to end his days here as a farmer said to me
in speaking of "The Others" and those who may be among them: "There's
some places of their own we should never touch such as the forths; and
if ever we cross their pathways we're like to know it soon enough, for
some ill turn they'll do us, and then we must draw back out of their
way.... And we should above all things leave the house clean at night,
with nothing about that would offend them. For we must all die some
day, but God knows we're not all fit for heaven just on the minute; and
what the intermediate state may be, or what friends we may want there,
I don't know. No one has come back to tell us that."_
_I was told by John Donovan:_
Before I came here I was for two years in a house outside Cloon. And
no one that lived there ever prospered but all they did went to loss.
I sowed seeds and put in the crop each year, and if I'd stopped there
I wouldn't have had enough to keep trousers to my back. _In the way_
the place must be. I had no disturbance in the house, but some nights
I could hear the barrel rolling outside the door, back and forwards,
with a sort of a warning to me.
I knew another house in Clare where the front door is always shut up
and they only use the back door, but when I asked them the reason
they said if they opened the front door a sudden blast would come in,
that would take the roof off the house. And there's another house in
Clare built in a forth, a new one, shut up and the windows closed,
for no one can live in it.
_Andrew Lee:_
"In the way?" Yes that's a thing that often happens. Sure going into
Clough, you might see a house that no man ever yet kept a roof on.
Surely it's in the way of their coming and going. And Doctor Nolan's
father began to build a barn one time, and whatever was built in the
day, in the night it would be pulled down, so at last they gave over.
It was only labour and wages wasted.
_Mrs. Cloran:_
No, I never heard or felt anything since I came here. The old people
used to tell many things, they know more than what the youngsters do.
My mother saw many a thing, but they did her no harm. No, I remember
none of the stories; since my children died and a weight came on my
heart all those things went from me. Yes, it's true Father Boyle
banished the dog; and there was a cousin of my own used to live in
the house at Garryland, and she could get no sleep for what she used
to feel at night. But Father Boyle came and whatever he did, "You'll
feel them no more," says he, and she never did, though he was buried
before her.
That was a bad, bad place we lived in near the sea. The children
never felt anything, but often in the night I could hear music
playing and no one else in the house could hear it. But the children
died one by one, passing away without pain or ache.
All they saw was twice; the two last little girls I had were beside
the door at night talking and laughing and they saw a big dark man
pass by, but he never spoke. Some old thing out of the walls he must
have been. And soon after that they died.
One time when I was there a strange woman came in, and she knew
everything and told me everything. "I'd give you money if I had it,"
said I. "I know well you haven't much of it," says she; "but take my
word and go away out of this house to some other place, for you're
_in the way_." She told me to tell no one she came, and that shows
there was something not right about her; and I never saw her any more.
But if I'd listened to her then, and if I knew then what she meant
by the house being _in the way_ I wouldn't have stopped in it, and
my seven fine children would be with me now. Took away they were by
_them_ and without ache or pain. I never had a sign or a vision from
them since, but often and often they come across me in my sleep.
_Her Husband:_
The woman that came to give my wife the warning, I didn't see her,
and she knew all that was in the house and all about me and what
money I had, and that I would grow very poor. And she said that
before I'd die, I'd go to the strand and come back again. And we
couldn't know what she meant, and we thought it must mean that I'd go
to America. But we knew it at last. For one day I was washing sheep
down at Cahirglissane, and there is said to be the deepest water in
the world in one part of that lake. And as I was standing by it, a
sheep made a run and went between my two legs, and threw me into the
water, and I not able to swim. And I was brought on the top of the
water safe and sound to land again; and I knew well who it was helped
me, and saved my life. She that had come before to give advice that
would save my children, it's she that was my friend over there. To
say a Mass in the house? No use at all that would have been, living
in the place we did.
* * * * *
But they're mostly good neighbours. There was a woman they used to
help, one of them used to come and help her to clean the house, but
she never came when the husband was there. And one day she came and
said they were going to move now, to near Clifden. And she bid the
woman follow them, and whenever she'd come to a briar turned down,
with a thorn stuck in the earth, to build a house there.
_A Travelling Man:_
I was sleeping at a house one time and _they_ came in--the fallen
angels. They were pulling the clothes off me, ten times they did
that, and they were laughing like geese--just the very sound of
geese--and their boots were too large for their feet and were
clapping, clapping on the floor. I suppose they didn't like me to be
in it, or that the house was built in one of their passages.
My father was driven out of the little garden house at Castleboy one
time he went to sleep in it. In the way, I suppose it must have been.
And I knew of a herd's house, where five or six herds went one after
another and every one of them died, and their dogs and their cow. And
the gentleman that owned the place came to ask another one to go in
it, and his wife said she wouldn't go, for there was some bad luck
about it. But she went after, and she was a very clean woman, not
like some of them that do have the house dirty. Well, one day a woman
came to the door and asked for a dish of oaten meal, and she took
it from the shelf, and gave it to her. "I'll bring it back to you
tomorrow," says she, "it'll be easy getting it then when it's market
day." "Do not," says the woman of the house, "for if you do I won't
take it." "Well," says the stranger, "you'll have luck after this;
only one thing I tell you, keep that door at the back shut, and if
you want any opening there, let you open the window." Well, so she
did, and by minding that rule, and keeping the house so clean, she
was never troubled but lived there all her life.
_An Island Woman:_
There are some houses that never bring luck. There is one over there,
out of this village, and two or three died in it, and one night it
blazed up and burned down, those that were out in the fishing boats
could see it, but it was never known how it happened.
There was a house over in the other village and a woman living in it
that had two forths of land. And she had clever children, but the
most of them died one after another, boys and girls, and then the
husband died. And after that one of the boys that had died came to
her and said "You'd best leave this house or you'll be as we are,
and we are all now living in the Black Rock at the gable end of the
house. And two of the McDaraghs are with us there."
So after that she left the house--you can cut grass now in the
place where it was, and it's green all through the summer and the
winter--and she went up to the north side and she married a young man
up there, for she was counted a rich woman. She had but two daughters
left, and one of them was married, and there was a match to be made
for the other, but the stepfather wouldn't allow her to give any of
the land to her, so she said she'd go to America, and the priest drew
up a stamped paper for her, that they'd keep a portion of money for
her every year till she'd come back. It wasn't long after that the
stepfather was out in one of the fields one day and two men came and
knocked him down and gave him a beating. And it was his belief it was
the father of the girl and one of the brothers that came to beat him.
And one of the neighbours that went to the house one night saw one
of the brothers standing at the window, plump and plain. And a first
cousin of theirs--a Donovan--was near the Black Rock one night, and
he saw them playing ball there, the whole of them that had gone, and
others with them. And when they saw him they whistled to make fun of
him, and he went away.
The stepfather died after that, and the woman herself died, and was
buried a week yesterday. And she had one son by the second husband and
he was always silly-like, and the night she died he went into the room
where she was, to the other side of the bed, and he called out, and
then he came out walking crooked, and his face drawn up on one side;
and so he is since, and a neighbour taking care of him. And you'd
hardly mind what a poor silly creature like him would say, but what he
says is that it was some of the boys that were gone that were in it.
And now there's no one to take up the land that so many were after; the
girl in America wouldn't for all the world come back to that place.
V
THE FIGHTING OF THE FRIENDS
V
THE FIGHTING OF THE FRIENDS
_"One time on Hy, one Brito of Columcille's brotherhood was dying,
and Columcille gave him his blessing but would not see him die,
and went out into the little court of the house. And he had hardly
gone out when the life went from Brito. And Columcille was out in
the little court, and one of the monks saw him looking upward, and
wonder on him, and he asked what was it he saw. And Columcille said,
'I have seen just at this moment the holy angels fighting in the air
against the power of the enemy, and I gave thanks to Christ, the
Judge, because the winning angels have carried to heaven the soul
of this stranger that is the first to have died among us in this
island. And do not tell his secret to any person in my lifetime,' he
said."_--"Saints and Wonders."
* * * * *
_"With that King Arthur entereth into a great forest adventurous, and
rideth the day long until he cometh about evensong into the thick of
the forest. And he espied a little house beside a little chapel, and
it well seemed to him to be a hermitage.... And it seemed to him that
there was a strife in the chapel. The ones were weeping so tenderly
and sweetly as it were angels, and the others spake so harshly as
it were fiends.... The voices ceased as soon as he was within. He
marvelleth how it came that this house and hermitage were solitary,
and what had become of the hermit that dwelt therein. He drew nigh
the altar of the chapel, and beheld in front thereof a coffin all
discovered, and he saw the hermit lying therein all clad in his
vestments, and his hands crossed upon his breast, and he had life in
him yet, but he was nigh his end, being at the point of death.... The
King departed and so returned back into the little house, and sate
him down on a seat whereon the hermit wont to sit. And he heareth
the strife and the noise begin again within the chapel, and the ones
he heareth speaking high and the others low, and he knoweth well by
the voices that the ones are angels and the others devils. And he
heareth that the devils are distraining on the hermit's soul, and
that judgment will presently be given in their favour, whereof make
they great joy. King Arthur is grieved in his heart when he heareth
that the angels' voices are stilled. And while he sitteth thus,
stooping his head toward the ground, full of vexation and discontent,
he heareth in the chapel the voice of a Lady that spake so sweet
and clear that no man in this earthly world, were his grief and
heaviness never so sore, but and he had heard the sweet voice of her
pleading would again have been in joy.... The devils go their way all
discomfit and aggrieved; and the sweet Mother of our Lord God taketh
the soul of the hermit.... And the angels take it and begin to sing
for joy 'Te Deum Laudamus.' And the Holy Lady leadeth them and goeth
her way along with them."_--"The High History of the Holy Grail."
Translated by Sebastian Evans.
* * * * *
_Before I had read this old story from "The High History of the Holy
Grail" I had heard on our own roads of the fighting at the hour of
death, and how the friends of the dying among the dead come and use
their strength on his side, and I had been shown here and there a house
where such a fight had taken place. In the old days it was a king or
saint who saw and heard this unearthly battle; but now it is not those
who live in palaces who are aware of it, and it is not around the roof
of a fair chapel the hosts of good and evil gather in combat for the
parting soul, but around the thatched and broken roof of the poor._
_I was told by An Islander:_
There are more of the Sheogue in America than what there are here, and
more of other sort of spirits. There was a man from there told me that
one night in America he had brought his wife's niece that was sick back
from the hospital, and had put her in an upper room. And in the evening
they heard a scream from her and she called out "The room is full of
them, and my father is with them, and my aunt." And he drove them away
and used the devil's name and cursed them. And she was left quiet that
night, but the next day she said "I'll be destroyed altogether tonight
with them." And he said he'd keep them out, and he locked the door of
the house. And towards midnight he heard them coming to the door and
trying to get in, but he kept it locked and he called to them by way
of the keyhole to keep away out of that. And there was talking among
them, and the girl that was upstairs said that she could hear the laugh
of her father and of her aunt. And they heard the greatest fighting
among them that ever was, and after that they went away, and the girl
got well. That's what often happens, crying and fighting for one that's
sick or going to die.
_Mrs. Meagher:_
There was an old woman the other day was telling me of a little girl
that was put to bake a cake, for her mother was sick in the room. And
when she turned away her head for a minute the cake was gone. And
that happened the second day and the third, and the mother was vexed
when she heard it, thinking some of the neighbours had come and taken
it away.
But the next day an old man appeared, and she knew he was the
grandfather, and he said "It's by me the cake was taken, for I was
watching the house these three nights when I knew there was some one
sick in it. And you never heard such a fight as there was for her last
night, and they would have brought her away but for me that had my
shoulder to the door." And the woman began to recover from that time.
_Tom Smith:_
There does often be fighting when a person is dying. John Madden's
wife that lived in this house before I came to it, the night she died
there was a noise heard, that all the village thought that every wall
of every garden round about was falling down. But in the morning
there was no sign of any of them being fallen.
And Hannay that lived at Cahir, the bonesetter, when I went to him
one time told me that one night late he was walking the road near
Ardrahan. And they heard a great noise of fighting in the castle he
was passing by, and no one living in it and it open to the sky. And
he turned in and was going up the stairs, and a lady in a white dress
stopped him and wouldn't let him pass up. But the next day he went to
look and he found the floor all covered with blood.
* * * * *
And before John Casey's death, John Leeson asked me one day were we
fighting down at our place, for he heard a great noise of fighting
the night before.
_A Farmer:_
As to fighting for those that are dying, I'd believe in that. There was
a girl died not far from here, and the night of her death there was
heard in the air the sound of an army marching, and the drums beating,
and it stopped over the house where she was lying sick. And they could
see no one, but could hear the drums and the marching plain enough, and
there were like little flames of lightning playing about it.
* * * * *
Did they fight for Johnny Casey? No, believe me it's not among the
faeries Johnny Casey is. Too old he is for them to want him among
them, and too cranky.
* * * * *
I would hardly believe they'd take the old, but we can't know what they
might want of them. And it's well to have a friend among them, and
it's always said you have no right to fret if your children die, for
it's well to have them there before you. And when a person is dying the
friends and the others will often come about the house and will give a
great challenge for him. They don't want cross people, and they won't
take you if you say so much as one cross word. It's only the good and
the pious they want. Now isn't that very good of them?
_Another:_
There was a young man I knew died, a fine young man, twenty-five
years of age. He was seven or eight days ill, and the night he died
they could hear fighting around the house, and they heard voices but
they couldn't know what they were saying. And in the morning the
ground was all covered with blood.
* * * * *
When Connors the young policeman died, sure the mother said she never
heard such fighting as went on within the house. And there was blood
splashed high up on the walls. They never let on how he got the
touch, but I suppose they knew it themselves.
_A Gatekeeper:_
There was a girl near Westport was _away_, and the way it came on her
was, she was on the road one day and two men passed her, and one of
them said, "That's a fine girl," and the other said, "She belongs to
my town," and there and then she got a pain in her knee, and couldn't
walk home but had to be brought in a car. And she used to be away at
night, and thorns in her feet in the morning, but she never said where
she went. But one time the sister brought her to Kilfenora, and when
they were crossing a bog near to there, she pointed out a house in the
bog, and she said "It's there I was last night." And the sister asked
did she know any one she saw in it, and she said "There was one I know,
that is my mother's cousin," and she told her name. And she said "But
for her they'd have me ill-treated, but she fought for me and saved
me." She was thought to be dying one time and given over, and my mother
sent me to see her, and how was she. And she was lying on the bed and
her eyes turned back, and she speechless, and I told my mother when I
came home she hadn't an hour to live. And the next day she was up and
about and not a thing on her. It might be the mother's cousin that
fought for her again there. She went to America after.
_An Aran Woman:_
There's often fighting heard about the house where one is sick, that
is what we call "the fighting of the friends" for we believe it is
the friends and the enemies of the sick person fighting for him.
* * * * *
I knew a house where there were a good many sleeping one night, and
in the morning there was blood on the threshold, and the clothes of
those that slept on the floor had blood on them. And it wasn't long
after that the woman of the house took sick and died.
* * * * *
One night there was one of the boys very sick within, and in the
morning the grandmother said she heard a great noise of fighting in the
night about the door. And she said: "If it hadn't been for Michael and
John being drowned, you'd have lost Martin last night. For they were
there fighting for him; I heard them, and I saw the shadow of Michael,
but when I turned to take hold of him he was gone."
VI
THE UNQUIET DEAD
VI
THE UNQUIET DEAD
_A good many years ago when I was but beginning my study of the
folk-lore of belief, I wrote somewhere that if by an impossible miracle
every trace and memory of Christianity could be swept out of the world,
it would not shake or destroy at all the belief of the people of
Ireland in the invisible world, the cloud of witnesses, in immortality
and the life to come. For them the veil between things seen and unseen
has hardly thickened since those early days of the world when the sons
of God mated with the daughters of men; when angels spoke with Abraham
in Hebron or with Columcille in the oakwoods of Derry, or when as an
old man at my own gate told me they came and visited the Fianna, the
old heroes of Ireland, "because they were so nice and so respectable."
Ireland has through the centuries kept continuity of vision, the vision
it is likely all nations possessed in the early days of faith. Here in
Connacht there is no doubt as to the continuance of life after death.
The spirit wanders for a while in that intermediate region to which
mystics and theologians have given various names, and should it return
and become visible those who loved it will not be afraid, but will, as
I have already told, put a light in the window to guide the mother home
to her child, or go out into the barley gardens in the hope of meeting
a son. And if the message brought seems hardly worth the hearing, we
may call to mind what Frederic Myers wrote of more instructed ghosts:_
_"If it was absurd to listen to Kepler because he bade the planets
move in no perfect circles but in undignified ellipses, because he
hastened and slackened from hour to hour what ought to be a heavenly
body's ideal and unwavering speed; is it not absurder still to refuse
to listen to these voices from afar, because they come stammering and
wandering as in a dream confusedly instead of with a trumpet's call?
Because spirits that bending to earth may undergo perhaps an earthly
bewilderment and suffer unknown limitations, and half remember and
half forget?"_
_And should they give the message more clearly who knows if it would
be welcome? For the old Scotch story goes that when S. Columcille's
brother Dobhran rose up from his grave and said, "Hell is not so bad
as people say," the Saint cried out, "Clay, clay on Dobhran!" before
he could tell any more._
_I was told by Mrs. Dennehy:_
Those that mind the teaching of the clergy say the dead go to Limbo
first and then to Purgatory and then to hell or to heaven. Hell is
always burning and if you go there you never get out; but those that
mind the old people don't believe, and I don't believe, that there is
any hell. I don't believe God Almighty would make Christians to put
them into hell afterwards.
It is what the old people say, that after death the shadow goes
wandering, and the soul is weak, and the body is taking a rest. The
shadow wanders for a while and it pays the debts it had to pay, and
when it is free it puts out wings and flies to Heaven.
_An Aran Man:_
There was an old man died, and after three days he appeared in the
cradle as a baby; they knew him by an old look in his face, and his
face being long and other things. An old woman that came into the
house saw him, and she said, "He won't be with you long, he had three
deaths to die, and this is the second," and sure enough he died at
the end of six years.
_Mrs. Martin:_
There was a man beyond when I lived at Ballybron, and it was said of
him that he was taken away--up before God Almighty. But the blessed
Mother asked for grace for him for a year and a day. So he got it. I
seen him myself, and many seen him, and at the end of the year and a
day he died. And that man ought to be happy now anyway. When my own
poor little girl was drowned in the well, I never could sleep but
fretting, fretting, fretting. But one day when one of my little boys
was taking his turn to serve the Mass he stopped on his knees without
getting up. And Father Boyle asked him what did he see and he looking
up. And he told him that he could see his little sister in the
presence of God, and she shining like the sun. Sure enough that was a
vision He had sent to comfort us. So from that day I never cried nor
fretted any more.
_A Herd:_
Do you believe Roland Joyce was seen? Well, he was. A man I know told
me he saw him the night of his death, in Esserkelly where he had a
farm, and a man along with him going through the stock. And all of a
sudden a train came into the field, and brought them both away like a
blast of wind.
* * * * *
And as for old Parsons Persse of Castleboy, there's thousands of people
has seen him hunting at night with his horses and his hounds and his
bugle blowing. There's no mistake at all about him being there.
_An Aran Woman:_
There was a girl in the middle island had died, and when she was
being washed, and a priest in the house, there flew by the window the
whitest bird that ever was seen. And the priest said to the father:
"Do not lament, unless what you like, your child's happy for ever!"
_Mrs. Casey:_
Near the strand there were two little girls went out to gather
cow-dung. And they sat down beside a bush to rest themselves, and
there they heard a groan coming from under the ground. So they ran
home as fast as they could. And they were told when they went again
to bring a man with them.
So the next time they went they brought a man with them, and they
hadn't been sitting there long when they heard the saddest groan that
ever you heard. So the man bent down and asked what was it. And a
voice from below said, "Let some one shave me and get me out of this,
for I was never shaved after dying." So the man went away, and the
next day he brought soap and all that was needful and there he found
a body lying laid out on the grass. So he shaved it, and with that
wings came and carried it up to high heaven.
_A Chimney-sweep:_
I don't believe in all I hear, or I'd believe in ghosts and faeries,
with all the old people telling you stories about them and the
priests believing in them too. Surely the priests believe in ghosts,
and tell you that they are souls that died in trouble. But I have
been about the country night and day, and I remember when I used to
have to put my hand out at the top of every chimney in Coole House;
and I seen or felt nothing to frighten me, except one night two rats
caught in a trap at Roxborough; and the old butler came down and beat
me with a belt for the scream I gave at that. But if I believed in
any one coming back, it would be in what you often hear, of a mother
coming back to care for her child.
And there's many would tell you that every time you see a tree
shaking there's a ghost in it.
* * * * *
Old Lambert of Dangan was a terror for telling stories; he told me
long ago how he was near the Piper's gap on Ballybrit race-course,
and he saw one riding to meet him, and it was old Michael Lynch of
Ballybrista, that was dead long before, and he never would go on the
race-course again. And he had heard the car with headless horses
driving through Loughrea. From every part they are said to drive, and
the place they are all going to is Benmore, near Loughrea, where there
is a ruined dwelling-house and an old forth. And at Mount Mahon a herd
told me the other day he often saw old Andrew Mahon riding about at
night. But if I was a herd and saw that I'd hold my tongue about it.
_Mrs. Casey:_
At the graveyard of Drumacoo often spirits do be seen. Old George
Fitzgerald is seen by many. And when they go up to the stone he's
sitting on, he'll be sitting somewhere else.
There was a man walking in the wood near there, and he met a woman,
a stranger, and he said "Is there anything I can do for you?" For he
thought she was some country-woman gone astray. "There is," says she.
"Then come home with me," says he, "and tell me about it." "I can't
do that," says she, "but what you can do is this, go tell my friends
I'm in great trouble, for twenty times in my life I missed going to
church, and they must say twenty Masses for me now to deliver me,
but they seem to have forgotten me. And another thing is," says she,
"there's some small debts I left and they're not paid, and those are
helping to keep me in trouble." Well, the man went on and he didn't
know what in the world to do, for he couldn't know who she was, for
they are not permitted to tell their name. But going about visiting
at country houses he used to tell the story, and at last it came out
she was one of the Shannons. For at a house he was telling it at they
remembered that an old woman they had, died a year ago, and that she
used to be running up little debts unknown to them. So they made
inquiry at Findlater's and at another shop that's done away with now,
and they found that sure enough she had left some small debts, not
more than ten shillings in each, and when she died no more had been
said about it. So they paid these and said the Masses, and shortly
after she appeared to the man again. "God bless you now," she said,
"for what you did for me, for now I'm at peace."
_A Tinker's Daughter:_
I heard of what happened to a family in the town. One night a thing
that looked like a goose came in. And when they said nothing to it,
it went away up the stairs with a noise like lead. Surely if they had
questioned it, they'd have found it to be some soul in trouble.
And there was another soul came back that was in trouble because of a
ha'porth of salt it owed.
And there was a priest was in trouble and appeared after death, and
they had to say Masses for him, because he had done some sort of a
crime on a widow.
_Mrs. Farley:_
One time myself I was at Killinan, at a house of the Clancys' where the
father and mother had died, but it was well known they often come to
look after the children. I was walking with another girl through the
fields there one evening and I looked up and saw a tall woman dressed
all in black, with a mantle of some sort, a wide one, over her head,
and the waves of the wind were blowing it off her, so that I could hear
the noise of it. All her clothes were black, and had the appearance of
being new. And I asked the other girl did she see her, and she said she
did not. For two that are together can never see such things, but only
one of them. So when I heard she saw nothing I ran as if for my life,
and the woman seemed to be coming after me, till I crossed a running
stream and she had no power to cross that. And one time my brother was
stopping in the same house, and one night about twelve o'clock there
came a smell in the house like as if all the dead people were there.
And one of the girls whose father and mother had died got up out of her
bed, and began to put her clothes on, and they had to lock the doors to
stop her from going away out of the house.
* * * * *
There was a woman I knew of that after her death was kept for seven
years in a tree in Kinadyfe, and for seven years after that she was
kept under the arch of the little bridge beyond Kilchriest, with the
water running under her. And whether there was frost or snow she had
no shelter from it, not so much as the size of a leaf.
At the end of the second seven years she came to her husband, and he
passing the bridge on the way home from Loughrea, and when he felt
her near him he was afraid, and he didn't stop to question her, but
hurried on.
So then she came in the evening to the house of her own little girl.
But she was afraid when she saw her, and fell down in a faint. And the
woman's sister's child was in the house, and when the little girl told
her what she saw, she said "You must surely question her when she comes
again." So she came again that night, but the little girl was afraid
again when she saw her and said nothing. But the third night when she
came the sister's child, seeing her own little girl was afraid, said
"God bless you, God bless you." And with that the woman spoke and said
"God bless you for saying that." And then she told her all that had
happened her and where she had been all the fourteen years. And she
took out of her dress a black silk handkerchief and said: "I took that
from my husband's neck the day I met him on the road from Loughrea,
and this very night I would have killed him, because he hurried away
and would not stop to help me, but now that you have helped me I'll
not harm him. But bring with you to Kilmacduagh, to the graveyard,
three cross sticks with wool on them, and three glasses full of salt,
and have three Masses said for me; and I'll appear to you when I am at
rest." And so she did; and it was for no great thing she had done that
trouble had been put upon her.
_John Cloran:_
That house with no roof was made a hospital of in the famine, and
many died there. And one night my father was passing by and he
saw some one standing all in white, and two men beside him, and he
thought he knew one of the men and spoke to him and said "Is that
you, Martin?" but he never spoke nor moved. And as to the thing in
white, he could not say was it man or woman, but my father never went
by that place again at night.
* * * * *
The last person buried in a graveyard has the care of all the other
souls until another is to be buried, and then the soul can go and
shift for itself. It may be a week or a month or a year, but watch
the place it must till another soul comes.
* * * * *
There was a man used to be giving short measure, not giving the full
yard, and one time after his death there was a man passing the river
and the horse he had would not go into it. And he heard the voice
of the tailor saying from the river he had a message to send to his
wife, and to tell her not to be giving short measure, or she would be
sent to the same place as himself. There was a hymn made about that.
* * * * *
There was a woman lived in Rathkane, alone in the house, and she told
me that one night something came and lay over the bed and gave three
great moans. That was all ever she heard in the house.
* * * * *
The shadows of the dead gather round at Samhain time to see is there
any one among their friends saying a few Masses for them.
_An Islander:_
Down there near the point, on the 6th of March, 1883, there was a
curragh upset and five boys were drowned. And a man from County Clare
told me that he was on the coast that day, and that he saw them
walking towards him on the Atlantic.
* * * * *
There is a house down there near the sea, and one day the woman of it
was sitting by the fire, and a little girl came in at the door, and
a red cloak about her, and she sat down by the fire. And the woman
asked her where did she come from, and she said that she had just
come from Connemara. And then she went out, and when she was going
out the door she made herself known to her sister that was standing
in it, and she called out to the mother. And when the mother knew it
was the child she had lost near a year before, she ran out to call
her, for she wouldn't for all the world to have not known her when
she was there. But she was gone and she never came again.
* * * * *
There was this boy's father took a second wife, and he was walking
home one evening, and his wife behind him, and there was a great wind
blowing, and he kept his head stooped down because of the seaweed
coming blowing into his eyes. And she was about twenty paces behind,
and she saw his first wife come and walk close beside him, and he
never saw her, having his head down, but she kept with him near all
the way. And when they got home, she told the husband who was with
him, and with the fright she got she was bad in her bed for two or
three days--do you remember that, Martin? She died after, and he has
a third wife taken now.
* * * * *
I believe all that die are brought among them, except maybe an odd
old person.
_A Kildare Woman:_
There was a woman I knew sent into the Rotunda Hospital for an
operation. And when she was going she cried when she was saying
good-bye to her cousin that was a friend of mine, for she felt in her
that she would not come back again. And she put her two arms about
her going away and said, "If the dead can do any good thing for the
living, I'll do it for you." And she never recovered, but died in
the hospital. And within a few weeks something came on her cousin,
my friend, and they said it was her side that was paralysed, and she
died. And many said it was no common illness, but that it was the
dead woman that had kept to her word.
_A Connemara Man:_
There was a boy in New York was killed by rowdies, they killed him
standing against a lamppost and he was frozen to it, and stood there
till morning. And it is often since that time he was seen in the room
and the passages of the house where he used to be living.
And in the house beyond a woman died, and some other family came to
live in it; but every night she came back and stripped the clothes
off them, so at last they went away.
* * * * *
When some one goes that owes money, the weight of the soul is
more than the weight of the body, and it can't get away and keeps
wandering till some one has courage to question it.
_Mrs. Casey:_
My grandmother told my mother that in her time at Cloughballymore,
there was a woman used to appear in the churchyard of Rathkeale, and
that many boys and girls and children died with the fright they got
when they saw her.
So there was a gentleman living near was very sorry for all the
children dying, and he went to an old woman to ask her was there any
way to do away with the spirit that appeared. So she said if any one
would have courage to go and to question it, he could do away with
it. So the gentleman went at midnight and waited at the churchyard,
and he on his horse, and had a sword with him. So presently the shape
appeared and he called to it and said, "Tell me what you are?" And it
came over to him, and when he saw the face he got such a fright that
he turned the horse's head and galloped away as hard as he could. But
after galloping a long time he looked down and what did he see beside
him but the woman running and her hand on the horse. So he took his
sword and gave a slash at her, and cut through her arm, so that she
gave a groan and vanished, and he went on home.
And when he got to the stable and had the lantern lighted, you may
think what a start he got when he saw the hand still holding on to the
horse, and no power could lift it off. So he went into the house and
said his prayers to Almighty God to take it off. And all night long, he
could hear moaning and crying about the house. And in the morning when
he went out the hand was gone, but all the stable was splashed with
blood. But the woman was never seen in those parts again.
_A Seaside Man:_
And many see the faeries at Knock and there was a carpenter died, and
he could be heard all night in his shed making coffins and carts and
all sorts of things, and the people are afraid to go near it. There
were four boys from Knock drowned five years ago, and often now they
are seen walking on the strand and in the fields and about the village.
* * * * *
There was a man used to go out fowling, and one day his sister said
to him, "Whatever you do don't go out tonight and don't shoot any
wild-duck or any birds you see flying--for tonight they are all poor
souls travelling."
_An Old Man in Galway Workhouse:_
Burke of Carpark's son died, but he used often to be seen going about
afterwards. And one time a herd of his father's met with him and he
said, "Come tonight and help us against the hurlers from the north,
for they have us beat twice, and if they beat us a third time, it
will be a bad year for Ireland."
It was in the daytime they had the hurling match through the streets
of Galway. No one could see them, and no one could go outside the
door while it lasted, for there went such a whirlwind through the
town that you could not look through the window.
And he sent a message to his father that he would find some paper he
was looking for a few days before, behind a certain desk, between
it and the wall, and the father found it there. He would not have
believed it was his son the herd met only for that.
_A Munster Woman:_
I have only seen them myself like dark shadows, but there's many can
see them as they are. Surely they bring away the dead among them.
There was a woman in County Limerick that died after her baby being
born. And all the people were in the house when the funeral was to
be, crying for her. And the cars and the horses were out on the road.
And there was seen among them a carriage full of ladies, and with
them the woman was sitting that they were crying for, and the baby
with her, and it dressed.
And there was another woman I knew of died, and left a family, and
often after, the people saw her in their dreams, and always in rich
clothes, though all the clothes she had were given away after she
died, for the good of her soul, except maybe her shawl. And her
husband married a serving girl after that, and she was hard to the
children, and one night the woman came back to her, and had like
to throw her out of the window in her nightdress, till she gave a
promise to treat the children well, and she was afraid not to treat
them well after that.
There was a farmer died and he had done some man out of a saddle, and
he came back after to a friend, and gave him no rest till he gave a
new saddle to the man he had cheated.
_Mrs. Casey:_
There was a woman my brother told me about and she had a daughter
that was red-haired. And the girl got married when she was under
twenty, for the mother had no man to tend the land, so she thought
best to let her go. And after her baby being born, she never got
strong but stopped in the bed, and a great many doctors saw her but
did her no good.
And one day the mother was at Mass at the chapel and she got a start,
for she thought she saw her daughter come in to the chapel with the
same shawl and clothes on her that she had before she took to the bed,
but when they came out from the chapel, she wasn't there. So she went
to the house, and asked was she after going out, and what they told her
was as if she got a blow, for they said the girl hadn't ten minutes to
live, and she was dead before ten minutes were out. And she appears
now sometimes; they see her drawing water from the well at night and
bringing it into the house, but they find nothing there in the morning.
_A Connemara Man:_
There was a man had come back from Boston, and one day he was out in
the bay, going towards Aran with £3 worth of cable he was after getting
from McDonagh's store in Galway. And he was steering the boat, and
there were two turf-boats along with him, and all in a minute they saw
he was gone, swept off the boat with a wave and it a dead calm.
And they saw him come up once, straight up as if he was pushed, and
then he was brought down again and rose no more.
And it was some time after that a friend of his in Boston, and that
was coming home to this place, was in a crowd of people out there.
And he saw him coming to him and he said, "I heard that you were
drowned," and the man said, "I am not dead, but I was brought here,
and when you go home, bring these three guineas to McDonagh in Galway
for it's owed him for the cable I got from him." And he put the
three guineas in his hand and vanished away.
_An Old Army Man:_
I have seen hell myself. I had a sight of it one time in a vision. It
had a very high wall around it, all of metal, and an archway in the
wall, and a straight walk into it, just like what would be leading
into a gentleman's orchard, but the edges were not trimmed with box
but with red-hot metal. And inside the wall there were cross walks,
and I'm not sure what there was to the right, but to the left there
was five great furnaces and they full of souls kept there with great
chains. So I turned short and went away; and in turning I looked
again at the wall and I could see no end to it.
And another time I saw purgatory. It seemed to be in a level place
and no walls around it, but it all one bright blaze, and the souls
standing in it. And they suffer near as much as in hell, only there
are no devils with them there, and they have the hope of heaven.
And I heard a call to me from there "Help me to come out of this!"
And when I looked it was a man I used to know in the army, an
Irishman and from this country, and I believe him to be a descendant
of King O'Connor of Athenry. So I stretched out my hand first but
then I called out "I'd be burned in the flames before I could get
within three yards of you." So then he said, "Well, help me with your
prayers," and so I do.
VII
APPEARANCES
VII
APPEARANCES
_When I had begun my search for folk-lore, the first to tell me he
himself had seen the Sidhe was an old, perhaps half-crazed man I will
call Michael Barrett_ (_for I do not give the real names either of
those who are living or who have left living relatives_). _I had one
day asked an old woman who had been spinning wool for me, to be made
into frieze by our weavers, if she had ever seen the faery host. She
said, "I never saw them myself nor I don't think much of them; it is
God that takes us or leaves us as He will. But a neighbouring man was
standing in my door last night, and there's no day of the year he
doesn't hear them or feel them._
"_It's in his head I think it does be, and when he stood in the door
last night I said 'the wind does be always in my ears and the sound of
it never stops,' to make him think it was the same with him. But he
said, 'I hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of
them's after bringing out a little flute, and it's on it he's playing
to them.' Sure he has half his chimney pulled down, where they used to
be sitting and singing to him day and night. But those that are born
in the daytime never have power to see or hear them all their life._"
_Another neighbour talked to me of him and said, "One night he was
walking across the bog, and a lurcher, a bastard hound, with him. And
something ran across the path in the shape of a white cat, and the
lurcher went after him, and Barrett went home and to bed and left the
door open for the lurcher to come in. And in the morning they found it
there, lying under the table, and it paralysed and not able to stir.
But after a few months it got better, and one night they were crossing
the bog again and the same thing ran across their path, and this time
in the form of a deer. But the dog wouldn't follow it again, but shrank
behind Barrett until such time as it had passed by."_
_My spinning woman, coming another time with chickens to sell, said,
"Barrett is after telling me this morning that they were never so bad
as these last two nights. 'Friday fine-day' is what they say now, in
Irish, and he got no sleep till he threatened to throw dirty water
over them. The poor man, they do say they are mostly in his head now,
but sure he was a fine fresh man twenty years ago, the night he saw
them all linked in two lots, like slips of girls walking together.
And it was that very same day that Hession's little girl got a touch
from them. She was as fine a little girl as ever you saw, and her
mother sent her into Gort to do a message. And on the road she met a
red-haired woman, with long wisps of hair as bright as silver, and
she said, 'Where are you going and who are you?' 'I'm going to Gort
on a message,' says she, 'and I'm Mrs. Hession's daughter of such a
place.' Well, she came home, and that very night she got a pain in
her thigh, with respects to you, and she and her mother have half the
world walked since then, trying to get relief for her; but never a
bit better did she ever get. And no doubt at all but that's the very
same day Michael Barrett saw them in the field near Hession's house."_
_I asked Mr. Yeats to come with me to see the old man, and we walked
up the long narrow lane, from which we could see Slieve Echtge and
the Burren hills, to the little cabin with its broken chimney where
Michael Barrett told us of those that had disturbed his rest. This
was the first time we went together to enquire into the Hierarchy of
the Sidhe, of which by degrees we have gathered so much traditional
and original knowledge._
_As to old Barrett, I saw him from time to time, and he told me he was
still "tormented," and that "there is one that sat and sang b-b-b all
the night" til a few evenings before he had got a bit of rag and tied
it to a long stick, and hit at him when he came, and drove him out
with the rest. And in the next spring I heard he was ill, and that "on
Saturday he had been told by three he was to die." When I visited him I
found him better, and he said that since the warning on Saturday they
had left him alone "and the children that used to be playing about with
them have gone to some other place; found the house too cold for them
maybe." That was the last time I saw him; I am glad I had been able to
help him to more warmth and comfort before the end._
_I asked the old man's brother, a labourer, what he thought of
Michael's visions, but he made little of them. "Old he is, and it's
all in the brain the things he does be talking of. If it was a young
man told us of them we might believe him, but as to him, we pay no
attention to what he says at all. Those things are passed away, and
you--I beg your pardon for using that word--a person--hears no more
of them._
"_John Casey saw queer things? So he might. Them that travel by
night, why wouldn't they see queer things? But they'd see nothing if
they went to their bed quiet and regular._
"_Lydon that had the contract for the schoolhouse, we didn't mind much
what he said happened him the night he slept there alone, and in the
morning he couldn't stir across the floor from the place where he was.
But who knows? Maybe he had too much drink taken before he went to bed.
It was no wonder in the old times if there was signs and the like where
murder had been. But that's come to an end, and time for it._
"_There's another man, one Doran, has the same dreams and thoughts
as my brother, and he leaves pieces of silver on the wall; and when
they're took--it's the faeries! But myself I believe it's the boys do
be watching him._
"_No, these things are gone from the world, and there's not the same
dread of death there used to be. When we die we go to judgment, and
the places we'll get there, they won't be the same as what we had
here. The charitable, the kind-hearted, lady or gentleman, who'd
have a chance if they didn't? But the tyrants and schemers, what
chance will there be for the like of them?_"
"_You will have a good place there, Barrett, you and John Farrell.
You have done your work better than most of us through all your life,
and it's likely you'll be above us there._"
"_I did my work all my life, fair and honest every day; and now that
I'm old, I'll keep on the same track to the last. Like a horse that
might be racing at Galway racecourse or another, there might be eight
leaps or ten leaps he might be frightened at; but when he's once over
the last leap there's no fear of him. Why would he fail then, with
the winning post so near at hand?_"
_I was told by A Gatekeeper:_
There was once a family, the O'Hagans living in Dromore Hill, that now
belongs to you, well-to-do people. And one day the son that had been
at college was coming back, and there was a great dinner being made in
the house. And a girl was sent off to a spring by the forth to get some
water, and when she passed by the forth, she heard like the crying of
a child and some one said to it "Nothing given to us today, no milk
spilled for us, nothing laid out for us, but tonight we'll have what we
want and there will be waste and overflow." And that evening the young
man that was coming home got a fall from his horse, and was killed, and
all the grand things for the dinner were thrown about and went to loss.
So never begrudge the drop of milk you'll spill, or the bit you'll let
fall, it might turn all to good in the end.
* * * * *
One night at the house below it was just getting dark, and a man came
in the gate and to the door and came in and fell down on a chair.
And when I saw him shaking and his face so white, I thought it was
the _fear gortha_ (the hungry grass) he had walked on, and I called
to the wife to give him something to eat. But he would take nothing
but a cup of water with salt in it, and when he got better he told us
that when he was passing the big tree a man and a woman came out and
came along with him. They didn't speak but they walked on each side
of him, and then the woman seemed to go away, but the man's step was
with him till he came in at the gate.
* * * * *
There was a girl of the Heniffs brought the dinner one day to where
the men were working near where the river rises at Coole. And when she
had left the dinner she began to gather kippeens, and put them in her
shawl, and began to twist a rope of the ends of it to tie them up. And
at that moment she was taken up, and where she found herself was in
Galway, sitting in the Square. And she had no money, and she began to
think of the friends she had there and to say, "If they knew where I
was they'd give me money to bring me back." And in those days there was
a coach that ran from Galway to Kiltartan, and she found herself in it,
and it starting, and it left her safe and sound again at home.
_Mrs. Casey:_
There was a girl at Tyrone was bringing back some apples out of the
garden there. And on the road she met a man, and she thought that he
was one of the old St. Georges, and he asked where did she get the
apples, and bid her put them down in the road, and when she opened the
bundle they were all turned to eggs. So she put them up again and
brought them home, and when she and her mother looked at them in the
house they were beginning to crack, and the chickens to put their beaks
through them; so they put them in the corner of the kitchen for the
night, and in the morning when they went to look at them they were all
turned to apples again, but they thought best not to eat them.
_A Munster Woman:_
There was a woman I knew in County Limerick, near Foynes--Mrs.
Doolan, a nurse. She was called out of bed one night by a small man
with a lamp, and he led her to a place she had never seen before,
and into a house, and there was a woman in a bed and the child was
born after she came. And I always heard her say it was a faery she
attended. And the man led her back and gave her a sovereign, and bid
her change it before sunrise.
* * * * *
And I know a boy lived on Lord Dunraven's property, one of a family
of large farmers, and he had a settle-bed in the kitchen, and one
night he saw the kitchen full of them, and they making up the fire
and cooking, and they set out the table and ate at it.
* * * * *
I often heard they'd fight in November at the time of harvest, and
my father told me that in the year of the famine there was great
fighting heard up in the sky, and they were crying out, "Black
potatoes, black potatoes, we'll have them now." I suppose it was one
tribe of them fighting against another for them. And the oats in that
year were all black as well as the potatoes.
_A Clare Man:_
I saw them myself one night I was going to Ennis with a load of
straw. It was when we came to Bunnahow and the moon was shining, and
I was on the top of the load of straw, and I saw them in a field.
Just like jockeys they were, and riding horses, red clothes and caps
they had like a jockey would have, but they were small. They had a
screen of bushes put up in the field and some of the horses would
jump over it, and more of them would baulk when they'd be put to it.
The men that were with me didn't see them, they were walking in the
road, but they heard the sound of the horses.
_Another Clare Man:_
I heard a churning one time in the hill up by the road beyond. I was
coming back from Kinvara, and I heard it plain, no mistake about it.
I was sorry after I didn't call down and ask for a drink. Johnny Moon
did so, and got it. If you wish for a drink and they put it out for
you, it's no harm to take it, but if you refuse it, some harm might
happen to you. Johnny Henderson often told that he heard churning in
that spot, but I wouldn't believe the sun rising from him, he had so
many lies. But after that, I said, "Well, Johnny Henderson has told
the truth for once anyhow."
_A Miller:_
There was Tom Gantly one evening was going to Coole, and he heard a
step behind him and it followed him every bit of the way, till he got
to the hall door of Coole House; but he could see nothing.
He saw a gig one night on the road there by the wall and it full of
ladies laughing and grandly dressed--the best of hats and feathers
they had. And it turned and passed him a second time. And with the
fright he got, he never would pass that bit of road by himself again.
* * * * *
There were two men went one night to catch rabbits in that field
you have let now to Father Fahy, and the one next it. And when they
were standing there they heard a churning below. So they went on a
little way, and they heard a tambourine below, music going on and the
beating of a drum. So they moved a little farther on and then they
heard the sound of a fiddle from below. So they came home and caught
no rabbits that night.
_J. Creevy:_
May is a great time with these strangers, and November is a bad
month for them, and this month you're in now. I was trying the
other day in the town to get a marriage made up for a girl that was
seduced--and the family wouldn't have it this month because of that.
* * * * *
One night on the Kiltartan road I saw a flock of wool by the road
side, and I gave a kick at it and it didn't move, and then another
kick and it didn't move. So it can have been no natural thing.
* * * * *
And Lee told me that one night he saw red men riding through the
country and going over ditches.
* * * * *
One time I was sick in the bed and I heard music, and I sat up and
said: "Is it music I hear, or is it the squealing of pigs?" And they
all said they could hear nothing. But I could hear it for a long time,
and it the grandest I ever heard--and like a melodeon. And as to the
tune, I couldn't tell what it was but I know that I had heard it before.
_A Kerry Piper:_
One time in Kerry there was a coach coming after me and it passed
beside me, and I saw with it Mrs. Mitchell from the big house. And when
it came near the bridge it sank into the earth, and I saw no more of it.
* * * * *
And one time I was at Ennistymon I saw the ass-car and the woman and
the man out before me. I had a little ass of my own at that time,
and I followed them thinking to overtake them, but when I was in the
hollow they were on the hill, and when I was on the hill they were
in the hollow. And when they got near to the bridge that is over the
big river, they were not to be seen. For they can never cross over a
mering (boundary) that is a river.
_J. Fagan:_
One time I was at a party and I didn't leave the house till 2 o'clock
so you may think it was late in the night before I got home. And
after a while I looked back and I saw some one coming after me, a
little old woman about so high (3 feet) and she wearing a white cap
with a frilled border, and a red square and a red flannel petticoat.
I set off to run when I saw her, for at that time I had the run of
a hare, but when I got near home I looked back and she was after me
still. When I got inside the door I fell on my two knees. And it was
seven years before I got the better of that fright. And from that
time to this I never got the run again that I used to have.
* * * * *
There was a respectable woman, Mrs. Gaynor, living in Cloon, told me
that whenever she went out of Cloon in the direction of Fiddane in one
part of the road there was a woman sometimes met her, that she saw at
no other time, and every time she'd meet her she'd spit in her face.
There is a family at Tirneevan and they were having a wedding there.
And when it was going on, the wine ran short, and the spirits ran
out and they didn't know what to do to get more, Gort being two
miles away. And two or three strange people came in that they had
never seen before. And when they found what was wanting they said
that they'd go get it. And in a few minutes they were back with the
spirits and the wine--and no place to get it nearer than Gort.
* * * * *
There was a herd's house up at Burren that no one could live in. But
one Holland from Tirneevan said he'd take the place, and try how
would he get on there. So he went with his family, and the first
day the daughter made the place clean and swept it, and then she
went out for a can of milk. And when she was coming in the door, it
was knocked out of her hand and spilled over her. And that evening
when they sat down to their supper the door opened and eight or nine
people came in, and a red man among them. And they sat down and ate.
And then they showed Holland one side of the room, and bid him to
keep it always clean, and spring water in it.
_A Herd:_
There was a man woke about three o'clock one morning and he bade the
servant girl go down and make the fire and put on the potatoes, where
he had to be going out early. So she went down and there she saw one
of _them_ sitting by the hearth in the kitchen. So she ran upstairs
with the fright she got to where the man was in bed with his wife. So
then he went down himself, and he saw one of them sure enough sitting
by the fire and he asked "How did you come in?" And he said, "By the
lock-hole of the door." And the man said, "There's the pot full of
potatoes and you might as well have used a few of them." And he said,
"We have them used already; and you think now they are potatoes, but
when you put the pot down on the fire you'll see they are no more
than horse dung."
_Thomas Cloonan:_
One night my father was beyond on the other side of the lake, going
to watch an otter where the water goes away underground. And he heard
voices talking, and he thought one was the voice of Father Nagle
the parish priest of Kilbecanty, and the other the voice of Father
Hynes from Cloon that does be late out fishing for eels. And when he
came to where the voices were, there was no one at all in it. And
he went and sat in the cave, where the water goes under, and there
was a great noise like as if planks were being thrown down overhead.
And you may think how frightened he was when he never took off his
boots to cross the river, but run through it just as he was and never
stopped till he got to the house.
_Mrs. Cloonan:_
Two men I saw one time over in Inchy. I was sitting milking the cow
and she let a snore and I looked up and I saw the two men, small men,
and their hands and their feet the smallest ever I saw, and hats
turned back on their heads, but I did not see their faces. Then the
cow rose her foot, and I thought, "it will be worse for me if she'll
put her foot down on me," and I looked at her, and when I looked up
again they were gone. Mrs. Stafford told me it was not for me they
came, but for the cow, Blackberry, that died soon after.
* * * * *
There was a man in Gort was brought for a while to Tir-na-Og, that is
a part of heaven.
* * * * *
McGarrity that was coming back one night to the new house beyond
the lake saw two children, two little girls they were, standing
beside the house. Paddy told me that, and he said they came there to
foretell him he was stopping there too late.
_John Phelan:_
I never saw them nor felt them all my life, and I walking the place
night and day, except one time when for twelve nights I slept in the
little house beyond, in the kitchen garden where the apples were being
robbed that time because there was no one living at home. In the
night-time in the loft above my head I used to hear a scratching and
a scraping, and one time a plank that was above in it began to move
about. But I had no fear but stopped there, but I did not put off my
clothes nor stretch myself on the bed for twelve nights. They say that
one man that slept in the same house was found in the morning choked in
his bed and the door locked that they had to burst it in.
And in old Richard Gregory's time there was one Horan slept there,
and one night he ran out of it and out of the Gort gate and got no
leave to put his clothes on. But there's some can see those things
and more that can't, and I'm one of those that can't. Walking Coole
demesne I am these forty years, days and nights, and never met
anything worse than myself.
But one night standing by the vinery and the moon shining, on a
sudden a wind rose and shook the trees and rattled the glass and the
slates, and no wind before, and it stopped as sudden as it came. And
there were two bunches of grapes gone, and them that took them took
them by the chimney and no other way.
_James Hill:_
One night since I lived here I found late at night that a black jennet
I had at that time had strayed away. So I took a lantern and went to
look for him, and found him near Doherty's house at the bay. And when
I took him by the halter, I put the light out and led him home. But
surely as I walked there was a footstep behind me all the way home.
I never rightly believed in them till I met a priest about two years
ago coming out from the town that asked his way to Mrs. Canan's,
the time she was given over, and he told me that one time his horse
stopped and wouldn't pass the road, and the man that was driving
said, "I can't make him pass." And the priest said, "It will be the
worse for you, if I have to come down into the road." For he knew
some bad thing was there. And he told me the air is full of them. But
Father Dolan wouldn't talk of such things, very proud he is, and he
coming of no great stock.
* * * * *
One night I was driving outside Coole gate--close to where the
Ballinamantane farm begins. And the mare stopped, and I got off the
car to lead her, but she wouldn't go on. Two or three times I made
her start and she'd stop again. Something she must have seen that I
didn't see.
Beasts will sometimes see more than a man will. There were three
young chaps I knew went up by the river to hunt coneens one evening,
and they threw the dog over the wall. And when he was in the field he
gave a yelp and drew back as if something frightened him.
* * * * *
Another time my father was going early to some place, and my mother
had a noggin of turnips boiled for him the night before, to give him
something to eat before he'd start. So they got up very early and she
lighted the fire and put the oven hanging over it for to warm the
turnips, and then she went back to bed again. And my father was in a
hurry and he went out and brought in a sheaf of wheaten straw to put
under the oven, the way it would make a quick blaze. And when he came
in, the oven had been taken off the hook, and was put standing in the
hearth, and no mortal had been there. So he was afraid to stop, and
he went back to the bed, and till daybreak they could hear something
that was knocking against the pot. And the servant girl that was in
the house, she awoke and heard quick steps walking to the stable, and
the door of it giving a screech as if it was being opened. But in the
morning there was no sign there or of any harm being done to the pot.
Then the girl remembered that she had washed her feet the night
before, and had never thought to throw out the water. And it's well
known to wash the feet and not to throw the water out, brings some
harm--except you throw fire into the vessel it stands in.
_Simon Niland:_
Late one night I was out walking, and a gun in my hand, and I was
going down a little avenue of stones, and I heard after me the noise
of a horse's steps. So I stopped and sat down on the stile, for I
thought, the man that's with the horse, I'll have his company a bit
of the way. But the noise got louder like as if it was twenty horses
coming, and then I was knocked down, and I put out my foot to save
the gun from being broken. But when I got up there was no hurt on me
or on the gun, and the noise was all gone, and the place quiet. It
was maybe four year after that or six, I was walking the same path
with the priest and a few others, for a whale had come ashore, and
the jaw-bones of it were wanted to make the piers of a gate. And the
priest said to me, "Did you ever hear of the battle of Troy?" "I
didn't hear but I read about it," says I. "Well," says he, "there was
a man at that time called Simon, and they found that whenever he came
out with them to fight there was luck with them, and when he wasn't
with them, there'd be no luck. And that's why we put you in front of
us, to lead us on the path, you having the same name." So that put
it in my head, and I told him about what happened that night, and I
said, "Now would you believe that?" "I would," says he. "And what are
such things done by?" says I. "The fallen angels," he said, "for they
have power to do such things and to raise wind and storm, but yet
they have the hope of salvation at the last."
* * * * *
One clear night and the moon shining, I was walking home down this
road, and I had a strong dog at that time. And just here where you
stand he began to bark at something and he made rushes at it, and
made as if he was worrying it, but I could see nothing, though if it
had been even the size of a rat I must have seen it, the night was
so clear. And I had to leave him at last and heard him barking and I
was at the house-door before he came up with me.
* * * * *
I know a good many on the island have seen _those_, but they wouldn't
say what they are like to look at, for when they see them their
tongue gets like a stone.
_Mrs. Hynes of Slieve Echtge:_
When you see a blast of wind pass, pick a green rush and throw it
after them, and say, "God speed you." There they all are, and maybe
the _stroke lad_ at the end of them.
* * * * *
There was a neighbour of mine in late with me one night, and when he
was going home, just as he passed that little road you see, a big
man came over the wall in front of him, and was growing bigger as he
went, till he nearly fainted with the fright he got.
* * * * *
They can do everything. They can raise the wind, and draw the storm.
And to Drogheda they go for wine, for the best wine is in the cellars
there.
_An Islander:_
One night I and another lad were coming along the road, and the dog
began to fight, as if he was fighting another dog, but we could see
nothing and we called him off but he wouldn't come. And when we got
home he answered us, and he seemed as if tired out.
* * * * *
There was a strange woman came to this island one day and told some
of the women down below what would happen to them. And they didn't
believe her, she being a stranger, but since that time, it's all been
coming true.
_Mrs. Casey:_
I knew a woman that every night after she went to bed used to see
some sort of a shadow that used to appear to her. So she went to some
old woman, and she told her to sprinkle holy water about and to put a
blackthorn stick beside her bed. So she got the stick and put it there
and sprinkled the holy water, and it never appeared since then. Three
sorts of holy water she got, from the priest and from the friars and
from some blessed well. And she has them in three pint bottles in the
window, and she'd kill you if you so much as looked at them.
_A Fisherman:_
I never saw anything myself, but one day I was going over the fields
near Killeen, and it the quietest day of summer you ever saw. And
all of a sudden I heard a great noise like thunder, and a blast of
wind passed by me that laid the thistles low, and then all was quiet
again. It might be that they were changing, for they change from
place to place.
I would not give in to faeries myself but for one thing. There was a
little boy of my own, and there was a wedding going to be here, and
there was no bread in the house, and none to be had in Kilcolgan, and
I bade him to go to Kinvara for bread. I pulled out the ass-car for
him and he set out.
And from that time he was never the same, and now he is in the asylum
at Ballinasloe.
Did he tell what happened? He never told me anything, but he told a
neighbour that he met awful looking people on the road to Kinvara
just about midnight, and that whatever they did to him, he could
never recover it.
_A Carter:_
Often and often I heard things. A great shouting I heard one night
inside Coole demesne,--a hurling it must have been. Another time I
was passing at night-time, near Reed the weaver's, and there were
rocks thrown at me all along the road, but they did not touch me, and
I could not see any one thing there. But I never went that road again
at night-time.
It's said those that die are left in the place where they lived to
do their penance. Often and often when I came to that house below, I
felt knocks under the bed, and like some one walking over it.
Two men I know were going from Gort one night, and there near the
wall of the demesne they saw two men ploughing, and they asked one
another what could they be to be ploughing by night. And then they
saw that as they ploughed, the land was going away from them, and
they were gone themselves, and they saw them no more.
_An Old Woman who was Housekeeper to the Donnellans:_
I'll tell you how the fortune of the family began.
It was Tully O'Donnellan was riding home from Ballinasloe, or some
other place, and it was raining, and he came to a river that was in
flood, and there used to be no bridges in those times. And when he
was going to ride through the river, he saw the _greasa_ leprechaun
on the bank, and he offered him a lift, and he stooped down and
lifted him up behind him on the horse.
And when he got near where the castle was, he saw it in flames before
him. And the leprechaun said, "Don't fret after it but build a new
castle in the place I'll show you, about a stone's throw from the
old one." "I have no money to do that," said Tully Donnellan. "Never
mind that," said the leprechaun, "but do as I bid you, and you'll
have plenty." So he did as he bade him, and the morning after he went
to live in the new castle, when he went into that room that has the
stone with his name on it now, it was full up of gold, and you could
be turning it like you'd turn potatoes into a shovel. And when the
children would go into the room with their father and mother, the
nurses would put bits of wax on their shoes, the way bits of the gold
would stick to them. And they had great riches and smothered the world
with it, and they used to shoe their horses with silver. It was in
racing they ran through it, and keeping hounds and horses and horns.
_Old Pegs Kelly:_
I seen the Sheogue but once, and that was five or six years ago, and
I walking the railway where I was looking after my little hens that
do be straying. And I saw them coming along, and in a minute I was in
the middle of them. Shavings, and shavings, and shavings going along
the road as fast as they could go. And I knew there was no shavings
to be seen this many year, since the stakes were made for the railway
down at Nolan's, and the carpenter that made them dead, and the shop
where he made them picked clean. And I knew well they were the horses
the Sheogue did be riding. But some that saw them said they looked
like bits of paper. And I threw three stones after them and I heard
them cry out as they went. And that night the roof was swept off Tom
Dermot's house in Ryanrush and haystacks blown down. And John Brady's
daughter that was daft those many years was taken, and Tom Horan's
little girl that was picking potatoes, she and her brothers together.
She turned black all of a minute and three days after, she was dead.
That's the only time I seen them, and that I never may again, for
believe me that time I had my enough, thinking as I did that I hadn't
more than three minutes to live.
_A Herd's Wife:_
Martin's new wife is a fine big woman, if she is lucky. But it's not a
lucky house. That's what happened the last wife that lost her baby and
died. William Martin knows well _they_ are in it, but he is a dark man
and would say nothing. I saw them myself about the house one time, and
I met one on the forth going through the fields; he had the appearance
of a man in his clothes. And sometimes when I look over at Martin's
house there is a very dark look like a dark cloud over it and around it.
_The other Army Man:_
The faeries are all fallen angels. Father Folan told us from the
altar that they're as thick as the sands of the sea all about us,
and they tempt poor mortals. But as for carrying away women and the
like, there's many that says so, but they have no proof. But you have
only to bid them begone and they will go. One night myself I was
after walking back from Kinvara, and down by the wood beyond I felt
one coming beside me, and I could feel the horse that he was riding
on and the way that he lifted his legs, but they didn't make a sound
like the hoofs of a horse. So I stopped and turned around and said
very loud "Be off!" And he went and never troubled me after. And I
knew a man that was dying, and one came up on his bed and he cried
out to it, "Get out of that, you unnatural animal!" And it left him.
There's a priest I heard of that was looking along the ground like as
if he was hunting for something, and a voice said to him "If you want
to see them you'll see enough of them," and his eyes were opened and
he saw the ground thick with them. Singing they do be sometimes and
dancing, but all the time they have the cloven foot.
Fallen angels they are, and after they fell God said, "Let there be
Hell, and there it was in a moment"--("God save us! It's a pity He said
that word and there might have been no Hell today" _murmurs the wife_).
And then He asked the devil what would he take for the souls of all the
people. And the devil said nothing would satisfy him but the blood of a
Virgin's Son. So he got that and then the gates of Hell were opened.
_The Wife:_
I never seen anything, although one night I was out after a cow till
2 o'clock in the morning and old Gantly told me he wondered at me to
be out in this place, by the wood near the white gate where he saw a
thing himself one night passing. But it's only them that's living in
mortal sin can see such things, that's so Thomas, whatever you may
say. But your ladyship's own place is middling free from them, but
Ratlin's full of them.
And there's many say they saw the banshee, and that if she heard you
singing loud, she'd be very apt to bring you away with her.
_A Piper:_
There was an old priest I knew--Father McManus--and when he would go
walking in the green lawn before the house, his man, Keary, would go
with him, and he carrying three sticks. And after a while the priest
would say, "_Cur do maide_"--Fire your stick--as far as you can, and
he would throw it. And he would say the same thing a second and a
third time, and after that he would say, "We have no more to protect
us now," and he would go in. And another priest I was talking to the
other day was telling me they are between earth and air and the grass
is full of them.
_Mrs. Casey:_
There was a boy I knew at Tyrone was a great card player. And one
night about 10 o'clock he was coming home from a party, and he had
the cards in his hands and he shuffling them as he went along. And
presently he saw a man before him on the road, and the man stopped
till he came up, and when he saw the cards, he says "Stop here and
I'll have a game with you," for the moon was shining bright. So the
boy sat down, and the stranger asked him had he any money, and he
said he had five shillings after the night's play. "Well," says the
man, "we'll play the first game for half-a-crown." So they sat down
and put out the money on a flagstone that was much like a table, and
they began to play, and the first game was won by the stranger. "Well
now," says he, "we'll have another." So the boy began to shuffle the
cards, but as he did, one card dropped on the ground, and he stooped
down for it, and when he did, he saw the man's feet that were partly
under the flagstone, and they were like the feet of a cow. So with
the fright he got, he jumped up and began to run and never stopped
till he got inside his house and had the door shut. And when he had
been sitting there a few minutes, a knock came to the door, and he
heard the voice of the stranger say, "It's well for you you ran away
when you did, or you'd be where I am now." And he heard no more; it
was the boy himself told me this.
I hear them in this house ever since the first night I came, in the
kitchen, when all are in bed. Footsteps, I wouldn't think so much of,
but scraping the potatoes, that's another thing.
* * * * *
A daughter I had that went to America died there, and the brother
that came back told me that he was with her, and she going, and
surely they all heard the jennet coming to the door, and when they
opened it, there was nothing there, and many people standing and
waiting about it. I knew a woman died beyond in Boher and left a
house full of children and the night she died there was a light seen
in the sick house.
* * * * *
To leave a few cold potatoes, the first of them, outside, you should
surely do it, and not to leave the house without spring water. I knew
a boy that was sleeping up in the loft of a house and one night they
had forgotten to leave water within in the kitchen. And about midnight
he awoke and he saw through a hole in the loft two women, and one of
them just after having a baby. And they said, "What way will we wash
the child, and no water here; we must take the pan of milk down from
the shelf." So the boy said out loud the way they'd hear him, "I must
go for spring water. I forgot to leave it below." So he went and got
it and left it there, and let on not to see them. And--for I forget
what time after that--there was no morning he put his clothes on but
he'd find a half-crown in his boot. To do you harm? No, but the best of
neighbours they are, if you don't chance to offend them.
_A Schoolmaster:_
In Donegal one night some of the people were at a still in the
mountains, and on a sudden they heard a shot fired, and they thought
it was a signal given to the police, and they made home to the
village. And all the night they could hear like the tramp of horses
and of police and the noise of cars passing by, but nothing could be
seen. And next day the police came in earnest, and searched about
the place where they had been at work at the still, but no one was
there and they found nothing. So they knew it was a warning they were
after being given.
_John Madden:_
One day old Fogarty of Clough was cutting rods in Coole with a
black-handled knife, and he put it in his pocket, and presently he
felt for it and it was gone. But when he went home and went into the
house, there was the knife lying on the table.
* * * * *
My wife's brother was on a cock of hay in that field beyond one time,
and he sat down to rest and he saw them hurling in red caps and blue,
and a crowd looking in at them. But he said nothing to the men that
were with him. They are mostly in forths and lonesome places.
_An old man, Kelleher, living in the Wicklow Mountains, told me and
W. B. Yeats and Miss Pollexfen:_
I often saw them when I had my eyesight; one time they came about me,
shouting and laughing and there were spouts of water all around me.
And I thought that I was coming home, but I was not on the right path
and couldn't find it and went wandering about, but at last one of
them said, "Good-evening, Kelleher," and they went away, and then in
a moment I saw where I was by the stile. They were very small, like
little boys and girls, and had red caps.
I always saw them like that, but they were bigger at the butt of the
river; they go along the course of the rivers. Another time they came
about me playing music and I didn't know where I was going, and at
last one of them said the same way, "Good evening, Kelleher," and I
knew that I was at the gate of the College; it is the sweetest music
and the best that can be heard, like melodeons and fifes and whistles
and every sort.
_Mrs. Kelleher says_: I often hear that music too, I hear them
playing drums.
_K._: We had one of them in the house for a while, it was when I
was living up at Ticnock, and it was just after I married that
woman there that was a nice slip of a girl at that time. It was in
the winter and there was snow on the ground, and I saw one of them
outside, and I brought him in and put him on the dresser, and he
stopped in the house for a while, for about a week.
_Mrs. K._: It was more than that, it was two or three weeks.
_K._: Ah! maybe it was--I'm not sure. He was about fifteen inches high.
He was very friendly. It is likely he slept on the dresser at night.
When the boys at the public-house were full of porter, they used to
come to the house to look at him, and they would laugh to see him but
I never let them hurt him. They said I would be made up, that he would
bring me some riches, but I never got them. We had a cage here, I wish
I had put him in it, I might have kept him till I was made up.
_Mrs. K._: It was a cage we had for a thrush. We thought of putting
him into it, but he would not have been able to stand in it.
_K._: I'm sorry I didn't keep him--I thought sometimes to bring him
into Dublin to sell him.
_Mrs. K._: You wouldn't have got him there.
_K._: One day I saw another of the kind not far from the house, but
more like a girl and the clothes greyer than his clothes, that were
red. And that evening when I was sitting beside the fire with the
Missus I told her about it, and the little lad that was sitting on
the dresser called out, "That's Geoffrey-a-wee that's coming for
me," and he jumped down and went out of the door and I never saw him
again. I thought it was a girl I saw, but Geoffrey wouldn't be the
name of a girl, would it?
He had never spoken before that time. Somehow I think that he liked
me better than the Missus. I used to feed him with bread and milk.
_Mrs. K._: I was afraid of him--I was afraid to go near him, I
thought he might scratch my eyes out--I used to leave bread and milk
for him but I would go away while he was eating it.
_K._: I used to feed him with a spoon, I would put the spoon to his
mouth.
_Mrs. K._: He was fresh-looking at the first, but after a while he
got an old look, a sort of wrinkled look.
_K._: He was fresh-looking enough, he had a hardy look.
_Mrs. K._: He was wearing a red cap and a little red cloth skirt.
_K._: Just for the world like a Highlander.
_Mrs. K._: He had a little short coat above that; it was checked and
trousers under the skirt and long stockings all red. And as to his
shoes, they were tanned, and you could hardly see the soles of them,
the sole of his foot was like a baby's.
_K._: The time I lost my sight, it was a Thursday evening, and I was
walking through the fields. I went to bed that night, and when I rose
up in the morning, the sight was gone. The boys said it was likely I
had walked on one of their paths. Those small little paths you see
through the fields are made by _them_.
They are very often in the quarries; they have great fun up there,
and about Peacock Well. The Peacock Well was blessed by a saint, and
another well near, that cures the headache.
I saw one time a big grey bird about the cow-house, and I went to a
comrade-boy and asked him to come and to help me to catch it, but
when we came back it was gone. It was very strange-looking and I
thought that it had a head like a man.
_Old Manning:_
I never saw them except what I told you, the dog fighting, and I
heard the horses, and at that same time I saw smoke coming out of
the ground near Foley's house at Corker, by the gate.
My mother lived for twenty years in Coole, and she often told me that
when she'd pass Shanwalla hill there would people come out and meet
her and--with respects to you--they'd spit in her face.
Faeries of course there are and there's many poor souls doing their
penance, and how do we know where they may be doing it?
_A Farmer:_
I might not believe myself there are such things but for what
happened not long after I was married when my first little girl
was but a week old. I had gone up to Ballybrit to tie some sheep
and put fetters on them, and I was waiting for Haverty to come and
help me tie them. The baby was a little unwell that day but I was
not uneasy about her. But while I was waiting for Haverty, a blast
of wind came through the field and I heard a voice say quite clear
out of it "Katie is gone." That was the little one, we had called
her Catherine, but though she wasn't a week in the world, we had it
shortened already to Kate. And sure enough, the child got worse, and
we attended her through the night, and before daybreak she was gone.
_An Army Man:_
Two nights ago a travelling man came and knocked at John Hanlon's
house at 11 o'clock, where he saw a light in the window and he asked
would there be any one out hurling so late as that. For in coming by
the field beyond the chapel he saw it full of people, some on horses,
and hurling going on, and they were all dressed like soldiers, and
you would hear their swords clinking as they ran. And he was not sure
were they faeries till he asked John Hanlon was it the custom of
people in this country to go hurling so late as that. But that was
always a great field for them. From eleven to two, that is the time
they have for play, but they must go away before the cock crows. And
the cock will crow sometimes as early as 1 o'clock, a right one.
* * * * *
It was in the night that Christ our Saviour rose there were some Jews
sitting around the fire, and a cock boiling in the pot. And one of
them said, "He'll never rise again until that cock crows." And the
cock rose out of the pot and crowed, and he that was speaking got
scalded with the water that was splashed about.
_A Connemara Man:_
One night I was sleeping over there by the dresser and I heard them
("Would you say the day of the week," _says the old woman_. "It's
Thursday," said I. "Thank you," _says the old man, and goes on_)--I
heard them thick all about the house--but what they were saying I
couldn't know.
_The Old Woman:_
It was my uncle that was away at nights and knew the time his horse
fell in the ditch, and he out at sea. And another day he was working
at the bridge and he said, "Before this day is over, a man will be
killed here." And so it happened, and a man was killed there before
12 o'clock. He was in here one day with me, and I said, "I don't give
in to you being away and such things." And he says: "Um, Um, Um,"
three times, and then he says, "May your own living be long." We had
a horse, the grandest from this to Galway, had a foal when in this
place--and before long, both horse and foal died. And I often can
hear them galloping round the house, both horse and foal. And I not
the only one, but many in the village even hear them too.
_Young Mrs. Phelan:_
Often I saw a light in the wood at Derreen, above Ballyturn. It would
rise high over the trees going round and round. I'd see it maybe for
fifteen minutes at a time, and then it would fall like a lamp.
* * * * *
In the month of May is their chief time for changing, and it's then
there's blowing away of hay and such things and great disturbance.
_A Mayo Man:_
One time I was led astray in a town, in Golden Hill in Staffordshire. I
was in the streets and I didn't know what way to turn all of a sudden,
and every street looked like a wood before me, and so I went on until
I met some man I knew, and I asked him where I was, and I went in, and
stayed drinking with the others till 10 o'clock and I went home sober.
I saw the white rabbit too at Golden Hill. (_One of the other men
puts in_, "There is always a white rabbit seen there, that turns into
a woman before any misfortune happens, such as an accident.") I was
walking along the road, and it ran beside me, and then I saw a woman in
white before me on the road, and when I got to her, she was gone. And
that evening a woman in a house near by fell dead on her own doorstep.
Another time near this, I was passing the barn where Johnny Rafferty
the carpenter and his son used to be working, but it was shut and
locked and no one in it. But when I came near it, I felt as if I was
walking on wood, and my hair stood up on my head, and I heard the
noise of tools, and hammering and sawing in it.
_Pete Heffernan:_
Old Doran told me that he was near Castle Hacket one time and saw
them having a fair, buying and selling for all the world like
ourselves, common people. But you or I or fifty others might have
been there like him and not seen them. It's only them that are born
at midnight that has the second sight.
Fallen angels, they say they are. And they'd do more harm than what
they do but for the hope they have that some day they may get to
heaven. Very small they are, and go into one another so that what you
see might only be a sort of a little bundle. But to leave a couple of
cold potatoes about at night one should always do it, and to sweep
the hearth clean. Who knows when they might want to come in and warm
themselves.
Not to keep the water you wash your feet in in the house at night,
not to throw it out of the door where it might go over them, but to
take it a bit away from the house, and if by any means you can, to
keep a bit of light burning at night, if you mind these three things
you'll never be troubled with them.
That woman of mine was going to Mass one day early and she met a small
little man, and him with a book in his hand. "Where are you going?"
says he. "To the chapel beyond," says she. "Well," says he, "you'd
better take care not to be coming out at this hour and disturbing
people," says he. And when she got into the chapel she saw him no more.
_An Old Woman with Oysters from Tyrone:_
Oh, I wouldn't believe in the faeries, but it's no harm to believe in
fallen angels!
_Mrs. Day:_
My own sons are all for education and read all books and they
wouldn't believe now in the stories the old people used to tell. But
I know one Finnegan and his wife that went to Esserkelly churchyard
to cry over her brother that was dead. And all of a sudden there
came a pelt of a stone against the wall of the old church and no one
there. And they never went again, and they had no business to be
crying him and it not a funeral.
Francis, my son that's away now, he was out one morning before the
daybreak to look at a white heifer in the field. And there he saw a
little old woman, and she in a red cloak--crying, crying, crying. But
he wouldn't have seen that if he had kept to natural hours.
There were three girls near your place, and they went out one time
to gather cow-dung for firing. And they were sitting beside a small
little hill, and while they were there, they heard a noise of churning,
churning, in the ground beneath them. And as they listened, all of a
minute, there was a naggin of milk standing beside them. And the girl
that saw it first said, "I'll not drink of it lest they might get power
over me." But the other girl said, "I'll bring it home and drink it."
And she began to ridicule them. And because of she ridiculing them and
not believing in them, that night in bed she was severely beaten so
that she wasn't the better of it for a long time.
* * * * *
Often they'll upset a cart in the middle of the road, when there's no
stone nor anything to upset it. And my father told me that sometimes
after he had made the hay up into cocks, and on a day without a
breath of wind, they'd find it all in the next field lying in wisps.
One time too the cart he was driving went over a leprechaun--and the
old woman in the cart had like to faint.
_Mr. Hosty of Slieve Echtge:_
I never would have believed the shadow of a soul could have power,
till that hurling match I saw that I told you about.
* * * * *
It was in the old time it happened, that there was war in heaven. He
that was called the brightest of the angels raised himself up against
God. And when they were all to be thrown out, St. Michael spoke up
for them for he saw that when the heavens were weeded out they'd be
left without company. So they were stopped in the falling, in the air
and in the earth and in the sea. And they are about us sure enough,
and whenever they'll be saved I don't know, but it is not for us to
say what God will do in the end.
I often heard that our winter is their summer--sure they must have
some time for setting their potatoes and their oats. But I remember a
very old man used to say when he saw the potatoes black, that it was
to them they were gone. "Sure" he used to say, "the other world must
have its way of living as well as ourselves."
_Mrs. Casey:_
Dolan I was talking to the other day, and I asked him if faeries used
not to be there. And he said, "They're in it yet. There where you're
standing, they were singing and dancing a few nights ago. And the
same evening I saw two women down by the lake, and I thought it was
the ladies from the house gone out for a walk, but when I came near,
it was two strange women I saw, sitting there by the lake, and their
wings came, and they vanished into the air."
_John Phelan:_
I was cutting trees in Inchy one time. And at 8 o'clock one morning
when I got there, I saw a girl picking nuts with her hair hanging
down over her shoulders, brown hair, and she had a good clean face
and was tall and nothing on her head, and her dress was no way gaudy,
but simple. And when she felt me coming, she gathered herself up and
was gone as if the earth had swallowed her up. And I followed her
and looked for her, but I never could see her again from that day to
this, never again.
_Mary Shannon:_
There was a herd's house near Loughrea that had a bad name; and a
strange woman came in one time and told the woman of the house that
she must never throw dirty water out of the back-door. "For," said
she, "if you had clean linen hanging there on a line before the fire,
how would you like any one to come in and to throw dirty water over
it?" And she bid her leave food always on the dresser. "For," said
she, "wherever you leave it we'll be able to find it." And she told
how they often went into Loughrea to buy things, and provisions,
and would look like any other person, and never be known, for they
can make themselves visible or invisible as they like. You might
be talking to one of them and never know she was different from
another. At our place there used to be a good many of these people
about, these Ingentry women or women from the North we sometimes call
them. There was one came into the house one day and told my mother
she didn't get all her butter in the milk. And she told her the
servant-girl was stealing and hiding some of it, for in these days
servants were cheap and we kept a couple; you'd get them for about
five shillings a quarter. And my mother went to look, and then she
went out of the house, and went off in a minute in a blast. And the
husband that was coming into the house, he never saw her at all, and
she going out of the door.
Sunset is a bad hour, and just before sunrise in the morning, and
about 12 o'clock in the day, it's best not to be too busy or going
about too much.
_An Aran Man:_
Sometimes they travel like a cloud, or like a storm. One day I was
setting out the manure in my own garden and they came and rolled it
in a heap and tossed it over the wall, and carried it out to sea
beyond the lighthouse.
_Mr. Finnerty:_
People say two days of the week, they name two days. Some say Thursday,
and some say whatever day it is, and the day before it, and then they
can't be heard. In the village beyond, there were a good many people in
a house one night, and lights in it, and talking, and of a sudden some
one opened the door--and there outside and round the house _they_ were
listening to them--and when the door was open they were all seen, and
made off as thick as crows to the forth near the Burren hills.
* * * * *
There was one Ward was walking one night near Castle Taylor, and in
that big field that's near the corner where Burke was murdered he saw
a big fire, and a lot of people round about it, and among them was a
girl he used to know that had died.
* * * * *
Last week in that field beyond there, the hay was all taken up, and
turned into the next field in wisps.
* * * * *
You must put the potatoes out for them before they are put on the
table, for they would not touch them if they had been touched by
common persons.
* * * * *
And I saw Horan that had the orchard here bought run to our house in
the middle of the night naked with nothing on but his trousers, where
he was after being beat out of the house in the kitchen garden.
Every night when he was going to bed there did a knocking come in the
loft over his head, but he gave no attention to it. But a great storm
came and a great lot of the apples was blown down and he gathered
them up and filled the loft with them, thinking when he showed them
to get compensation. And that is the night he was beat out of bed.
And John Phelan knows well what things used to be in that house.
_John Creevy:_
My father? Yes indeed he saw many things, and I tell you a thing he
told me, and there's no doubt in the earthly world about it. It was
when they lived at Inchy they came over here one time for to settle
a marriage for Murty Delvin's aunt. And when they had the business
settled, they were going home again at dead of night. And a man was
after getting married that day, one Delane from beyond Kilmacduagh,
and the drag was after passing the road with him and his party going
home. And all of a minute the road was filled with men on horses
riding along, so that my father had to take shelter in Delane's
big haggard by the roadside. And he heard the horsemen calling on
Delane's name. And twenty-one days after, Delane lay dead.
There's no doubt at all about the truth of that, and they were no
riders belonging to this world that were on those horses.
_Thomas Brown:_
There was a woman walking in the road that had a young child at home,
and she met a very old man, having a baby in his arms. And he asked
would she give it a drop of breast-milk. So she did, and gave it a
drink. And the old man said: "It's well for you that you did that, for
you saved your cow by it. But tomorrow look over the wall into the
fields of the rich man that lives beyond the boundary, and you'll see
that one of his was taken in the place of yours." And so it happened.
In the old times there used to be many stories of such things, half
the world seemed to be on the _other side_.
I used not to believe in them myself, until one night I heard them
hurling. I was coming home from town with Jamsie Flann; we were not
drunk but we were hearty. Coming along the road beyond we heard them
hurling in the field beside us. We could see nothing but we'd hear
them hit the ball, and it fly past us like the lightning, so quick,
and when they hit the goal, we heard a moan--"Oh! ah!"--that was
all. But after we went a little way we sat down by a little hill to
rest, and there we heard a thousand voices talking. What they said,
we couldn't understand, or the language, but we knew that it was one
side triumphing over the other.
* * * * *
But the nights are queer--surely they are queer by sea or by land.
There was a friend of mine told me he was out visiting one night,
and coming home across the fields he came into a great crowd of them.
They did him no harm, and among them he saw a great many he knew,
that were dead, five or six out of our own village. And he was in his
bed for two months after that, and he told the priest of it. He said
he couldn't understand the talk, it was like the hissing of geese,
and there was one very big man, that seemed the master of them, and
his talk was like you'll hear in a barrel when it's being rolled.
There's a hill, Cruach-na-Sheogue down by the sea, and many have seen
them there dancing in the moonlight.
There was a man told me he was passing near it one night, and the
walls on each side of the road were all covered with people sitting
on them, and he walked between, and they said nothing to him. And he
knew many among them that were dead before that. Is it only the young
go there? Ah, how do we know what use they may have for the old as
well as for the young?
There are but few in these days that die right. The priests know
about this more than we do, but they don't like to be talking of
_them_ because they might be too big in our minds.
* * * * *
They are just the same in America as they are here, and my sister
that came home told me they were, and the women that do cures, just
like the woman at Clifden, or that woman you know of.
There was one she went to out there, and when you'd come in to ask a
cure she'd be lulled into a sleep, and when she woke she'd give the
cure. _Away_ she was while the sleep lasted.
_The Spinning Woman:_
No, I never seen them myself, and I born and bred in the same village
as Michael Barrett. But the old woman that lives with me, she does
be telling me that before she came to this part she was going home
one night, where she was tending a girl that was sick, and she had to
cross a hill forth. And when she came to it, she saw a man on a white
horse, and he got to the house before her, and the horse stopped at
the back-door. And when she got there and went in, sure enough the
girl was gone.
I never saw anything myself, but one night I was passing the boreen
near Kinvara, and a tall man with a tall hat and a long coat came out
of it. He didn't follow me, but he looked at me for a while, and then
he went away.
* * * * *
And one time I saw the leprechaun. It's when I was a young woman,
and there was black frieze wanting at Ballylee, and in those days
they all thought there could no black frieze be spun without sending
for me. So I was coming home late in the evening, and there I saw
him sitting by the side of the road, in a hollow between two ridges.
He was very small, about the height of my knee, and wearing a red
jacket, and he went out of that so soon as he saw me. I knew nothing
about him at that time. The boys say if I'd got a hold of his purse
I'd be rich for ever. And they say he should have been making boots;
but he was more in dread of me than I of him, and had his instruments
gathered up and away with him in one second.
* * * * *
There used to be a lot of things seen, but someway the young people
go abroad less at night, and I'm thinking the souls of some of
_those_ may be delivered by this time.
* * * * *
There was a boy looked out of the door, and he saw a woman milking
the cow. But after, when he went to milk her, he found as much milk
as ever there was.
_Mrs. Phelan:_
There was a woman at Kilbecanty was out one evening and she saw a
woman dressed in white come after her, and when she looked again she
had disappeared into a hole in the wall. Small she must have grown
to get into that. And for eleven days after that, she saw the same
appearance, and after eleven days she died.
* * * * *
There was another woman lived at Kilbecanty, just beside the
churchyard, you can see the house yet. And one day she found a plate
of food put in at the door, the best of food, meat and other things.
So she eat it and the next day the same thing happened. And she told
a neighbouring woman about it, and she left her door open, and a
plate of food was left in to her that night. But when she saw it she
was afraid to eat it, but took it and threw it out. And the next day
she died. But the woman that eat the food, nothing happened to her.
* * * * *
There was one Halloran took that farm on the road beyond one time,
but he locked the house up, not meaning to go and live in it yet a
while, and he kept the key in his pocket. But one night late he was
coming by and he saw a light in the window and looked in, and he saw
a woman sitting by a fire she was after lighting. So he ran away and
never went to live in the house after.
One night myself coming back from Kelly's I saw a man by the side of
the road, and I knew him to be one Cuniff that had died a year before.
There were two men stealing apples in a garden, and when they tried
to get out there was a soldier at the door with a sword in his hand.
And at the door there he was still before them; so they had to leave
the two bags of apples behind.
_W. Sullivan:_
One night myself I was driving the jennet I had at that time to
Cappagh and I went past a place one Halvey had bought and I saw a man
having a white front to his shirt standing by the wall, and I said
to myself, "Halvey is minding this place well," and I went on, and I
saw the man following me, and the jennet let a roar and kicked at me,
and at that time we passed a stile, and I saw him no more.
_Mrs. Barrett:_
I don't know did old Michael see anything or was it in his head. But
James, the brother that died, told me one time that he was crossing
the way beyond from Brennan's, where the stones are. And there he saw
a hurling going on. He never saw a field so full before. And he stood
and watched them and wasn't a bit frightened, but the dog that was
with him shrank between his legs and stopped there.
* * * * *
And my father told me that one time he was stopping with my uncle, up
there near Mrs. Quaid's, in a house that's pulled down since. And he
woke up and saw the night so bright that he went out. And there he
saw a hurling going on, and they had boots like soldiers and were all
shining with the brightness of the night.
And Micky Smith, God rest his soul, saw them at midday passing in the
air above Cahir, as thick as birds.
_A Gate-keeper:_
Niland that met the coach that time and saw them other times, he told
me that there were two sets among them. The one handsome and tall
and like the gentry; the others more like ourselves, he said, and
short and wide, and the body starting out in front, and wide belts
about their waists. Only the women he saw, and they were wearing
white caps with borders, and their hair in curls over the forehead
and check aprons and plaid shawls. They are the spiteful ones that
would do you a mischief, and others that are like the gentry would do
nothing but to laugh and criticize you.
One night myself I was outside Loughrea on the road, about 1 o'clock
in the morning and the moon was shining. And I saw a lady, a true lady
she was, dressed in a sort of a ball dress, white and short in the
skirt, and off the shoulders. And she had long stockings and dancing
shoes with short uppers. And she had a long thin face, and a cap on her
head with frills, and every one of the frills was the breadth of my six
fingers. As to flowers or such things, I didn't notice, for I was more
fixed in looking at the cap. I suppose they wore them at balls in some
ancient times. I followed her a bit, and then she crossed the road to
Johnny Flanigan the joiner's house, that had a gate with piers. And I
went across after her, to have a better view, and when she got to the
pier she shrank into it and there was nothing left.
* * * * *
Johnny Kelly that lives in Loughrea was over here one evening, where
he had some cattle on the land at Coole. And where the river goes
away, he saw two ladies sitting, ladies he thought them to be, and
they had long dresses. And they rose up and went on to that hole
where the water is and the trees. And there all of a sudden they rose
a storm and went up in it, with a sort of a roar or a cry and passed
away through the air.
And I was in the house with my wife and I heard the cry, and I thought
it might be some drunken man going home, and it about 10 o'clock in the
evening. And I went to the door, and presently Kelly came in and you'd
have thought him a drunken man, walking and shaking as he did with the
fright he got seeing them going off away in the storm.
_Mrs. Casey:_
I went over to see Kate Cloran the other day, knowing that she had
seen some of these things. And she told me that she was led astray
by them one time--a great lot of them, they were dressed in white
blouses and black skirts and some of them had crimson mantles, but
none of them had any covering on their head, and they had all golden
hair and were more beautiful than any one she had ever seen.
And one night she met the coach and four, and it was full of ladies,
letting the window up and down and laughing out at her. They had
golden hair, or it looked so with the lights. They were dressed in
white, and there were bunches of flowers about the horses' heads.
Roses, chiefly, some pink and some blue. The coachmen were strange
looking, you could not say if they were men or women--and their
clothes were more like country clothes. They kept their heads down
that she could not see their faces, but those in the carriage had
long faces, and thin, and long noses.
_Mike Martin:_
They are of the same size as we are. People only call them diminutive
because they are made so when they're sent on certain errands.
There was a man of Ardrahan used to see many things. But he lost his
eyesight after. It often happens that those that see these things
lose their earthly sight.
The coach and four is seen by many. It appears in different forms, but
there is always the same woman in it. Handsome I believe she is, and
white; and there she will always be seen till the end of the world.
It's best to be neighbourly with them anyway--best to be neighbourly.
* * * * *
There was a woman woke one night and she saw two women by the fire, and
they came over and tried to take away her baby. But she held him and
she nudged her husband with her arm, but he was fast asleep. And they
tried him again, and all she could do wouldn't waken the husband, but
still she had the baby tight, and she called out a curse in the devil's
name. So then they went away, for they don't like cursing.
One night coming home from Madden's where I was making frames with him,
I began to tremble and to shake, but I could see nothing. And at night
there came a knocking at the window, and the dog I had that would fight
any dog in Ireland began to shrink to the wall and wouldn't come out.
And I looked out the door and saw him. Little clothes he had on, but on
his head a quarter cap, and a sort of a bawneen about him. And I would
have followed him, but the rest wouldn't let me.
* * * * *
Another time I was crossing over the stile behind Kiltartan chapel into
Coole, and others along with me. And a great blast of wind came, and
two trees were bent and broken and fell into the river, and the splash
of water out of it went up to the skies. And those that were with me
saw many figures, but myself I only saw one, sitting there by the bank
where the trees fell, dark clothes he had, and he was headless.
* * * * *
They can take all shapes and it's said a pig is the worst, but I
believe if you take no notice of them and bless yourself as they
pass, they'll do you no harm at all.
There were two men walking by a forth that's beyond Cloon, and one of
them must have been in it at some time, for he told the other to look
through his arm, and when he looked he could see thousands of people
about walking and driving, and ladies and gentry among them.
There was a man in Cloon and he was very religious and very devout
and he didn't believe in anything. But one day he was at the
Punch-bowl out on the Ennis road, and there he saw two coaches coming
through the thick wood and they full of people and of ladies, and
they went in to the bushes on the other side. And since he saw that
he'd swear to _them_ being there.
* * * * *
There was a woman living over near Tirneevan, and one morning three
men came galloping up on three horses, and they stopped at the door
and tied up the horses and walked in, and they strangers. And the
woman put the tongs over the cradle where the baby was sleeping, for
that is a _pishogue_. And when they saw the tongs, they looked at one
another and laughed, but they did him no harm, but pulled out the
table and sat down and played cards for a while, and went away again.
* * * * *
But if they're well treated, and if you know how to humour them,
they're the best of neighbours.
* * * * *
There was a woman seen not long ago, all in white, and she standing
in a stream washing her feet. But you need never be afraid of
anything that's white.
* * * * *
There was a woman I know was away sometimes and used to go into a
forth among them. She told me about it, and she said there were
big and small among them as there are here. And they wore caps like
hurling caps, all striped with blue and different colours, and their
dress striped the same way.
_A Seaside Man:_
There was a girl below in Spiddal was coming home from Galway with
her father, and just at the bridge below she saw the coach and four.
Like a van it was, with horses, and full of gentlemen. And she tried
to make her father see it, and he couldn't. And it passed along the
road, and then turned down into a field, over the stones, and it
got to the strand and ran along it for a while, and what became of
it then I don't know. My father told me that one night he came from
a wake, and in the field beyond, that was all a flag then, but the
man that owns it has it covered with earth now, he saw about twelve
ladies all in white, and they dancing round and round and a fiddler
or a flute-player or whatever he was, in the middle. And he thought
they were some ladies from Spiddal, and called out to them that it
was late to be out dancing. And he turned to open the door of the
house, and while he was turning they were gone.
* * * * *
There was a man walking one night and he felt a woman come and walk
behind him, and she all in white. And the two of them walked on till
sunrise, and then a cock crowed, and the man said, "There's the cock
crowing." And she said, "That's only a weak cock of the summer." And
soon after another cock crowed, and he asked did she hear it, and she
said, "That's but a poor cock of the harvest." And the third time a
cock crowed and when the man asked her she said, "That's a cock of
March. And you're as wise as the man that doesn't tell Friday's dream
on Saturday." For if you dream on a Friday, you must never tell the
dream of a Saturday.
_Mrs. Swift:_
My mother told me, and she wouldn't tell a lie, that one time she
went to a wake at Ardrahan. And about 12 o'clock, the night being
hot, she and her sister went out to the back of the house. And there
they saw a lot of people running as hard as they could to the house,
and knocking down the walls as they came to them, for there were a
lot of small stones. And she said to her sister, "These must be all
the first cousins coming, and there won't be room to sit in the house
when they come in." So they hurried back. But no one ever came in or
came to the door at all.
* * * * *
They are said to be outside the door there often. And some see them
hurling, small they are then, and with grey coats and blue caps. And
the car-driver told me--he wouldn't tell a lie--that he often passed
them walking like soldiers through the hollow beyond.
_An Old Man on Slieve Echtge:_
One night I was walking on that mountain beyond, and a little
lad with me, Martin Lehane, and we came in sight of the lake of
Dairecaol. And in the middle of the lake I saw what was like the
shadow of a tall fir tree, and while I was looking it grew to be like
the mast of a boat. And then ropes and rigging came at the sides and
I saw that it was a ship; and the boy that was with me, he began to
laugh. Then I could see another boat, and then more and more till the
lake was covered with them, and they moving from one side to another.
So we watched for a while, and then we went away and left them there.
_Mrs. Guinan:_
It's only a few days ago, I was coming through the field between this
and the boreen, and I saw a man standing, a countryman you'd say he
was. And when I got near him, all at once he was gone, and when I
told Mrs. Raftery in the next house, she said she didn't wonder at
that, for it's not very long ago she saw what seemed to be the same
man, and he vanished in the same way.
* * * * *
There's a woman living up that road beyond, is married to a man of
the Matthews, and last year she told me that a strange woman came
into her house, and asked had she good potatoes. And she said she
had. And the woman said: "You have them this year, but we'll have
them next year." And she said: "When you go out of the house, it's
your enemy you'll see standing outside," that was her near neighbour
and was her worst enemy.
* * * * *
They'll often come in the night, and bring away the food. I wouldn't
touch any food that had been lying about in the night, you wouldn't
know what might have happened it. And my mother often told me, best
not eat it, for the food that's cooked at night and left till the
morning, they will have left none of the strength in it.
* * * * *
There was a hurling seen in a field near our house, little men they
were in green with red caps, and a sergeant of police and his men
that were going by stopped to look at them, but Johnny Roland a boy I
know, was standing in the middle of them all the time in the field,
and never saw anything at all.
_A North Galway Woman:_
There was a man living over at Caramina, beyond Moyne, Dick Regan
was his name, and one night he was walking over a little hill near
that place. And when he got to the top of it, he found it like a
fair green with all the people that were in it, and they buying and
selling just like ourselves. And they did him no harm, but they put
a basket of cakes into his hand and kept him selling them all the
night. And when he got home, he told the story. And the neighbours
when they heard it gave him the name of the cakes and to the day of
his death he was called nothing but Richard Crackers.
* * * * *
There was a smith, and a man called on him late one evening, and asked
him to shoe a horse for him and so he did. And then he offered him pay
but he would take none. And the man took him out behind the house, and
there were three hundred horses with riders on them, and a hundred
without, and he said, "We want riders for those," and they went on.
_An Aran Man:_
A man that came over here from Connemara named Costello told me that
one night he was making poteen, and a man on a white horse came up,
and the horse put his head into the place they were making it, and
then they rode away again. So he put a bottle of the whiskey outside
the place, and in a little time he went and looked and it was empty.
And then he put another bottle out, and in a little time he looked
again, and it was empty. And then he put a third, but when he looked
the whiskey in it had not been stirred. And he told me he never did
so much with it or made so much profit as he did in that year.
* * * * *
They are everywhere. Tom Deruane saw them down under the rocks
hurling and they were all wearing black caps. And sometimes you'd
see them coming on the sea, just like a barrel on the top of the
water, and when they'd get near you, no matter how calm the day,
you'd have a hurricane about you. That is when they are taking their
diversions. And one evening late I was down with the wife burning
kelp on the rocks, where we had a little kiln made. And we heard a
talking and a whispering about us on the rocks, and my wife thought
it was the child that the sister was bringing down to her, and she
said, "God bless the son!" but no one came, and the talking went on
again, and she got uneasy, and at last we left the kelp and came
home; and we weren't the first that had to leave it for what they
heard in that place.
Fallen angels they are said to be. God threw a third part of them
into Hell with Lucifer, and it was Michael that interceded for the
rest, and then a third part was cast into the air and a third on the
land and the sea. And here they are all about us as thick as grass.
_A Needlewoman from North Galway Working at Coole:_
Myself and Anne (one of the maids) went up the middle avenue after
dark last night and we got a fright, seeing what we thought to be
faeries. They were men dressed in black clothes like evening clothes,
wearing white ruffles round their necks and high black hats without
brims. Two walked in front and one behind, and they seemed to walk
or march stiff like as if there was no bend in the leg. They held
something in each hand and they stopped before the gate pier where
there is a sort of cross in white like paint, then they disappeared
and we turned and ran.
(_When they were going up to bed, I am told, "Anne suddenly stopped
under the picture of Mary Queen of Scots and called out
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