by Lady Gregory
1920
Seven Short Plays
Folk-History Plays, 2 vols.
New Comedies
The Image
The Golden Apple
Our Irish Theatre. A Chapter of Autobiography
Visions and Beliefs, 2 vols.
Cuchulain of Muirthemne
Gods and Fighting Men
Saints and Wonders
Poets and Dreamers
The Kiltartan Poetry Book
"There's no doubt at all but that there's the samesort of things in other countries; but you hearmore about them in these parts because the Irishdo be more familiar in talking of them."
| 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 |
There is a saying in Irish, "An old womanwithout learning, it is she will be doingcharms"; and I have told in "Poets and Dreamers"of old Bridget Ruane who came and gave me my firstknowledge of the healing power of certain plants,some it seemed having a natural and some a mysteriouspower. And I said that she had "died lastwinter, and we may be sure that among the greenherbs that cover her grave there are some that are goodfor every bone in the body and that are very good for asore heart."
As to the book she told me of that had come fromthe unseen and was written in Irish, I think of Mrs.Sheridan's answer when I asked in what languagethe strange unearthly people she had been among hadtalked: "Irish of course—what else would theytalk?" And I remember also that when Blake toldCrabb Robinson of the intercourse he had had withVoltaire and was asked in what tongue Voltaire spokehe said, "To my sensations it was English. It waslike the touch of a musical key. He touched it probablyin French, but to my ear it became English."
I was told by her:
There is a Saint at the Oratory in London, butI don't know his name, and a girl heard of him inLondon, and he sent her back to Gort, and hesaid, "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 Saintthrough the Press, he'd tell me his remedies, and allthe world would be cured. For I can't do all curesthough there are a great many I can do. I curedPat Carty when the doctor couldn't do it, and awoman in Gort that was paralysed and her twosons that were stretched. For I can bring backthe dead with the same herbs our Lord was broughtback with—the slanlus and the garblus. Butthere are some things I can't do. I can't helpanyone that has got a stroke from the Queen orthe Fool of the Forth.
I know a woman that saw the Queen one time,and she said she looked like any Christian. Inever heard of any that saw the Fool but onewoman that was walking near Gort, and shecalled out, "There's the Fool of the Forth comingafter me." So her friends that were with hercalled out though they could see nothing, and Isuppose he went away at that for she got no harm.[Pg 6]He was like a big strong man, and half-naked—that'sall she said about him.
It was my brother got the knowledge of curesfrom a book that was thrown down before himon the road. What language was it written in?What language would it be but Irish. Maybe itwas God gave it to him, and maybe it was theother people. He was a fine strong man, and heweighed twenty-five stone—and he went to England,and then he cured all the world, so that thedoctors had no way of living. So one time hegot on a ship to go to America, and the doctorshad bad men engaged to shipwreck him out of theship; he wasn't drowned but he was broken topieces on the rocks, and the book was lost alongwith 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 ofthe women that bore them. I was never awaymyself, but I am a cousin of Saggarton, and hisuncle was away for twenty-one years.
This is dwareen (knapweed) and what you haveto do with this is to put it down, with other herbs,and with a bit of threepenny sugar, and to boil it andto drink it for pains in the bones, and don't beafraid but it will cure you. Sure the Lord put itin 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 fatherof all herbs—the father of the ground. This isvery hard to pull, and when you go for it, youmust have a black-handled knife.
And this is camal-buide (loosestrife) that willkeep all bad things away.
This is cuineul-Muire (mullein), the blessedcandle of our Lady.
This is fearaban (water buttercup) and it's goodfor every bone of your body.
This is dub-cosac (lichen), that's good for theheart, very good for a sore heart. Here are theslanlus (plantain) and the garblus (dandelion) andthese would cure the wide world, and it wasthese brought our Lord from the Cross, afterthe ruffians that was with the Jews did all theharm to Him. And not one could be got to pierceHis heart till a dark man came and said, "Giveme the spear, and I'll do it," and the blood thatsprang out touched his eyes and they got theirsight.
And it was after that, His Mother and Mary andJoseph gathered their herbs and cured His wounds.These are the best of the herbs, but they are allgood, and there isn't one among them but wouldcure seven diseases. I'm all the days of my lifegathering them, and I know them all, but it isn'teasy to make them out. Sunday evening is thebest time to get them, and I was never interferedwith. Seven "Hail Marys" I say whenI'm gathering them, and I pray to our Lord and[Pg 8]to St. Joseph and St. Colman. And there maybe some watching me, but they never meddledwith me at all.
Mrs. Quaid:
Monday is a good day for pulling herbs, orTuesday, not Sunday. A Sunday cure is no cure.The cosac (lichen) is good for the heart, there wasMineog in Gort, one time his heart was wore to asilk 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 thescraws, and pull it with three pulls, and mind wouldthe wind change when you are pulling it or yourhead will be gone. Warm it on the tongs whenyou bring it and put it on the lump. The lus-mor(mullein) is the only one that's good to bring backchildren that are away. But what's better thanthat is to save what's in the craw of a cock you'llkill 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 mymother often told me about one night she wasspinning flax, before she was married and she wasup late. And a man of the faeries came in. Shehad no right to be sitting up so late, they don'tlike that. And he told her to go to bed, for hewanted to kill her, and he couldn't touch herwhile she was handling the flax. And every timehe'd tell her to go to bed, she'd give him someanswer, and she'd go on pulling a thread of the[Pg 9]flax, or mending a broken one, for she was wise,and she knew that at the crowing of the cock he'dhave to go. So at last the cock crowed, and he wasgone, and she was safe then, for the cock is blessed.
Mrs. Ward:
As to the lus-mor, whatever way the wind isblowing when you begin to cut it, if it changes whileyou're cutting it, you'll lose your mind. And ifyou're paid for cutting it, you can do it when youlike, but if not they mightn't like it. I knew awoman was cutting it one time, and a voice, anenchanted voice, called out, "Don't cut that ifyou're not paid, or you'll be sorry." But if youput a bit of this with every other herb you drink,you'll live for ever. My grandmother used toput a bit with everything she took, and she livedto be over a hundred.
An Old Man on the Beach:
I wouldn't give into those things, but I'lltell you what happened to a son of my own. Hewas as fine and as stout a boy as ever you saw,and one day he was out with me, and a lettercame and told of the death of some one's childthat was in America, and all the island gatheredto hear it read. And all the people were pressingto each other there. And when we were cominghome, he had a bit of a kippeen in his hand, andgetting over a wall he fell, and some way thekippeen went in at his throat, where it had a[Pg 10]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 mywife gave me no ease till I went to her, and shegave me some herb for him. He got better after,and there's no man in the island stronger andstouter than what he is but he never got back theuse of his left hand, but the strength he has inthe other hand is equal to what another man wouldhave in two. Did the woman in Spiddal saywhat gave him the touch? Oh well, she saidall sorts of things. But I wouldn't like to meddletoo much with such as her, for it's by witchcraft Ibelieve it's done. There was a woman of the samesort over in Roundstone, and I knew a man wentto her about his wife, and first she said the sicknesshad nothing to do with her business, but he saidhe came too far to bring back an answer like that.So she went into a little room, and he heard hercall on the name of all the devils. So he cried outthat that was enough, and she came out then andmade the sign of the Cross, but he wouldn't stopin it.
But a priest told me that there was a woman inFrance used to cure all the dumb that came toher, and that it was a great loss and a great pitywhen she died.
Mrs. Cloonan:
I knew some could cure with herbs; but it's notright for any one that doesn't understand them to[Pg 11]be meddling with them. There was a womanI knew one time wanted a certain herb I knewfor a cure for her daughter, and the only place thatherb was to be had was down in the bottom of aspring well. She was always asking me wouldI go and get it for her, but I took advice, and I wasadvised not to do it. So then she went herselfand she got it out, a very green herb it was, notwatercress, but it had a bunch of green leaves.And so soon as she brought it into the house, shefell as if dead and there she lay for two hours.And not long after that she died, but she curedthe daughter, and it's well I didn't go to gather theherb, or it's on me all the harm would have come.
I used to be gathering an herb one time for theBishop that lived at Loughmore, dandelion it was.There are two sorts, the white that has no harmin it, that's what I used to be gathering, and thered that has a pishogue in it, but I left that alone.
Old Heffernan:
The best herb-doctor I ever knew was Conollyup at Ballyturn. He knew every herb thatgrew in the earth. It was said that he wasaway with the faeries one time, and when Iknew him he had the two thumbs turned in,and it was said that was the sign they left onhim. I had a lump on the thigh one time andmy father went to him, and he gave him anherb for it but he told him not to come into thehouse by the door the wind would be blowing in at.[Pg 12]They thought it was the evil I had, that is givenby them by a touch, and that is why he said aboutthe wind, for if it was the evil, there would be aworm in it, and if it smelled the herb that wasbrought in at the door, it might change to anotherplace. I don't know what the herb was, but Iwould have been dead if I had it on another hour,it burned so much, and I had to get the lumplanced after, for it wasn't the evil I had.
Conolly cured many a one. Jack Hall that fellinto a pot of water they were after boiling potatoesin, and had the skin scalded off him and thatDoctor Lynch could do nothing for, he cured.
He boiled down herbs with a bit of lard, andafter that was rubbed on three times, he was well.
And Pat Cahel that was deaf, he cured withthe rib-mas-seala, that herb in the potatoes thatmilk comes out of. His wife was against himdoing the cures, she thought that it would fall onherself. And anyway, she died before him. ButConnor at Oldtown gave up doing cures, and hisstock began to die, and he couldn't keep a pig,and all he had wasted away till he began to dothem again; and his son does cures now, but Ithink it's more with charms than with herbs.
John Phelan:
The bainne-bo-bliatain (wood anemone) is goodfor the headache, if you put the leaves of it onyour head. But as for the lus-mor it's best notto have anything to do with that.
Mrs. West:
Dandelion is good for the heart, and whenFather Prendergast was curate here, he had it rootedup in all the fields about, to drink it, and see what afine man he is. Garblus; how did you hear ofthat? That is the herb for things that have to dowith the faeries. And when you'd drink it foranything of that sort, if it doesn't cure you, itwill kill you then and there. There was a fineyoung man I used to know and he got his deathon the head of a pig that came at himself andanother man at the gate of Ramore, and that neverleft them, but was at them all the time till theycame to a stream of water. And when he gothome, he took to his bed with a headache, andat last he was brought a drink of the garblusand no sooner did he drink it than he was dead.I remember him well. Biddy Early didn't useherbs, but let people say what they like, she wasa sure woman. There is something in flax, forno priest would anoint you without a bit of tow.And if a woman that was carrying was to put abasket of green flax on her back, the child would gofrom her, and if a mare that was in foal had aload of flax put on her, the foal would go thesame way.
Mrs. Allen:
I don't believe in faeries myself, I really don't.But all the people in Kildare believe in them, andI'll tell you what I saw there one time myself.[Pg 14]There was a man had a splendid big white horse,and he was leading him along the road, and awoman, a next-door neighbour, got up on the walland looked at him. And the horse fell down onhis knees and began to shiver, and you'd thinkbuckets of water were poured over him. Andthey led him home, but he was fit for nothing, andeveryone was sorry for the poor man, and himbeing worth ninety pounds. And they sent to theCurragh and to every place for vets, but not onecould do anything at all. And at last they sentup in to the mountains for a faery doctor, and hewent into the stable and shut the door, and whateverhe did there no one knows, but when he cameout he said that the horse would get up on theninth day, and be as well as ever. And so he didsure enough, but whether he kept well, I don'tknow, for the man that owned him sold him thefirst minute he could. And they say that whilethe faery doctor was in the stable, the womancame to ask what was he doing, and he called frominside, "Keep her away, keep her away." And apriest had lodgings in the house at the same time,and when the faery doctor saw him coming, "Letme out of this," says he, and away with him as fastas he could. And all this I saw happen, but whetherthe horse only got a chill or not I don't know.
James Mangan:
My mother learned cures from an Ulsterwoman, for the Ulster women are the best for[Pg 15]cures; but I don't know the half of them, andwhat I know I wouldn't like to be talking aboutor 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 hefainted when he sat down in the chair, he was so fargone. But she gave him a drink of it, and hecame in a second time and she gave it again, and hedidn't come a third time for he didn't want it.But I don't mind if I tell you the cure and it isthis: take a bit of the dirt of a dog that has beeneating bones and meat, and put it on top of anoven till it's as fine as powder and as white asflour, and then pound it up, and put it in a glass ofwhiskey, in a bottle, and if a man is not too fargone with jaundice, that will cure him.
There was one Carthy at Imlough did greatcures with charms and his son can do them yet.He uses no herbs, but he'll go down on his kneesand he'll say some words into a bit of unsaltedbutter, and what words he says, no one knows.There was a big man I know had a sore on his legand the doctor couldn't cure him, and Doctor Moransaid a bit of the bone would have to come out.So at last he went to Jim Carthy and he told himto bring him a bit of unsalted butter the nextMonday, or Thursday, or Saturday, for there's adifference in days. And he would have to comethree times, or if it was a bad case, he'd have tocome nine times.
But I think it was after the third time that hegot well, and now he is one of the head men inPersse's Distillery in Galway.
A Slieve Echtge Woman:
The wild parsnip is good for gravel, and forheartbeat 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 houseand they used to be picking it up. And at Christmasthey killed one of them, and when it was cutopen they found a new heart growing in it withthe dint of the dandelion.
My father went one time to a woman at Ennis,not Biddy Early, but one of her sort, to askher about three sheep he had lost.
And she told him the very place they werebrought to, a long path through the stones nearKinvara. And there he found the skins, andhe heard that the man that brought them awayhad them sold to a butcher in Loughrea. So hefollowed him there, and brought the police, andthey found him—a poor looking little man, buthe had £60 within in his box.
There was another man up near Ballylee couldtell these things too. When Jack Fahy lost hiswool, he went to him, and next morning there werethe fleeces at his door.
Those that are away know these things. Therewas a brother of my own took to it for seven[Pg 17]years—and we at school. And no one could beathim at the hurling and the games. But I wouldn'tlike to be mixed with that myself.
There was one Moyra Colum was a great onefor doing cures. She was called one time to seesome sick person, and the man that came for herput her up behind him, on the horse. And someyoungsters began to be humbugging him, andhumbugging is always bad. And there was ayoung horse in the field where the youngsterswere and it began to gallop, and it fell over astump and lay on the ground kicking as if in afit. And then Moyra Colum said, "Let me getdown, for I have pity for the horse." And shegot down and went into the field, and she pickeda blade of a herb and put it to the horse's mouthand in one minute it got up well.
Another time a woman had a sick cow and shesent her little boy to Moyra Colum, and she gavehim a bottle, and bade him put a drop of what wasin it in the cow's ear. And so he did and in a fewminutes he began to feel a great pain in his foot.So when the mother saw that, she took the bottleand threw it out into the street and broke it, andshe said, "It's better to lose the cow than to losemy son." And in the morning the cow was dead.
The herbs they cure with, there's some that'snatural, and you could pick them at all times ofthe day; there's a very good cure for the yellow[Pg 18]jaundice I have myself, and I offered it to a womanin Ballygrah the other day, but some people areso taken up with pride and with conceit they won'tbelieve that to cure that sickness you must takewhat comes from your own nature. She's deadsince of it, I hear. But I'll tell you the cure, theway you'll know it. If you are attending afuneral, pick out a few little worms from the earththat's thrown up out of the grave, few or many,twenty or thirty if you like. And when you gohome, boil them down in a sup of new milk andlet it get cold; and believe me, that will cure thesickness.
There's one woman I knew used to take a bit oftape when you'd go to her, and she'd measure itover her thumb like this; and when she had itmeasured she'd know what was the matter withyou.
For some sicknesses they use herbs that have nonatural cure, and those must be gathered in themorning early. Before twelve o'clock? No, butbefore sunrise. And there's a different charm tobe said over each one of them. It is for any sortof pain these are good, such as a pain in the side.There's the meena madar, a nice little planteenwith a nice little blue flowereen above on it, that'sused for a running sore or an evil. And the charmto be said when you're picking it has in it thename of some old curer or magician, and you can[Pg 19]say that into a bit of tow three times, and put it onthe person to be cured. That is a good charm.You might use that yourself if it was any oneclose to you was sick, but for a stranger I'd recommendyou not do it. They know all things andwho are using it, and where's the use of puttingyourself in danger?
James Mangan:
My mother learned to do a great many curesfrom a woman from the North (Note 1) and someI could do myself, but I wouldn't like to be doingthem unless for those that are nearest me; I don'twant to be putting myself in danger.
For a swelling in the throat it's an herb wouldbe used, or for the evil a poultice you'd make ofherbs. But for a pain in the ribs or in the head,it's a charm you should use, and to whisper itinto a bit of tow, and to put it on the mouth ofwhoever would have the pain, and that wouldtake it away. There's a herb called rif in yourown garden is good for cures. And this is a goodcharm to say in Irish:
The Old Man on the Beach:
In the old times all could do druith—like free-masonry—andthe ground was all covered with[Pg 20]the likeness of the devil; and with druith they coulddo anything, and could put the sea between youand 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 piningaway, and a travelling woman came to the houseand she told the mother to bring the girl across tothe graveyard that's near the house before sunriseand to pick some of the grass that's growingover the remains. And so she did, and the girlgot well. But the mother told me that when thewoman had told her that, she vanished away, all ina minute, and was seen no more.
I have a charm myself for the headache, I curedmany with it. I used to put on a ribbon from theback of the head over the mouth, and anotherfrom the top of the head under the chin and thento press my hand on it, and I'd give them greatrelief and I'd say the charm. But one time I readin the Scriptures that the use of charms is forbidden,so I had it on my conscience, and thenext time I went to confession I asked the priestwas it any harm for me to use it, and I said it tohim in Irish. And in English it means "Charm ofSt. Peter, Charm of St. Paul, an angel brought itfrom Rome. The similitude of Christ, sufferingdeath, and all suffering goes with Him and into theflax." And the priest didn't say if I might use it[Pg 21]or not, so I went on with it, for I didn't like toturn away so many suffering people coming to me.
I know a charm a woman from the North gaveto Tom Mangan's mother, she used to cure ulcerswith it and cancers. It was with unsalted butterit 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 badthing can hurt you. And a cure can be made forbad eyes from the ivy that grows on a white-thornbush. I know a boy had an ulcer on his eye andit was cured by that.
Mrs. Creevy:
There was Leary's son in Gort had bad eyesand no doctor could cure him. And one nighthis mother had a dream that she got up andtook a half-blanket with her, and went away to ablessed well a little outside Gort, and there shesaw a woman dressed all in white, and she gaveher some of the water, and when she brought it toher son he got well. So the next day she wentthere and got the water, and after putting itthree times on his eyes, he was as well as everhe was.
There was a woman here used to do cures withherbs—a midwife she was. And if a man wentfor her in a hurry, and on a horse, and he'd want[Pg 22]her to get up behind him, she'd say, "No,"that she was never on horseback. But no matterhow fast he'd go home, there she'd be close afterhim.
There was a child was sick and it was knownitself wasn't in it. And a woman told the motherto go to a woman she told her of, and not to sayanything about the child but to say, "The calf issick" and to ask for a cure for it. So she did andthe woman gave her some herb, and she gave it tothe child and it got well.
There was a man from Cuillean was telling mehow two women came from the County Downin his father's time, mother and daughter, and theybrought two spinning wheels with them, andthey used to be in the house spinning. But themilk went from the cow and they watched andsaw it was through charms. And then all thepeople brought turf and made a big fire outside,and stripped the witch and the daughter to burnthem. And when they were brought out to beburned the woman said, "Bring me out a bit offlax and I'll show you a pishogue." So theybrought out a bit of flax and she made two skeinsof it, and twisted it some way like that (interlacinghis fingers) and she put the two skeins round herselfand the daughter, and began to twist it, andit went up in the air round and round and thetwo women with it, and the people all saw them[Pg 23]going up, but they couldn't stop them. Theman's own father saw that himself.
There was a woman from the County Downwas living up on that mountain beyond one time,and there was a boy in the house next to minethat had a pain in his heart, and was crying outwith the pain of it. And she came down, andI was in the house myself and I saw her fill thebowl with oatenmeal, and she tied a cloth overit, and put it on the hearth. And when she tookit off, all the meal was gone out of one side of thebowl, and she made a cake out of what was left onthe other side, and ate it. And the boy got well.
There was a woman in Clifden did many curesand knew everything. And I knew two boyswere sent to her one time, and they had a bottle ofpoteen to bring her, but on the road they drankthe poteen. But they got her another bottlebefore they got to the house, but for all that sheknew 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, justlike King's blood used to cure the evil, but theycouldn't teach it to you or to me or another.
There's a very good charm to stop bleeding; itwill 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 onetime, 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 saidto me, any man that will use charms to do cureswith will be damned." I persuaded him to doit after, but I never felt that it did me much good.Because he took no care to do it well after thepriest saying that of him. But there's some willonly let it be said in an outhouse if there's a cureto be done in the house.
A Woman in County Limerick:
It is twenty year ago I got a pain in my side, thatI could not stoop; and I tried Siegel's Syrup anda plaster and a black blister from the doctor, andevery sort of thing and they did me no good.And there came in a man one day, a farmer Iknew, and he said, "It's a fool you are not to goto a woman living within two miles of you thatwould cure you—a woman that does charms."So I went to her nine times, three days I should goand three stop away, and she would pass her handover me, and would make me hold on to the branchof an apple tree up high, that I would hang fromit, and she would be swinging me as you wouldswing a child. And she laid me on the grass andpassed her hands over me, and what she said overme I don't know. And at the end of the ninevisits I was cured, and the pain left me. At the[Pg 25]time she died I wanted to go lay her out but myhusband would not let me go. He said if I wasseen going in, the neighbours would say she hadleft me her cures and would be calling me a witch.She said it was from an old man she got the charmthat used to be called a wizard. My father knewhim, and said he could bring away the wheat andbring it back again, and that he could turn thefour winds of heaven to blow upon your housetill they would knock it.
A Munster Midwife:
Is it true a part of the pain can be put on theman? It is to be sure, but it would be the mostpity in the world to do it; it is a thing I never did,for the man would never be the better of it, and itwould not take any of the pain off the woman. Andshouldn't we have pity upon men, that have enoughtroubles 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 midwifedo it. He was such a Molly of an old man, andhe had no compassion at all on his wife. He wasas if making out she had no pain at all. So mymother gave her a drink, and with that he was onthe floor and around the floor crying and roaring."The devil take you," says he, and the pain uponhim; but while he had it, it went away from hiswife. It did him no harm after, and my mother[Pg 26]would not have done it but for him being socovetous. He wanted to make out that she wasn'tsick.
Mrs. Stephens:
At childbirth there are some of the old womenare able to put a part of the pain upon the man, orany man. There was a woman in labour nearOran, and there were two policemen out walkingthat night, and one of them went into the house tolight his pipe. There were two or three women init, and the sick woman stretched beyond them, andone of them offered him a drink of the tea she hadbeen using, and he didn't want it but he took adrink of it, and then he took a coal off the hearthand put it on his pipe to light it and went out to hiscomrade. And no sooner was he there than hebegan to roar and to catch hold of his belly and hefell down by the roadside roaring. But the otherknew something of what happened, and he tookthe pipe, and it having a coal on it, and he put it ontop of the wall and fired a shot of the gun at it andbroke it; and with that the man got well of thepain and stood up again.
No woman that is carrying should go to thehouse where another woman is in labour; if shedoes, that woman's pain will come on her alongwith her own pain when her time comes.
A child to come with the spring tide, it will haveluck.
Mr. Yeats in his dedication of "The ShadowyWaters" says of some of our woods:
I have heard many stories of people led astray inthese by invisible power, though I myself, althoughborn at midnight, have lived many hours of manyyears in their shades and shelters, and as the sayingis have "never seen anything worse than myself."
Last May a friend staying with us had gone outearly in the afternoon, and had not come back byeight o'clock dinner-time. As half-hours passed wegrew anxious and sent out messengers riding and onfoot, searching with lanterns here and there in thewoods and on Inchy marsh, towards which he hadbeen seen going. It was not till long after the fall ofdarkness that he returned, tired out with so many[Pg 30]hours of wandering, and with no better explanationthan "Yeats talks of the seven woods of Coole, but Isay there are seventy times seven." It was in dimInchy and the wicked wood it borders he had goneastray; and many said that was natural, for theyhave a bad name, and May is a month of danger.Yet some unbelievers may carry their credulityso far as to believe that the creator of Father Keegan'sdreams may himself have dreamed the wholeadventure.
I was told by An Army Man who had beenthrough the Indian Mutiny:
It's only yesterday I was talking to a man aboutthe others, and he told me that the castle ofBallinamantane is a great place for them, for it'sthere a great stand was made long ago in oneof their last fights. And one night he was makinghis way home, and only a field between him andhis house, when he found himself turned aroundand brought to another field, and then to another—sevenin all. And he remembered the saying thatyou should turn your coat and that they'd haveno power over you, and he did so, but it did him nogood. For after that he was taken again, andfound himself in the field over beyond. And hehad never a one drop taken, but was quite soberthat night.
What did they do it for? It might be that he hadtrespassed on one of their ways; but it's mostlikely that there was some sort of a rogue amongthem that turned and did it for sport.
Mrs. Cloonan:
The other evening I was milking the cow overin Inchy, and a beggar-woman came by, with asack of potatoes and such things on her back. She[Pg 32]makes her living selling ballads in Gort, and thenbegging afterwards. So she sat down beside me,and she said "I don't like to go on through thewood." So I asked did she ever see anythingthere. "I did," says she, "three years ago, onenight just where the old house is the Dooleys usedto live in. There came out of the end of it awoman all in white, and she led me astray all thenight, and drove me that I had no time to turn myclothes—and my feet were black with the blowsshe gave me, and though it was three years ago, Ifeel the pain in them yet."
Mrs. Coniffe says:
I was in Inchy the other day late, and I met anold beggarman, and I asked him was he ever ledastray there. And he said, "Not in this wood,but in the wood beyond, Garryland. It was onenight I was passing through it, and met a great lotof them—laughing they were and running aboutand drinking wine and wanting me to drink withthem. And they had cars with them, and an oldwoman sitting on a sort of an ass-car. And I had ascapular round my neck, and I thought that wouldmake me independent, but it did not, for it wason the highroad outside I found myself put atlast."
A Mason:
My father was led astray one time, when he wascoming home from a neighbour's house, and he[Pg 33]was led here and there till he didn't know whatway he was going. And then the moon began toshine out and he saw his shadow, and anothershadow along with it ten feet in length. So withthat he ran, and when he got to the wood of Cloonhe fell down in a faint.
And I was led astray one night, going across to aneighbour's house—just the length of a field away,and where I could find my way blindfolded. Intothe ditch I was led, and to some other field, andI put my hand to the ground, and it was potatoground, and the drills made, but the seed not putin. And if it wasn't at last that I saw a light fromScalp, it's away I'd have been brought altogether.
John Rivers:
Once I was led astray in that field and wentround and round and could find no way out—tillat last I thought of the old Irish fashion of turningmy waistcoat, and did so. And then I got outthe gate in one minute.
And one night I was down at the widow Hayley's—Ididn't go much there—she used to have theplace full of loafers, and they playing cards. Butthis night I stopped a bit, and then I went out.And the way I was put I could not say, but Ifound myself in the field with an eight-foot wallbehind me—and there I had to stop till some of themen came and found me and brought me out.
A Girl of the Feeneys:
One time my brother when he was coming homelate one evening was put asleep in spite of himself,on the grass, at this corner we're passing. None ofthe boys like to be coming home late, from card-playingor the like, unless there's two or three ofthem together. And if they go to a wake, theywouldn't for all the world come home before thecock crows. There were many led astray in thathollow beyond, where you see the haycocks. OldTom Stafford was led astray there by somethinglike 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 drivingacross Kiltartan bog, and it was seen to manyothers besides.
As to Michael Barrett, I believe it's mostly inhis own head they are. But I know this that whenhe pulled down the chimney where he said thatthe piper used to be sitting and playing, he liftedout stones, and he an old man, that I could nothave lifted myself when I was young and healthy.
A Clare Woman:
As to treasure, there was a man here dreamt ofsome buried things—of a skeleton and a crock ofmoney. So he went to dig, but whether he dreamedwrong or that he didn't wait for the third dream, Idon't know, but he found the skeleton, skull and all,but when he found the crock there was nothing init, but very large snail-shells. So he threw them[Pg 35]out in the grass, and next day when he went tolook at them they were all gone. Surely there'ssomething that's watching over that treasure underground.
But it doesn't do to be always looking for money.There was Whaney the miller, he was alwayswishing to dream of money like other people.And so he did one night, that it was hid under themillstone. So before it was hardly light he wentand began to dig and dig, but he never foundthe money, but he dug till the mill fell down onhimself.
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. Therewas a farmer man living there beyond over themountains, and one day a strange man came in andasked a night's lodging. "Where do you comefrom?" says the farmer. "From the county Mayo,"says he, and he told how he had a dream of abush in this part of the world, and gave a descriptionof it, and in his dream he saw treasure buriedunder it. "Then go home, my poor man," saidthe farmer, "for there's no such place as thatabout here." So the man went back again toMayo. But the bush was all the time just at theback of the house, and when the stranger was gone,the farmer began to dig, and there, sure enough, hefound the pot of gold, and took it for his own use.
But all the children he had turned silly after[Pg 36]that; there was one of them not long ago goingabout the town with long hair over his shoulders.
And after that, a poor scholar, such as used tobe going about in those times, came to the house,and when he had sat down, the lid of the pot thegold was found in was lying by the fire. And hetook it up and rubbed it, and there was writingon it, in Irish, that no one had ever been ableto read. And the poor scholar made it out,"This side of the bush is no better than the otherside." So he went out to dig, and there he foundanother pot on the other side just the same as thefirst pot and he brought it away with him, andwhat became of him after is unknown.
John Phelan:
There was a man in Gort, Anthony Hynes, heand two others dreamed of finding treasure withinthe church of Kilmacduagh. But when they gotthere at night to dig, something kept them back,for there's always something watching over wheretreasure is buried. I often heard that long ago inthe nursery at Coole, at the cross, a man that wasdigging found a pot of gold. But just as he hadthe cover took off, he saw old Richard Gregorycoming, and he covered it up, and was never ableagain to find the spot where it was.
But there's dreams and dreams. I heard of aman from Mayo went to Limerick, and walkedtwo or three times across the bridge there. And acobbler that was sitting on the bridge took notice[Pg 37]of him, and knew by the look of him and by theclothes he wore that he was from Mayo, and askedhim what was he looking for. And he said he hada dream that under the bridge of Limerick he'dfind treasure. "Well," says the cobbler, "I had adream myself about finding treasure, but in anothersort of a place than this." And he described theplace where he dreamed it was, and where was that,but in the Mayo man's own garden. So he wenthome again, and sure enough, there he found a potof gold with no end of riches in it. But I neverheard that the cobbler found anything under thebridge 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 upsticks near a wood. And she chanced to lay holdon a tuft of grass, and it came up in her hand andthe sod with it. And there was a hole underneathfull of half-crowns, and she began to fill her apronwith them, and as soon as she had the full of herapron she called to the other girl, and the minuteshe came there wasn't one to be seen. But whatshe 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 buriedunder the bush up there, by the chapel, a mile tothe east; you can see the bush there, blown slantwise[Pg 38]by the wind from the sea. So she got threemen to go along with her and they brought shovelsto dig for it. But it was the woman should havelifted the first sod and she didn't do it, and theysaw, coming down from the mountains of Burren,horses and horses, bearing horse-soldiers on them,and they came around the bush, and the soldiersheld up their shovels, and my sister and the menthat were with her made away across the field.
The time I was in America, I went out to thecountry to see Tom Scanlon, my cousin, thatis a farmer there and had any amount of land andfeeding for the cows, and we went out of the houseand sat down on a patch of grass the same as we'resitting on now. And the first word he said to mewas, "Did Bridget, your sister, ever tell you of thedream she had, and the way we went digging atthe bush, for I was one of the men that was alongwith 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 nearClarenbridge, and one of them saw, as he wasdigging, a great lot of gold. So he said nothing, theway 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 flagstonehe lifted. But when he went back next dayto get it, all the strength he had wouldn't lift theflag.
The Army Man:
There was a forth sometime or other there insidethe gate, and one Kelly told me that he was comingby it one night and saw all the hollow spread withgold, and he had not the sense to take it up, butran away.
A friend I had near Athenry had more sense.He saw the ground spread with gold and he tookup the full of his pockets and paid his rent nextday and prospered ever after, as everyone doesthat gets the faery gold.
Another man I knew of had a dream of a placewhere there was three crocks of gold. And in themorning he went to dig and found the crocks sureenough, and nothing in them but oyster shells.That was because he went to dig after the firstdream. He had a right to wait till he had dreamedof it three times.
A girl the same way dreamt of gold hid in a rockand did not wait for the third dream, but went atonce, and all she found was the full of an ass-cartnear of sewing needles, and that was a queer thingto find in a rock. No, they don't always hinderyou, they help you now and again.
There was a working man used to be diggingpotatoes for me, and whenever he was in want ofmoney, he found it laid on his window-sill in the[Pg 40]night. But one day he had a drop of drink taken,he told about it, and never a penny more did hefind after that.
Sure, there's an old castle beyond Gort, Fiddaneit's called, and there you'd see the gold out bleaching,but no one would like to go and take it. Andmy mother told me one time that a woman wentup in the field beyond where the liss is, to milk thecow, and there she saw on the grass a crock full ofgold. So she left the bit she had for holding thecow beside it, and she ran back to the house for totell them all to come out and see it. But whenthey came the gold was nowhere to be seen, buthad vanished away. But in every part of thefield there was a bit of rope like the one she leftbeside the crock, so that she couldn't know whatspot it was in at all.
She had a right to have taken it, and told noone. They don't like to have such things told.
Mrs. Coniffe:
That bush you took notice of, the boy told methat it is St. Bridget's bush, and there is agreat lot of money buried under it; they knowthis from an old woman that used to be here along time ago. Three men went one time to digfor it and they dug and dug all the day andfound 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[Pg 41]week. And you'd be sorry to see—as the boy did—thethree coffins carried out of the three houses.And since then no other person has ever gone tolook 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, PatrickConnell, dreamed he found it beneath a bush. Buthe wasn't willing to go look for it, and his sons andhis friends were always at him to tell where it was,but he would tell them nothing. But at last hissons one day persuaded him to go with them andto dig for it. So they took their car, and they setout. But when they came to a part of the roadwhere there's a small little ditch about a foot widebeside it, he was walking and he put his foot in itand they had to bring him home, for his leg wasbroke. So there was no more digging for treasureafter that.
A Neighbour:
There's crocks of gold in all the forths, butthere's cats and things guarding them. And ifany one does find the gold, he doesn't live longafterwards. But sometimes you might see it andthink that it was only a heap of dung. It's bestto leave such things alone.
"Then Cuchulain went on his way, and Cathbadthat had followed him went with him. Andpresently they came to a ford, and there they saw ayoung girl, thin and white-skinned and having yellowhair, washing and ever washing, and wringing outclothing that was stained crimson red, and she cryingand 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 asshe washes, because she knows you are going to yourdeath against Maeve's great army.'"—"Cuchulainof Muirthemne."
From Cuchulain's day, or it may be from a yetearlier time, that keening woman of the Sidhe hasbeen heard giving her lamentable warning for thosewho are about to die. Rachel had not yet beenheard mourning for her children when the white-skinnedgirl whose keening has never ceased in Irelandwashed red clothes at the ford. It was she orone of her race who told King Brian he was going tomeet his death at Clontarf; though after the defeat of[Pg 46]the old gods that warning had often been sent by amore radiant messenger, as when Columcille at thedawn of the feast of Pentecost "lifted his eyes and sawa great brightness and an angel of God waiting thereabove him." And Patrick himself had his warningthrough his angel, Victor, who met him on the roadat midday and bade him go back to the barn where hehad lodged the night before, for it was there he had todie. Such a messenger may have been at hand at thedeath of that Irish born mystic, William Blake,when he "burst out into singing of the things he sawin Heaven, and made the rafters ring." And a fewyears ago the woman of a thatched house at the footof Echtge told me "There were great wonders done inthe old times; and when my father that worked in thegarden there above was dying, there came of a suddenthree flashes of light into the room, the brightest lightthat ever was seen in the world; and there was an oldman in the room, one Ruane, and I leaned back onhim for I had like to faint. And people coming theroad saw the light, and up at Mick Inerney's housethey all called out that our house was in flames. Andwhen they came and heard of the three flashes of lightcoming into the room and about the bed they all saidit was the angels that were his friends that had cometo meet him." When Raftery died, the blind poetwho wandered through our townlands a hundred yearsago, some say there were flames about the house allthrough the night, "and those were the angels wakinghim." Yet his warning had not been sent throughthese white messengers but through a vision that had[Pg 47]come to him once in Galway, when Death himself hadappeared "thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful; theshadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tearsdown his cheeks" and had told him he had but sevenyears to live. And though Raftery spoke back to himin scornful verse, there are some who say he spentthose last seven years in praying and in making hissongs of religion. To some it is a shadow that bringsthe warning, or a noise of knocking or a dream. Atthe hour of a violent death nature itself will showsympathy; I have been told on a gloomy day that it haddarkened because there was a man being hanged; anda woman who had travelled told me that once atBundoran she had "seen the waves roaring andturning" and she knew later it was because at that verytime 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 theyhad come to see her, but she said there was nofear of her, and she would not let them stop becauseshe knew that they were up at a wake the nightbefore.
So when I left them I was going back to thehouse, and I saw the shadow of my wife on theroad before me, and it was as white as driftedsnow. And when I came into the house, thereshe was dying.
Mrs. Curran:
My cousin Mary that lives in the village beyondtold me that she was coming home yesterday weekalong the road, and she is a girl would not beafraid to walk the whole world with herself. Andit was late, and suddenly there was a man walkingbeside her, inside the field, on the other side of thewall.
And at first she was frightened, but then shefelt sure it was her cousin John that was dying,and then she wasn't afraid, for she knew hercousin would do her no harm. And after a while hewas gone, and when she got near home and saw the[Pg 50]lights she was frightened, and when she got intothe house she was in a sort of a faint. And nextday, this day week, her cousin was dead.
Old Simon:
I heard the Banshee crying not long ago, andwithin three days a boy of the Murphy's was killedby his own horse and he bringing his cart toKinvara. And I heard it again a few nights ago,but I heard of no death since then. What is theBanshee? It is of the nature of the Hyneses.Six families it cries for, the Hyneses and theFahys 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 tothe tune she had, so nice and so calm and somournful.
I would yield to dreams because of some thingswere dreamed to me in my lifetime and that turnedout true. I dreamed one time that I saw mydaughter that was in America dead, and stretchedand a table laid out with the corpse. She camehome after, and at the end of five months shewasted and died. And there I saw her stretchedas in the dream, and it was on my own table.
One time I was walking the road and I heard agreat crying and keening beside me, a woman thatwas keening, and she conveyed me three miles ofthe road. And when I got to the door of the house[Pg 51]I looked down and saw a little woman, very broadand broad faced—about the bigness of the seat ofthat table—and a cloak about her. I called out toher that was my first wife—the Lord be with her—andshe lighted a candle and I came in weak andlay upon the floor, and I was till 12 o'clock thatnight lying in the bed.
A man I was talking to said it was the Banshee,and it cries for three families, the Fahys and theO'Briens and another I forget which. My grandmotherwas a Fahy, and I suppose, father ormother, it follows the generations. I heard itanother time and my daughter from Americacoming into the house that night. It was the mostmournful thing ever you heard, keening aboutthe house for the same term as before, till 12o'clock of night. And within five months mydaughter from America was dead.
John Cloran:
There was a man near us that was ploughing afield, and he found an iron box, and they saythere was in it a very old Irish book with all theknowledge of the world in it. Anyway, there's noquestion you could ask him he couldn't answer.And what he says of the Banshee is, that it'sRachel mourning still for every innocent of theearth that is going to die, like as she did for ourLord when the king had like to kill Him. But it'sonly for them that's sprung from her own tribethat she'll raise her voice.
Mrs. Smith:
As for the Banshee, where she stops is in the oldcastle of Esserkelly on the Roxborough estate.Many a one has seen her there and heard herwailing, wailing, and she with a red petticoat putabout her head. There was a family of the nameof Fox in Moneen, and never one of that familydied but she'd be heard keening them.
The Spinning Woman:
The Banshee is all I ever saw myself. It waswhen I was a slip of a girl picking potatoes alongwith the other girls, we heard crying, crying, in thegraveyard beyond at Ryanrush, so we ran likefoals to see who was being buried, and I was thefirst, and leaped up on the wall. And there shewas and gave me a slap on the jaw, and she justlike a countrywoman with a red petticoat. Oftenthey hear her crying if any one is going to die in thevillage.
A Seaside Woman:
One time there was a man in the village wasdying and I stood at the door in the evening, andI heard a crying—the grandest cry ever you heard—andI said "Glynn's after dying and they'recrying him." And they all came to the door andheard it. But my mother went out after that andfound him gasping still.
Sure enough it was the Banshee we heard thatevening.
And out there where the turf-boat is lying withits sail down, outside Aughanish, there the Bansheedoes always be crying, crying, for some thatwent down there some time.
At Fiddoon that strip of land between Tyroneand Duras something appears and cries for amonth before any one dies. A great many aretaken away sudden there; and they say that it'sbecause of that thing.
The Banshee cries every time one of the Sionnacsdies. And when the old Captain died, the crowsall left the place within two days, and never cameback for a year.
A Connemara Woman:
There was a boy from Kylemore I met inAmerica used to be able to tell fortunes. He usedto be telling them when the work would be done,and we would be having afternoon tea. He toldme one time I would soon be at a burying, and itwould be a baby's burying, and I laughed at that.But sure enough, my sister's baby, that was notborn at the time, died about a month after, andI went to its burying.
A Herd:
Crying for those that are going to die you'd hearof often enough. And when my own wife was[Pg 54]dying, the night she went I was sitting by thefire, and I heard a noise like the blow of a flail onthe door outside. And I went to see what it was,but there was nothing there. But I was not in anyway frightened, and wouldn't be if she came backin a vision, but glad to see her I would be.
A Miller:
There was a man that was out in the field anda 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, andthat if she heard you singing loud she'd be veryapt to bring you away with her.
A Connemara Woman:
One night the clock in my room struck sixand it had not struck for years, and two nightsafter—on Christmas night—it struck six again,and afterwards I heard that my sister in Americahad died just at that hour. So now I have takenthe weights off the clock, that I wouldn't hearit again.
Mrs. Huntley:
It was always said that when a Lord —— died,a fox was seen about the house. When the lastLord —— lay dying, his daughter heard a noiseoutside the house one night, and opened the[Pg 55]hall-door, and then she saw a great numberof foxes lying on the steps and barking andrunning about. And the next morning therewas a meet at some distant covert—it had beenchanged there from hard by where it was to havetaken place on account of his illness—and therewas not a single fox to be found there or in anyother covert. And that day he died.
J. Hanlon:
There was one Costello used to be ringing thebell 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 mygrandfather "Come to the corner of the old castleand you'll find me dead." So he set out, and whenhe got to the corner of the castle, there was Costellolying dead before him.
And once going to a neighbour's house to see alittle girl, I saw her running along the path beforeme. But when I got to the house she was in bedsick, and died two days after.
Pat. Linskey:
Well, the time my own wife died I had sent herinto Cloon to get some things from the market, andI was alone in the house with the dog. And whatdo you think but he started up and went out to thehill outside the house, and there he stood a while[Pg 56]howling, and it was the very next day my wifedied.
Another time I had shut the house door at nightand fastened it, and in the morning it was standingwide open. And as I knew by the dates afterwardsthat was the very night my brother died inIndia.
Sure I told Stephen Green that, when he buriedhis mother in England, and his father lying inKilmacduagh. "You should never separate," saysI, "in death a couple that were together in life, forsure as fate, the one'll come to look for the other."
And when there's one of them passing in the airyou might get a blast of holy wind you wouldn'tbe the better of for a long time.
Mrs. Curran:
I was in Galway yesterday, and I was told therethat the night before those four poor boys weredrowned, there were four women heard crying outon the rocks. Those that saw them say that theywere young, and they were out of this world. Andone of those boys was out at sea all day, the daybefore he was drowned. And when he came in toGalway in the evening, some boy said to him "Isaw 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 Iout at sea?" And the next day he was drowned.And some say there was not much at all to drownthem that day.
A Man near Athenry:
There is often crying heard before a death, andin that field beside us the sound of washingclothes with a beetle is sometimes heard beforea death.
I heard crying in that field near the forth onenight, and not long after the man it belonged todied.
An Aran Man:
I remember one morning, St. Bridget's Eve,my son-in-law came into the house, where he hadbeen up that little road you see above. Andthe wife asked him did he see any one, and he said"I saw Shamus Meagher driving cattle." And thewife said, "You couldn't see him, for he's outlaying spillets since daybreak with two othermen." And he said, "But I did see him, and Icould have spoke with him." And the next day—St.Bridget's Day—there was confessions in thelittle chapel below and I was in it, and ShamusMeagher, and it was he that was kneeling next tome at the Communion. But the next morning heand two other men that had set the spillets wenton in their canoe to Kilronan for salt, for they hadcome short of salt and had a good deal of fishtaken. And that day the canoe was upset, andthe three of them were drowned.
A Piper:
My father and my mother were in the bed onenight and they heard a great lowing and a noise of[Pg 58]the cattle fighting one another, that they thoughtthey were all killed, and they went out and theywere quiet then. But they went on to the nexthouse where they heard a lowing, and all the cattleof that house were fighting one another, and so itwas at the next. And in the morning a child, oneGannon, was dead—or taken he was.
An Old Man in Aran:
When I was in the State of Maine, I knew awoman from the County Cork, and she had a littlegirl sick. And one day she went out behind thehouse and there she saw the fields full of those—fullof them. And the little girl died.
And when I was in the same State, I was in thehouse where there was a child sick. And one nightI heard a noise outside, as if of hammering. AndI went out and I thought it came from anotherhouse that was close by that no one lived in,and I went and tried the door but it was shutup.
And I went back and said to the woman, "Thisis 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. Onemorning just at sunrise I was going down to thesea, and a little storm came, and took my hatoff and brought it a good way, and then it broughtit back and returned it to me again.
An Old Midwife:
I do be dreaming, dreaming. I dreamt onenight I was with my daughter and that she wasdead and put in the coffin. And I heard after,the time I dreamt about her was the very timeshe died.
A Woman near Loughrea:
There are houses in Cloon, and Geary's is one ofthem, where if the people sit up too late the warningcomes; it comes as a knocking at the door.Eleven o'clock, that is the hour. It is likely it issome that lived in the house are wanting it forthemselves at that time. And there is a housenear the Darcys' where as soon as the potatoesare strained from the pot, they must put a platefulready and leave it for the night, and milk and thefire on the hearth, and there is not a bit left atmorning. Some poor souls that come in, lookingfor warmth and for food.
There is a woman seen often before a deathsitting by the river and racking her hair, and shehas a beetle with her and she takes it and beetlesclothes in the river. And she cries like any goodcrier; you would be sorry to be listening to her.
Old King:
I heard the Banshee and saw her. I and sixothers were card playing in the kitchen at the big[Pg 60]house, that is sunk into the ground, and I saw herup outside of the window. She had a white dressand it was as if held over her face. They all lookedup and saw it, and they were all afraid and wentback but myself. Then I heard a cry that did notseem to come from her but from a good way off,and then it seemed to come from herself. Shemade no attempt to twist a mournful cry but allshe said was, "Oh-oh, Oh-oh," but it was as mournfulas the oldest of the old women could make it,that was best at crying the dead.
Old Mr. Sionnac was at Lisdoonvarna at thattime, and he came home a few days after and tookto the bed and died. It is always the Bansheehas followed the Sionnacs and cried them.
Mrs. King:
There was a boy of the Naughtons died not farfrom this, a fine young man. And I set out to goto the burying, and Mrs. Burke along with me.But when we came to the gate we could hearcrying for the dead, and I said "It's as good for uswait where we are, for they have brought the corpout and are crying him." So we waited a whileand no one came, and so we went on to the house,and we had two hours to wait before they broughtout the corp for the burying, and there had beenno crying at all till he was brought out. We knewthen who it was crying, for if the boy was a Naughton,it is in a house of the Kearns he died, andthe Banshee always cries for the Kearns.
A Doctor:
There's a boy I'm attending now, and the firsttime I went to him, the mother came out of thehouse with me and said "It's no use to do anythingfor him, I'm going to lose him." And Iasked her why did she say that, and she said"Because the first night he took ill I heard thesound of a chair drawing over to the fire in thekitchen, and it empty, and it was the faeries werecoming for him." The boy wouldn't have hadmuch wrong with him, but his brother had died ofphthisis, and when he got a cold he made sure hewould die too, and he took to the bed. And everyday his mother would go in and cry for an hourover him, and then he'd cry and then the fatherwould cry, and he'd say "Oh, how can I leave myfather and my mother! Who will there be to mindthem when I'm gone?" One time he was gettinga little better they sent him over on a message toScahanagh, and there's a man there called Shannythat makes coffins for the people. And the boysaw Shanny looking at him, and he left his messageundone and ran home and cried out "Oh, I'm donefor now! Shanny was looking at me to see whatsize coffin I'd take!" And he cried and they allcried and all the village came in to see what wasthe matter.
The Old Army man:
As to the invisible world, I hear enough aboutit, but I have seen but little myself. One night[Pg 62]when I was at Calcutta I heard that one Connorwas dead—a man that I had been friendly with—soI went to the house. There was a good many ofus there, and when it came to just before midnight,I heard a great silence fall, and I looked from oneto another to see the silence. And then therecame a knock at the window, just as the clock wasstriking twelve. And Connor's wife said, "It wasjust at this hour last night there came a knocklike that and immediately afterwards he died."And the strange thing is, it was a barrack-roomand on the second story, so that no one could reachit from the street.
In India, before Delhi, there was an officer'sservant lodged in the same house as me, and wasthrown out of his cot every night. And as sure asmidnight came, the dogs couldn't stop outsidebut would come shrinking and howling into thehouse. Yes indeed, I believe the faeries are in allcountries, all over the world; but the banshee isonly in Ireland, though sometimes in India Iwould think of her when I'd hear the hyenaslaughing. Keening, keening, you can hear her,but only for the old Irish families, but she'll followthem even as far as Dublin.
An old Athenry man who had been as a soldierall through the Indian Mutiny and had comeback to end his days here as a farmer said to me inspeaking of "The Others" and those who may beamong them: "There's some places of their own weshould never touch such as the forths; and if ever wecross their pathways we're like to know it soon enough,for some ill turn they'll do us, and then we must drawback out of their way.... And we should aboveall things leave the house clean at night, with nothingabout that would offend them. For we must all diesome day, but God knows we're not all fit for heavenjust on the minute; and what the intermediate statemay be, or what friends we may want there, I don'tknow. 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 ahouse outside Cloon. And no one that lived thereever prospered but all they did went to loss. Isowed seeds and put in the crop each year, and ifI'd stopped there I wouldn't have had enough tokeep trousers to my back. In the way the placemust be. I had no disturbance in the house, butsome nights I could hear the barrel rolling outsidethe door, back and forwards, with a sort of a warningto me.
I knew another house in Clare where the frontdoor is always shut up and they only use the backdoor, but when I asked them the reason they saidif they opened the front door a sudden blast wouldcome 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 noone can live in it.
Andrew Lee:
"In the way?" Yes that's a thing that oftenhappens. Sure going into Clough, you might see ahouse that no man ever yet kept a roof on. Surelyit's in the way of their coming and going. AndDoctor Nolan's father began to build a barn one[Pg 68]time, and whatever was built in the day, in thenight it would be pulled down, so at last they gaveover. It was only labour and wages wasted.
Mrs. Cloran:
No, I never heard or felt anything sinceI came here. The old people used to tell manythings, they know more than what the youngstersdo. My mother saw many a thing, but they didher no harm. No, I remember none of the stories;since my children died and a weight came on myheart all those things went from me. Yes, it's trueFather Boyle banished the dog; and there was acousin of my own used to live in the house atGarryland, and she could get no sleep for what sheused to feel at night. But Father Boyle came andwhatever he did, "You'll feel them no more," sayshe, and she never did, though he was buried beforeher.
That was a bad, bad place we lived in nearthe sea. The children never felt anything, butoften in the night I could hear music playing andno one else in the house could hear it. But thechildren died one by one, passing away withoutpain or ache.
All they saw was twice; the two last little girlsI had were beside the door at night talking andlaughing and they saw a big dark man pass by,but he never spoke. Some old thing out of thewalls he must have been. And soon after thatthey died.
One time when I was there a strange womancame in, and she knew everything and told meeverything. "I'd give you money if I had it,"said I. "I know well you haven't much of it," saysshe; "but take my word and go away out of thishouse to some other place, for you're in the way."She told me to tell no one she came, and that showsthere was something not right about her; and Inever saw her any more.
But if I'd listened to her then, and if I knewthen what she meant by the house being in theway I wouldn't have stopped in it, and my sevenfine children would be with me now. Took awaythey were by them and without ache or pain. Inever had a sign or a vision from them since, butoften and often they come across me in my sleep.
Her Husband:
The woman that came to give my wife thewarning, I didn't see her, and she knew all thatwas in the house and all about me and whatmoney I had, and that I would grow very poor.And she said that before I'd die, I'd go to thestrand and come back again. And we couldn'tknow what she meant, and we thought it mustmean that I'd go to America. But we knew it atlast. For one day I was washing sheep down atCahirglissane, and there is said to be the deepestwater in the world in one part of that lake. Andas I was standing by it, a sheep made a run andwent between my two legs, and threw me into the[Pg 70]water, and I not able to swim. And I was broughton the top of the water safe and sound to landagain; and I knew well who it was helped me, andsaved my life. She that had come before to giveadvice that would save my children, it's she thatwas my friend over there. To say a Mass in thehouse? No use at all that would have been, livingin the place we did.
But they're mostly good neighbours. There wasa woman they used to help, one of them used tocome and help her to clean the house, but shenever came when the husband was there. Andone day she came and said they were going tomove now, to near Clifden. And she bid thewoman follow them, and whenever she'd come to abriar 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 camein—the fallen angels. They were pulling theclothes off me, ten times they did that, and theywere laughing like geese—just the very sound ofgeese—and their boots were too large for their feetand were clapping, clapping on the floor. I supposethey didn't like me to be in it, or that the house wasbuilt in one of their passages.
My father was driven out of the little gardenhouse 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 sixherds went one after another and every one of themdied, and their dogs and their cow. And thegentleman that owned the place came to askanother one to go in it, and his wife said shewouldn't go, for there was some bad luck about it.But she went after, and she was a very cleanwoman, not like some of them that do have thehouse dirty. Well, one day a woman came to thedoor and asked for a dish of oaten meal, and shetook it from the shelf, and gave it to her. "I'llbring it back to you tomorrow," says she, "it'll beeasy getting it then when it's market day." "Donot," says the woman of the house, "for if youdo I won't take it." "Well," says the stranger,"you'll have luck after this; only one thing I tellyou, keep that door at the back shut, and if youwant any opening there, let you open the window."Well, so she did, and by minding that rule, andkeeping the house so clean, she was never troubledbut 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, andtwo or three died in it, and one night it blazed upand burned down, those that were out in the fishingboats could see it, but it was never known how ithappened.
There was a house over in the other village anda woman living in it that had two forths of land.[Pg 72]And she had clever children, but the most of themdied one after another, boys and girls, and thenthe husband died. And after that one of the boysthat had died came to her and said "You'd bestleave this house or you'll be as we are, and we areall now living in the Black Rock at the gable endof the house. And two of the McDaraghs arewith us there."
So after that she left the house—you can cutgrass now in the place where it was, and it's greenall through the summer and the winter—and shewent up to the north side and she married a youngman up there, for she was counted a rich woman.She had but two daughters left, and one of themwas married, and there was a match to be made forthe other, but the stepfather wouldn't allow her togive any of the land to her, so she said she'd go toAmerica, and the priest drew up a stamped paperfor her, that they'd keep a portion of money forher every year till she'd come back. It wasn'tlong after that the stepfather was out in one of thefields one day and two men came and knockedhim down and gave him a beating. And it was hisbelief it was the father of the girl and one of thebrothers that came to beat him.
And one of the neighbours that went to thehouse one night saw one of the brothers standingat the window, plump and plain. And a firstcousin of theirs—a Donovan—was near the BlackRock one night, and he saw them playing ballthere, the whole of them that had gone, and others[Pg 73]with them. And when they saw him they whistledto make fun of him, and he went away.
The stepfather died after that, and the womanherself died, and was buried a week yesterday.And she had one son by the second husband andhe was always silly-like, and the night she diedhe went into the room where she was, to the otherside of the bed, and he called out, and then hecame out walking crooked, and his face drawn upon one side; and so he is since, and a neighbourtaking care of him. And you'd hardly mind whata poor silly creature like him would say, but whathe says is that it was some of the boys that weregone that were in it. And now there's no one totake up the land that so many were after; the girlin America wouldn't for all the world come backto that place.
"One time on Hy, one Brito of Columcille'sbrotherhood was dying, and Columcille gavehim his blessing but would not see him die, and wentout into the little court of the house. And he hadhardly gone out when the life went from Brito. AndColumcille was out in the little court, and one of themonks saw him looking upward, and wonder on him,and he asked what was it he saw. And Columcillesaid, 'I have seen just at this moment the holy angelsfighting in the air against the power of the enemy,and I gave thanks to Christ, the Judge, because thewinning angels have carried to heaven the soul of thisstranger that is the first to have died among us in thisisland. And do not tell his secret to any person inmy lifetime,' he said."—"Saints and Wonders."
"With that King Arthur entereth into a great forestadventurous, and rideth the day long until he comethabout evensong into the thick of the forest. And heespied a little house beside a little chapel, and it wellseemed to him to be a hermitage.... And itseemed to him that there was a strife in the chapel.[Pg 78]The ones were weeping so tenderly and sweetly asit were angels, and the others spake so harshly as itwere fiends.... The voices ceased as soon as hewas within. He marvelleth how it came that thishouse and hermitage were solitary, and what hadbecome of the hermit that dwelt therein. He drewnigh the altar of the chapel, and beheld in frontthereof a coffin all discovered, and he saw the hermitlying therein all clad in his vestments, and his handscrossed 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 thelittle house, and sate him down on a seat whereonthe hermit wont to sit. And he heareth the strife andthe noise begin again within the chapel, and the oneshe heareth speaking high and the others low, and heknoweth well by the voices that the ones are angels andthe others devils. And he heareth that the devils aredistraining on the hermit's soul, and that judgmentwill presently be given in their favour, whereof makethey great joy. King Arthur is grieved in his heartwhen he heareth that the angels' voices are stilled.And while he sitteth thus, stooping his head towardthe ground, full of vexation and discontent, he hearethin the chapel the voice of a Lady that spake so sweetand clear that no man in this earthly world, were hisgrief and heaviness never so sore, but and he hadheard the sweet voice of her pleading would again havebeen in joy.... The devils go their way all discomfitand aggrieved; and the sweet Mother of ourLord God taketh the soul of the hermit.... And[Pg 79]the angels take it and begin to sing for joy 'Te DeumLaudamus.' And the Holy Lady leadeth them andgoeth her way along with them."—"The High Historyof the Holy Grail." Translated by SebastianEvans.
Before I had read this old story from "The HighHistory of the Holy Grail" I had heard on our ownroads of the fighting at the hour of death, and how thefriends of the dying among the dead come and use theirstrength on his side, and I had been shown here andthere a house where such a fight had taken place.In the old days it was a king or saint who saw andheard this unearthly battle; but now it is not those wholive in palaces who are aware of it, and it is notaround the roof of a fair chapel the hosts of good andevil gather in combat for the parting soul, but aroundthe thatched and broken roof of the poor.
I was told by An Islander:
There are more of the Sheogue in America thanwhat there are here, and more of other sort ofspirits. There was a man from there told methat one night in America he had brought hiswife's niece that was sick back from the hospital,and had put her in an upper room. And in theevening they heard a scream from her and shecalled out "The room is full of them, and myfather is with them, and my aunt." And he drovethem away and used the devil's name and cursedthem. And she was left quiet that night, but thenext day she said "I'll be destroyed altogethertonight with them." And he said he'd keep themout, and he locked the door of the house. Andtowards midnight he heard them coming to thedoor and trying to get in, but he kept it lockedand he called to them by way of the keyhole tokeep away out of that. And there was talkingamong them, and the girl that was upstairs saidthat she could hear the laugh of her father and ofher aunt. And they heard the greatest fightingamong them that ever was, and after that theywent away, and the girl got well. That's whatoften happens, crying and fighting for one that'ssick or going to die.
Mrs. Meagher:
There was an old woman the other day wastelling me of a little girl that was put to bake acake, for her mother was sick in the room. Andwhen she turned away her head for a minute thecake was gone. And that happened the secondday and the third, and the mother was vexedwhen she heard it, thinking some of the neighbourshad come and taken it away.
But the next day an old man appeared, and sheknew he was the grandfather, and he said "It'sby me the cake was taken, for I was watching thehouse these three nights when I knew there wassome one sick in it. And you never heard such afight as there was for her last night, and theywould have brought her away but for me that hadmy shoulder to the door." And the woman beganto recover from that time.
Tom Smith:
There does often be fighting when a person isdying. John Madden's wife that lived in thishouse before I came to it, the night she died therewas a noise heard, that all the village thought thatevery wall of every garden round about was fallingdown. But in the morning there was no sign ofany of them being fallen.
And Hannay that lived at Cahir, the bonesetter,when I went to him one time told me that onenight late he was walking the road near Ardrahan.And they heard a great noise of fighting in the[Pg 83]castle he was passing by, and no one living in itand it open to the sky. And he turned in and wasgoing up the stairs, and a lady in a white dressstopped him and wouldn't let him pass up. Butthe next day he went to look and he found thefloor all covered with blood.
And before John Casey's death, John Leesonasked me one day were we fighting down at ourplace, for he heard a great noise of fighting thenight before.
A Farmer:
As to fighting for those that are dying, I'dbelieve in that. There was a girl died not farfrom here, and the night of her death there washeard in the air the sound of an army marching,and the drums beating, and it stopped over thehouse where she was lying sick. And they couldsee no one, but could hear the drums and themarching plain enough, and there were like littleflames of lightning playing about it.
Did they fight for Johnny Casey? No, believeme 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, butwe can't know what they might want of them.And it's well to have a friend among them, and[Pg 84]it's always said you have no right to fret if yourchildren die, for it's well to have them there beforeyou. And when a person is dying the friends andthe others will often come about the house andwill give a great challenge for him. They don'twant cross people, and they won't take you if yousay so much as one cross word. It's only the goodand the pious they want. Now isn't that verygood of them?
Another:
There was a young man I knew died, a fineyoung man, twenty-five years of age. He wasseven or eight days ill, and the night he diedthey could hear fighting around the house, and theyheard voices but they couldn't know what theywere saying. And in the morning the ground wasall covered with blood.
When Connors the young policeman died, surethe mother said she never heard such fighting aswent on within the house. And there was bloodsplashed high up on the walls. They never let onhow he got the touch, but I suppose they knew itthemselves.
A Gatekeeper:
There was a girl near Westport was away, andthe way it came on her was, she was on the roadone day and two men passed her, and one of themsaid, "That's a fine girl," and the other said, "She[Pg 85]belongs to my town," and there and then she got apain in her knee, and couldn't walk home but hadto be brought in a car. And she used to be awayat night, and thorns in her feet in the morning, butshe never said where she went. But one time thesister brought her to Kilfenora, and when theywere crossing a bog near to there, she pointed outa house in the bog, and she said "It's there I waslast night." And the sister asked did she knowany one she saw in it, and she said "There was oneI know, that is my mother's cousin," and she toldher name. And she said "But for her they'd haveme ill-treated, but she fought for me and savedme." She was thought to be dying one time andgiven over, and my mother sent me to see her,and how was she. And she was lying on the bedand her eyes turned back, and she speechless, andI told my mother when I came home she hadn't anhour to live. And the next day she was up andabout and not a thing on her. It might be themother's cousin that fought for her again there.She went to America after.
An Aran Woman:
There's often fighting heard about the housewhere one is sick, that is what we call "the fightingof the friends" for we believe it is the friends andthe enemies of the sick person fighting for him.
I knew a house where there were a good manysleeping one night, and in the morning there was[Pg 86]blood on the threshold, and the clothes of thosethat slept on the floor had blood on them. And itwasn't long after that the woman of the housetook sick and died.
One night there was one of the boys very sickwithin, and in the morning the grandmother saidshe heard a great noise of fighting in the nightabout the door. And she said: "If it hadn't beenfor Michael and John being drowned, you'd havelost Martin last night. For they were there fightingfor him; I heard them, and I saw the shadow ofMichael, but when I turned to take hold of himhe was gone."
A good many years ago when I was but beginningmy study of the folk-lore of belief, I wrotesomewhere that if by an impossible miracle everytrace and memory of Christianity could be swept outof the world, it would not shake or destroy at all thebelief of the people of Ireland in the invisible world,the cloud of witnesses, in immortality and the life tocome. For them the veil between things seen andunseen has hardly thickened since those early days ofthe world when the sons of God mated with thedaughters of men; when angels spoke with Abrahamin Hebron or with Columcille in the oakwoods ofDerry, or when as an old man at my own gate told methey came and visited the Fianna, the old heroes ofIreland, "because they were so nice and so respectable."Ireland has through the centuries keptcontinuity of vision, the vision it is likely all nationspossessed in the early days of faith. Here in Connachtthere is no doubt as to the continuance of lifeafter death. The spirit wanders for a while in thatintermediate region to which mystics and theologianshave given various names, and should it return and[Pg 90]become visible those who loved it will not be afraid,but will, as I have already told, put a light in thewindow to guide the mother home to her child, or goout into the barley gardens in the hope of meetinga son. And if the message brought seems hardlyworth the hearing, we may call to mind what FredericMyers wrote of more instructed ghosts:
"If it was absurd to listen to Kepler becausehe bade the planets move in no perfect circles butin undignified ellipses, because he hastened andslackened from hour to hour what ought to be aheavenly body's ideal and unwavering speed; is it notabsurder still to refuse to listen to these voices fromafar, because they come stammering and wanderingas in a dream confusedly instead of with a trumpet'scall? Because spirits that bending to earth mayundergo perhaps an earthly bewilderment and sufferunknown limitations, and half remember and halfforget?"
And should they give the message more clearly whoknows if it would be welcome? For the old Scotchstory goes that when S. Columcille's brother Dobhranrose up from his grave and said, "Hell is not so badas people say," the Saint cried out, "Clay, clay onDobhran!" before he could tell any more.
I was told by Mrs. Dennehy:
Those that mind the teaching of the clergy saythe dead go to Limbo first and then to Purgatoryand then to hell or to heaven. Hell is alwaysburning and if you go there you never get out; butthose that mind the old people don't believe, andI don't believe, that there is any hell. I don'tbelieve God Almighty would make Christians toput them into hell afterwards.
It is what the old people say, that after death theshadow goes wandering, and the soul is weak, andthe body is taking a rest. The shadow wandersfor a while and it pays the debts it had to pay,and when it is free it puts out wings and flies toHeaven.
An Aran Man:
There was an old man died, and after three dayshe appeared in the cradle as a baby; they knewhim by an old look in his face, and his face beinglong and other things. An old woman that cameinto the house saw him, and she said, "He won'tbe with you long, he had three deaths to die, andthis is the second," and sure enough he died at theend of six years.
Mrs. Martin:
There was a man beyond when I lived at Ballybron,and it was said of him that he was takenaway—up before God Almighty. But the blessedMother asked for grace for him for a year and aday. So he got it. I seen him myself, and manyseen him, and at the end of the year and a day hedied. And that man ought to be happy now anyway.When my own poor little girl was drownedin the well, I never could sleep but fretting, fretting,fretting. But one day when one of my little boyswas taking his turn to serve the Mass he stoppedon his knees without getting up. And FatherBoyle asked him what did he see and he lookingup. And he told him that he could see his littlesister in the presence of God, and she shining likethe sun. Sure enough that was a vision He hadsent to comfort us. So from that day I nevercried 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 thenight of his death, in Esserkelly where he had afarm, and a man along with him going throughthe stock. And all of a sudden a train came intothe field, and brought them both away like a blastof wind.
And as for old Parsons Persse of Castleboy,there's thousands of people has seen him hunting[Pg 93]at night with his horses and his hounds and hisbugle blowing. There's no mistake at all abouthim 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 thehouse, there flew by the window the whitest birdthat ever was seen. And the priest said to thefather: "Do not lament, unless what you like, yourchild's happy for ever!"
Mrs. Casey:
Near the strand there were two little girls wentout to gather cow-dung. And they sat down besidea bush to rest themselves, and there they heard agroan coming from under the ground. So theyran home as fast as they could. And they weretold when they went again to bring a man withthem.
So the next time they went they brought a manwith them, and they hadn't been sitting therelong when they heard the saddest groan that everyou heard. So the man bent down and askedwhat was it. And a voice from below said, "Letsome one shave me and get me out of this, for Iwas never shaved after dying." So the man wentaway, and the next day he brought soap and allthat was needful and there he found a body lyinglaid out on the grass. So he shaved it, and withthat wings came and carried it up to high heaven.
A Chimney-sweep:
I don't believe in all I hear, or I'd believe inghosts and faeries, with all the old people telling youstories about them and the priests believing inthem 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 myhand out at the top of every chimney in CooleHouse; and I seen or felt nothing to frighten me,except one night two rats caught in a trap atRoxborough; and the old butler came down andbeat me with a belt for the scream I gave at that.But if I believed in any one coming back, itwould be in what you often hear, of a mothercoming back to care for her child.
And there's many would tell you that everytime you see a tree shaking there's a ghost in it.
Old Lambert of Dangan was a terror for tellingstories; he told me long ago how he was near thePiper's gap on Ballybrit race-course, and he saw oneriding to meet him, and it was old Michael Lynchof Ballybrista, that was dead long before, and henever would go on the race-course again. And hehad heard the car with headless horses drivingthrough Loughrea. From every part they aresaid to drive, and the place they are all going to isBenmore, near Loughrea, where there is a ruineddwelling-house and an old forth. And at MountMahon a herd told me the other day he often[Pg 95]saw old Andrew Mahon riding about at night.But if I was a herd and saw that I'd hold mytongue about it.
Mrs. Casey:
At the graveyard of Drumacoo often spirits dobe 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 "Isthere anything I can do for you?" For he thoughtshe was some country-woman gone astray. "Thereis," says she. "Then come home with me," sayshe, "and tell me about it." "I can't do that,"says she, "but what you can do is this, go tell myfriends I'm in great trouble, for twenty times in mylife I missed going to church, and they must saytwenty Masses for me now to deliver me, but theyseem to have forgotten me. And another thing is,"says she, "there's some small debts I left andthey're not paid, and those are helping to keepme in trouble." Well, the man went on and hedidn't know what in the world to do, for he couldn'tknow who she was, for they are not permittedto tell their name. But going about visiting atcountry houses he used to tell the story, and atlast it came out she was one of the Shannons.For at a house he was telling it at they rememberedthat an old woman they had, died a year ago, andthat she used to be running up little debts unknown[Pg 96]to them. So they made inquiry at Findlater's andat another shop that's done away with now, andthey found that sure enough she had left somesmall 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, andshortly after she appeared to the man again."God bless you now," she said, "for what you didfor me, for now I'm at peace."
A Tinker's Daughter:
I heard of what happened to a family in thetown. One night a thing that looked like a goosecame in. And when they said nothing to it, itwent away up the stairs with a noise like lead.Surely if they had questioned it, they'd have foundit to be some soul in trouble.
And there was another soul came back that wasin trouble because of a ha'porth of salt it owed.
And there was a priest was in trouble andappeared after death, and they had to say Massesfor him, because he had done some sort of a crimeon a widow.
Mrs. Farley:
One time myself I was at Killinan, at a houseof the Clancys' where the father and mother haddied, but it was well known they often cometo look after the children. I was walking withanother girl through the fields there one eveningand I looked up and saw a tall woman dressed all[Pg 97]in black, with a mantle of some sort, a wide one,over her head, and the waves of the wind wereblowing it off her, so that I could hear the noise ofit. All her clothes were black, and had the appearanceof being new. And I asked the other girldid she see her, and she said she did not. For twothat are together can never see such things, butonly one of them. So when I heard she saw nothingI ran as if for my life, and the woman seemed to becoming after me, till I crossed a running streamand she had no power to cross that. And one timemy brother was stopping in the same house, andone night about twelve o'clock there came a smellin the house like as if all the dead people were there.And one of the girls whose father and mother haddied got up out of her bed, and began to put herclothes on, and they had to lock the doors to stopher from going away out of the house.
There was a woman I knew of that after herdeath was kept for seven years in a tree in Kinadyfe,and for seven years after that she was keptunder the arch of the little bridge beyond Kilchriest,with the water running under her. And whetherthere was frost or snow she had no shelter fromit, not so much as the size of a leaf.
At the end of the second seven years she cameto her husband, and he passing the bridge on theway home from Loughrea, and when he felt hernear him he was afraid, and he didn't stop toquestion her, but hurried on.
So then she came in the evening to the houseof her own little girl. But she was afraid whenshe saw her, and fell down in a faint. And thewoman's sister's child was in the house, and whenthe little girl told her what she saw, she said "Youmust surely question her when she comes again."So she came again that night, but the little girlwas afraid again when she saw her and saidnothing. But the third night when she came thesister's child, seeing her own little girl was afraid,said "God bless you, God bless you." And withthat the woman spoke and said "God bless youfor saying that." And then she told her all thathad happened her and where she had been all thefourteen years. And she took out of her dress ablack silk handkerchief and said: "I took that frommy husband's neck the day I met him on the roadfrom Loughrea, and this very night I would havekilled him, because he hurried away and would notstop to help me, but now that you have helped meI'll not harm him. But bring with you to Kilmacduagh,to the graveyard, three cross sticks withwool on them, and three glasses full of salt, andhave three Masses said for me; and I'll appear toyou when I am at rest." And so she did; and itwas for no great thing she had done that troublehad been put upon her.
John Cloran:
That house with no roof was made a hospital ofin the famine, and many died there. And one[Pg 99]night my father was passing by and he saw someone standing all in white, and two men beside him,and he thought he knew one of the men and spoketo him and said "Is that you, Martin?" but henever spoke nor moved. And as to the thing inwhite, he could not say was it man or woman, butmy father never went by that place again at night.
The last person buried in a graveyard has thecare of all the other souls until another is to beburied, and then the soul can go and shift for itself.It may be a week or a month or a year, but watchthe 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 hisdeath there was a man passing the river and thehorse he had would not go into it. And he heardthe voice of the tailor saying from the river he hada message to send to his wife, and to tell her notto be giving short measure, or she would be sent tothe same place as himself. There was a hymnmade about that.
There was a woman lived in Rathkane, alone inthe house, and she told me that one night somethingcame and lay over the bed and gave three greatmoans. That was all ever she heard in the house.
The shadows of the dead gather round atSamhain time to see is there any one amongtheir 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 weredrowned. And a man from County Clare told methat he was on the coast that day, and that he sawthem walking towards him on the Atlantic.
There is a house down there near the sea, andone day the woman of it was sitting by the fire,and a little girl came in at the door, and a redcloak about her, and she sat down by the fire.And the woman asked her where did she comefrom, and she said that she had just come fromConnemara. And then she went out, and whenshe was going out the door she made herself knownto her sister that was standing in it, and she calledout to the mother. And when the mother knew itwas the child she had lost near a year before, sheran out to call her, for she wouldn't for all theworld 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 hiswife behind him, and there was a great windblowing, and he kept his head stooped downbecause of the seaweed coming blowing into hiseyes. And she was about twenty paces behind, andshe saw his first wife come and walk close besidehim, and he never saw her, having his head down,but she kept with him near all the way. And when[Pg 101]they got home, she told the husband who was withhim, and with the fright she got she was bad in herbed for two or three days—do you remember that,Martin? She died after, and he has a third wifetaken 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 theRotunda Hospital for an operation. And whenshe was going she cried when she was sayinggood-bye to her cousin that was a friend of mine,for she felt in her that she would not come backagain. And she put her two arms about her goingaway and said, "If the dead can do any good thingfor the living, I'll do it for you." And she neverrecovered, but died in the hospital. And withina few weeks something came on her cousin, myfriend, and they said it was her side that wasparalysed, and she died. And many said it was nocommon illness, but that it was the dead womanthat had kept to her word.
A Connemara Man:
There was a boy in New York was killed byrowdies, they killed him standing against a lamppostand he was frozen to it, and stood there tillmorning. And it is often since that time he wasseen in the room and the passages of the housewhere he used to be living.
And in the house beyond a woman died, andsome other family came to live in it; but everynight she came back and stripped the clothes offthem, so at last they went away.
When some one goes that owes money, theweight of the soul is more than the weight of thebody, and it can't get away and keeps wanderingtill some one has courage to question it.
Mrs. Casey:
My grandmother told my mother that in hertime at Cloughballymore, there was a womanused to appear in the churchyard of Rathkeale,and that many boys and girls and children diedwith the fright they got when they saw her.
So there was a gentleman living near was verysorry for all the children dying, and he went to anold woman to ask her was there any way to doaway with the spirit that appeared. So she said ifany one would have courage to go and to questionit, he could do away with it. So the gentlemanwent 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 toit and said, "Tell me what you are?" And itcame over to him, and when he saw the face hegot such a fright that he turned the horse's headand galloped away as hard as he could. But aftergalloping a long time he looked down and whatdid he see beside him but the woman running and[Pg 103]her hand on the horse. So he took his sword andgave a slash at her, and cut through her arm, sothat she gave a groan and vanished, and he wenton home.
And when he got to the stable and had thelantern lighted, you may think what a start hegot when he saw the hand still holding on to thehorse, and no power could lift it off. So he wentinto the house and said his prayers to AlmightyGod to take it off. And all night long, he couldhear moaning and crying about the house. And inthe morning when he went out the hand was gone,but all the stable was splashed with blood. Butthe woman was never seen in those parts again.
A Seaside Man:
And many see the faeries at Knock and therewas a carpenter died, and he could be heard allnight in his shed making coffins and carts andall sorts of things, and the people are afraid togo near it. There were four boys from Knockdrowned five years ago, and often now they areseen walking on the strand and in the fields andabout the village.
There was a man used to go out fowling, andone day his sister said to him, "Whatever you dodon't go out tonight and don't shoot any wild-duckor any birds you see flying—for tonight theyare all poor souls travelling."
An Old Man in Galway Workhouse:
Burke of Carpark's son died, but he used oftento be seen going about afterwards. And one timea herd of his father's met with him and he said,"Come tonight and help us against the hurlersfrom the north, for they have us beat twice, and ifthey beat us a third time, it will be a bad year forIreland."
It was in the daytime they had the hurlingmatch through the streets of Galway. No onecould see them, and no one could go outside the doorwhile it lasted, for there went such a whirlwindthrough the town that you could not look throughthe window.
And he sent a message to his father that hewould find some paper he was looking for a fewdays before, behind a certain desk, between it andthe wall, and the father found it there. He wouldnot have believed it was his son the herd met onlyfor that.
A Munster Woman:
I have only seen them myself like dark shadows,but there's many can see them as they are. Surelythey bring away the dead among them.
There was a woman in County Limerick thatdied after her baby being born. And all the peoplewere in the house when the funeral was to be,crying for her. And the cars and the horses wereout on the road. And there was seen among thema carriage full of ladies, and with them the woman[Pg 105]was sitting that they were crying for, and thebaby with her, and it dressed.
And there was another woman I knew of died,and left a family, and often after, the people sawher in their dreams, and always in rich clothes,though all the clothes she had were given awayafter she died, for the good of her soul, except maybeher shawl. And her husband married a servinggirl after that, and she was hard to the children,and one night the woman came back to her, andhad like to throw her out of the window in hernightdress, till she gave a promise to treat thechildren well, and she was afraid not to treat themwell after that.
There was a farmer died and he had done someman out of a saddle, and he came back after to afriend, and gave him no rest till he gave a newsaddle to the man he had cheated.
Mrs. Casey:
There was a woman my brother told me aboutand she had a daughter that was red-haired.And the girl got married when she was undertwenty, for the mother had no man to tend theland, so she thought best to let her go. And afterher baby being born, she never got strong butstopped in the bed, and a great many doctors sawher but did her no good.
And one day the mother was at Mass at thechapel and she got a start, for she thought shesaw her daughter come in to the chapel with[Pg 106]the same shawl and clothes on her that she had beforeshe took to the bed, but when they came outfrom the chapel, she wasn't there. So she went tothe house, and asked was she after going out, andwhat they told her was as if she got a blow, for theysaid the girl hadn't ten minutes to live, and she wasdead before ten minutes were out. And she appearsnow sometimes; they see her drawing waterfrom the well at night and bringing it into thehouse, 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 towardsAran with £3 worth of cable he was after gettingfrom McDonagh's store in Galway. And he wassteering the boat, and there were two turf-boatsalong with him, and all in a minute they saw hewas gone, swept off the boat with a wave and it adead calm.
And they saw him come up once, straight up asif he was pushed, and then he was brought downagain and rose no more.
And it was some time after that a friend of hisin Boston, and that was coming home to this place,was in a crowd of people out there. And he sawhim coming to him and he said, "I heard that youwere 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 Galwayfor it's owed him for the cable I got from him."[Pg 107]And he put the three guineas in his hand andvanished away.
An Old Army Man:
I have seen hell myself. I had a sight of it onetime in a vision. It had a very high wall around it,all of metal, and an archway in the wall, and astraight walk into it, just like what would beleading into a gentleman's orchard, but the edgeswere not trimmed with box but with red-hot metal.And inside the wall there were cross walks, andI'm not sure what there was to the right, but to theleft there was five great furnaces and they full ofsouls kept there with great chains. So I turnedshort and went away; and in turning I looked againat the wall and I could see no end to it.
And another time I saw purgatory. It seemed tobe in a level place and no walls around it, but it allone bright blaze, and the souls standing in it.And they suffer near as much as in hell, only thereare no devils with them there, and they have thehope of heaven.
And I heard a call to me from there "Help meto come out of this!" And when I looked it was aman I used to know in the army, an Irishman andfrom this country, and I believe him to be a descendantof King O'Connor of Athenry. So Istretched out my hand first but then I called out"I'd be burned in the flames before I could getwithin three yards of you." So then he said,"Well, help me with your prayers," and so I do.
When I had begun my search for folk-lore, thefirst to tell me he himself had seen the Sidhewas an old, perhaps half-crazed man I will callMichael Barrett (for I do not give the real nameseither of those who are living or who have left livingrelatives). I had one day asked an old womanwho had been spinning wool for me, to be made intofrieze by our weavers, if she had ever seen the faeryhost. She said, "I never saw them myself nor Idon't think much of them; it is God that takes us orleaves us as He will. But a neighbouring man wasstanding in my door last night, and there's no dayof the year he doesn't hear them or feel them.
"It's in his head I think it does be, and when hestood in the door last night I said 'the wind does bealways in my ears and the sound of it never stops,'to make him think it was the same with him. But hesaid, 'I hear them singing and making music all thetime, and one of them's after bringing out a littleflute, and it's on it he's playing to them.' Sure hehas half his chimney pulled down, where they usedto be sitting and singing to him day and night. But[Pg 112]those that are born in the daytime never have powerto 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 alurcher, a bastard hound, with him. And somethingran across the path in the shape of a white cat, andthe lurcher went after him, and Barrett went homeand to bed and left the door open for the lurcher tocome in. And in the morning they found it there,lying under the table, and it paralysed and not able tostir. But after a few months it got better, and onenight they were crossing the bog again and the samething ran across their path, and this time in the formof a deer. But the dog wouldn't follow it again, butshrank behind Barrett until such time as it hadpassed by."
My spinning woman, coming another time withchickens to sell, said, "Barrett is after telling me thismorning that they were never so bad as these last twonights. 'Friday fine-day' is what they say now, inIrish, and he got no sleep till he threatened to throwdirty water over them. The poor man, they do saythey are mostly in his head now, but sure he was afine fresh man twenty years ago, the night he sawthem all linked in two lots, like slips of girls walkingtogether. And it was that very same day that Hession'slittle girl got a touch from them. She was asfine a little girl as ever you saw, and her mother senther into Gort to do a message. And on the road shemet a red-haired woman, with long wisps of hair asbright as silver, and she said, 'Where are you going[Pg 113]and who are you?' 'I'm going to Gort on a message,'says she, 'and I'm Mrs. Hession's daughter of sucha place.' Well, she came home, and that very nightshe got a pain in her thigh, with respects to you, andshe and her mother have half the world walked sincethen, trying to get relief for her; but never a bit betterdid she ever get. And no doubt at all but that's thevery same day Michael Barrett saw them in the fieldnear Hession's house."
I asked Mr. Yeats to come with me to see the oldman, and we walked up the long narrow lane, fromwhich we could see Slieve Echtge and the Burrenhills, to the little cabin with its broken chimney whereMichael Barrett told us of those that had disturbedhis rest. This was the first time we went togetherto enquire into the Hierarchy of the Sidhe, of whichby degrees we have gathered so much traditional andoriginal knowledge.
As to old Barrett, I saw him from time to time, andhe told me he was still "tormented," and that "thereis one that sat and sang b-b-b all the night" til a fewevenings before he had got a bit of rag and tied it to along stick, and hit at him when he came, and drovehim out with the rest. And in the next spring Iheard he was ill, and that "on Saturday he had beentold by three he was to die." When I visited him Ifound him better, and he said that since the warningon Saturday they had left him alone "and thechildren that used to be playing about with them havegone to some other place; found the house too cold forthem maybe." That was the last time I saw him; I am[Pg 114]glad I had been able to help him to more warmth andcomfort before the end.
I asked the old man's brother, a labourer, what hethought of Michael's visions, but he made little ofthem. "Old he is, and it's all in the brain the thingshe does be talking of. If it was a young man told us ofthem we might believe him, but as to him, we pay noattention to what he says at all. Those things arepassed away, and you—I beg your pardon for usingthat 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 seequeer things? But they'd see nothing if they wentto their bed quiet and regular.
"Lydon that had the contract for the schoolhouse, wedidn't mind much what he said happened him thenight he slept there alone, and in the morning hecouldn't stir across the floor from the place where hewas. But who knows? Maybe he had too much drinktaken before he went to bed. It was no wonder in theold times if there was signs and the like where murderhad been. But that's come to an end, and time for it.
"There's another man, one Doran, has the samedreams and thoughts as my brother, and he leavespieces of silver on the wall; and when they're took—it'sthe faeries! But myself I believe it's the boys dobe watching him.
"No, these things are gone from the world, andthere's not the same dread of death there used to be.When we die we go to judgment, and the places we'llget there, they won't be the same as what we had here.[Pg 115]The charitable, the kind-hearted, lady or gentleman,who'd have a chance if they didn't? But the tyrantsand schemers, what chance will there be for the like ofthem?"
"You will have a good place there, Barrett, you andJohn Farrell. You have done your work better thanmost of us through all your life, and it's likely you'llbe above us there."
"I did my work all my life, fair and honest everyday; and now that I'm old, I'll keep on the same trackto the last. Like a horse that might be racing atGalway racecourse or another, there might be eightleaps or ten leaps he might be frightened at; but whenhe's once over the last leap there's no fear of him. Whywould he fail then, with the winning post so near athand?"
I was told by A Gatekeeper:
There was once a family, the O'Hagans living inDromore Hill, that now belongs to you, well-to-dopeople. And one day the son that had been atcollege was coming back, and there was a greatdinner being made in the house. And a girl wassent off to a spring by the forth to get some water,and when she passed by the forth, she heard likethe crying of a child and some one said to it "Nothinggiven to us today, no milk spilled for us, nothinglaid out for us, but tonight we'll have what wewant and there will be waste and overflow." Andthat evening the young man that was cominghome got a fall from his horse, and was killed, andall the grand things for the dinner were thrownabout and went to loss. So never begrudge thedrop of milk you'll spill, or the bit you'll let fall, itmight turn all to good in the end.
One night at the house below it was just gettingdark, and a man came in the gate and to the doorand came in and fell down on a chair. And whenI saw him shaking and his face so white, I thoughtit was the fear gortha (the hungry grass) he hadwalked on, and I called to the wife to give himsomething to eat. But he would take nothing[Pg 118]but a cup of water with salt in it, and when he gotbetter he told us that when he was passing the bigtree a man and a woman came out and came alongwith him. They didn't speak but they walked oneach side of him, and then the woman seemed to goaway, but the man's step was with him till he camein at the gate.
There was a girl of the Heniffs brought thedinner one day to where the men were workingnear where the river rises at Coole. And whenshe had left the dinner she began to gather kippeens,and put them in her shawl, and began totwist a rope of the ends of it to tie them up. Andat that moment she was taken up, and where shefound herself was in Galway, sitting in the Square.And she had no money, and she began to think ofthe friends she had there and to say, "If they knewwhere I was they'd give me money to bring meback." And in those days there was a coach thatran from Galway to Kiltartan, and she found herselfin it, and it starting, and it left her safe andsound again at home.
Mrs. Casey:
There was a girl at Tyrone was bringing backsome apples out of the garden there. And on theroad she met a man, and she thought that he wasone of the old St. Georges, and he asked where didshe get the apples, and bid her put them down inthe road, and when she opened the bundle they[Pg 119]were all turned to eggs. So she put them up againand brought them home, and when she and hermother looked at them in the house they werebeginning to crack, and the chickens to put theirbeaks through them; so they put them in thecorner of the kitchen for the night, and in themorning when they went to look at them theywere all turned to apples again, but they thoughtbest not to eat them.
A Munster Woman:
There was a woman I knew in County Limerick,near Foynes—Mrs. Doolan, a nurse. She wascalled out of bed one night by a small man with alamp, and he led her to a place she had never seenbefore, and into a house, and there was a woman ina bed and the child was born after she came. AndI 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'sproperty, one of a family of large farmers, and hehad a settle-bed in the kitchen, and one night hesaw the kitchen full of them, and they making upthe fire and cooking, and they set out the table andate at it.
I often heard they'd fight in November at thetime of harvest, and my father told me that in theyear of the famine there was great fighting heard[Pg 120]up in the sky, and they were crying out, "Blackpotatoes, black potatoes, we'll have them now."I suppose it was one tribe of them fighting againstanother for them. And the oats in that year wereall black as well as the potatoes.
A Clare Man:
I saw them myself one night I was going toEnnis with a load of straw. It was when we cameto Bunnahow and the moon was shining, and I wason the top of the load of straw, and I saw them ina field. Just like jockeys they were, and ridinghorses, red clothes and caps they had like a jockeywould have, but they were small. They had ascreen of bushes put up in the field and some of thehorses would jump over it, and more of themwould baulk when they'd be put to it. The menthat were with me didn't see them, they werewalking in the road, but they heard the sound ofthe horses.
Another Clare Man:
I heard a churning one time in the hill upby the road beyond. I was coming back fromKinvara, and I heard it plain, no mistake about it.I was sorry after I didn't call down and ask for adrink. Johnny Moon did so, and got it. If youwish for a drink and they put it out for you, it'sno harm to take it, but if you refuse it, some harmmight happen to you. Johnny Henderson oftentold that he heard churning in that spot, but I[Pg 121]wouldn't believe the sun rising from him, he hadso many lies. But after that, I said, "Well, JohnnyHenderson has told the truth for once anyhow."
A Miller:
There was Tom Gantly one evening was goingto Coole, and he heard a step behind him and itfollowed him every bit of the way, till he got tothe hall door of Coole House; but he could seenothing.
He saw a gig one night on the road there bythe wall and it full of ladies laughing and grandlydressed—the best of hats and feathers they had.And it turned and passed him a second time. Andwith the fright he got, he never would pass that bitof road by himself again.
There were two men went one night to catchrabbits in that field you have let now to FatherFahy, and the one next it. And when they werestanding there they heard a churning below. Sothey went on a little way, and they heard atambourine below, music going on and the beatingof a drum. So they moved a little farther on andthen they heard the sound of a fiddle from below.So they came home and caught no rabbits thatnight.
J. Creevy:
May is a great time with these strangers, andNovember is a bad month for them, and this[Pg 122]month you're in now. I was trying the other dayin the town to get a marriage made up for a girlthat was seduced—and the family wouldn't haveit this month because of that.
One night on the Kiltartan road I saw a flock ofwool by the road side, and I gave a kick at it andit didn't move, and then another kick and itdidn't move. So it can have been no natural thing.
And Lee told me that one night he saw red menriding 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 itthe squealing of pigs?" And they all said theycould hear nothing. But I could hear it for a longtime, and it the grandest I ever heard—and like amelodeon. And as to the tune, I couldn't tellwhat it was but I know that I had heard it before.
A Kerry Piper:
One time in Kerry there was a coach comingafter me and it passed beside me, and I saw with itMrs. Mitchell from the big house. And when itcame near the bridge it sank into the earth, and Isaw no more of it.
And one time I was at Ennistymon I saw theass-car and the woman and the man out before[Pg 123]me. I had a little ass of my own at that time, andI followed them thinking to overtake them, butwhen 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 overthe big river, they were not to be seen. For theycan never cross over a mering (boundary) that is ariver.
J. Fagan:
One time I was at a party and I didn't leave thehouse till 2 o'clock so you may think it was latein the night before I got home. And after a whileI looked back and I saw some one coming afterme, a little old woman about so high (3 feet) andshe wearing a white cap with a frilled border, anda red square and a red flannel petticoat. I set offto run when I saw her, for at that time I had therun of a hare, but when I got near home I lookedback and she was after me still. When I got insidethe door I fell on my two knees. And it was sevenyears before I got the better of that fright. Andfrom that time to this I never got the run againthat I used to have.
There was a respectable woman, Mrs. Gaynor,living in Cloon, told me that whenever she went outof Cloon in the direction of Fiddane in one part ofthe road there was a woman sometimes met her,that she saw at no other time, and every time she'dmeet her she'd spit in her face.
There is a family at Tirneevan and they werehaving a wedding there. And when it was goingon, the wine ran short, and the spirits ran out andthey didn't know what to do to get more, Gortbeing two miles away. And two or three strangepeople came in that they had never seen before.And when they found what was wanting they saidthat they'd go get it. And in a few minutes theywere back with the spirits and the wine—and noplace to get it nearer than Gort.
There was a herd's house up at Burren that noone could live in. But one Holland from Tirneevansaid he'd take the place, and try how would heget on there. So he went with his family, and thefirst day the daughter made the place clean andswept it, and then she went out for a can of milk.And when she was coming in the door, it wasknocked out of her hand and spilled over her. Andthat evening when they sat down to their supperthe door opened and eight or nine people came in,and a red man among them. And they sat downand ate. And then they showed Holland one sideof 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 onemorning and he bade the servant girl go down andmake the fire and put on the potatoes, where he[Pg 125]had to be going out early. So she went down andthere she saw one of them sitting by the hearth inthe kitchen. So she ran upstairs with the frightshe got to where the man was in bed with his wife.So then he went down himself, and he saw one ofthem sure enough sitting by the fire and he asked"How did you come in?" And he said, "Bythe lock-hole of the door." And the man said,"There's the pot full of potatoes and you mightas well have used a few of them." And he said,"We have them used already; and you think nowthey are potatoes, but when you put the pot downon the fire you'll see they are no more than horsedung."
Thomas Cloonan:
One night my father was beyond on the otherside of the lake, going to watch an otter where thewater goes away underground. And he heardvoices talking, and he thought one was the voiceof Father Nagle the parish priest of Kilbecanty,and the other the voice of Father Hynes fromCloon that does be late out fishing for eels. Andwhen he came to where the voices were, there wasno one at all in it. And he went and sat in the cave,where the water goes under, and there was a greatnoise like as if planks were being thrown downoverhead. And you may think how frightenedhe was when he never took off his boots to cross theriver, but run through it just as he was and neverstopped till he got to the house.
Mrs. Cloonan:
Two men I saw one time over in Inchy. I wassitting milking the cow and she let a snore and Ilooked up and I saw the two men, small men, andtheir hands and their feet the smallest ever I saw,and hats turned back on their heads, but I didnot see their faces. Then the cow rose her foot,and I thought, "it will be worse for me if she'll puther foot down on me," and I looked at her, andwhen I looked up again they were gone. Mrs.Stafford told me it was not for me they came, butfor the cow, Blackberry, that died soon after.
There was a man in Gort was brought for a whileto Tir-na-Og, that is a part of heaven.
McGarrity that was coming back one night tothe 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 thereto foretell him he was stopping there too late.
John Phelan:
I never saw them nor felt them all my life, andI walking the place night and day, except onetime when for twelve nights I slept in the littlehouse beyond, in the kitchen garden where theapples were being robbed that time because therewas no one living at home. In the night-time in theloft above my head I used to hear a scratching anda scraping, and one time a plank that was above in[Pg 127]it began to move about. But I had no fear butstopped there, but I did not put off my clothes norstretch myself on the bed for twelve nights. Theysay that one man that slept in the same house wasfound in the morning choked in his bed and thedoor locked that they had to burst it in.
And in old Richard Gregory's time there wasone Horan slept there, and one night he ran out ofit and out of the Gort gate and got no leave toput his clothes on. But there's some can see thosethings and more that can't, and I'm one of thosethat can't. Walking Coole demesne I am theseforty years, days and nights, and never met anythingworse than myself.
But one night standing by the vinery and themoon shining, on a sudden a wind rose and shookthe trees and rattled the glass and the slates, andno wind before, and it stopped as sudden as it came.And there were two bunches of grapes gone, andthem that took them took them by the chimneyand no other way.
James Hill:
One night since I lived here I found late at nightthat a black jennet I had at that time had strayedaway. So I took a lantern and went to lookfor him, and found him near Doherty's house atthe bay. And when I took him by the halter,I put the light out and led him home. But surelyas I walked there was a footstep behind me all theway home.
I never rightly believed in them till I met apriest about two years ago coming out from thetown that asked his way to Mrs. Canan's, the timeshe was given over, and he told me that one timehis horse stopped and wouldn't pass the road, andthe man that was driving said, "I can't makehim pass." And the priest said, "It will be theworse for you, if I have to come down into theroad." For he knew some bad thing was there.And he told me the air is full of them. But FatherDolan wouldn't talk of such things, very proud heis, and he coming of no great stock.
One night I was driving outside Coole gate—closeto where the Ballinamantane farm begins.And the mare stopped, and I got off the car tolead her, but she wouldn't go on. Two or threetimes 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 upby the river to hunt coneens one evening, andthey threw the dog over the wall. And when hewas in the field he gave a yelp and drew back as ifsomething frightened him.
Another time my father was going early to someplace, and my mother had a noggin of turnipsboiled for him the night before, to give him somethingto eat before he'd start. So they got upvery early and she lighted the fire and put the[Pg 129]oven hanging over it for to warm the turnips, andthen she went back to bed again. And my fatherwas in a hurry and he went out and brought in asheaf of wheaten straw to put under the oven, theway it would make a quick blaze. And when hecame in, the oven had been taken off the hook, andwas put standing in the hearth, and no mortalhad been there. So he was afraid to stop, and hewent back to the bed, and till daybreak they couldhear something that was knocking against the pot.And the servant girl that was in the house, sheawoke and heard quick steps walking to the stable,and the door of it giving a screech as if it was beingopened. But in the morning there was no signthere or of any harm being done to the pot.
Then the girl remembered that she had washedher feet the night before, and had never thoughtto throw out the water. And it's well known towash the feet and not to throw the water out,brings some harm—except you throw fire into thevessel it stands in.
Simon Niland:
Late one night I was out walking, and a gun inmy hand, and I was going down a little avenue ofstones, and I heard after me the noise of a horse'ssteps. So I stopped and sat down on the stile, forI thought, the man that's with the horse, I'll havehis company a bit of the way. But the noise gotlouder like as if it was twenty horses coming, andthen I was knocked down, and I put out my foot to[Pg 130]save the gun from being broken. But when I gotup there was no hurt on me or on the gun, and thenoise was all gone, and the place quiet. It wasmaybe four year after that or six, I was walkingthe same path with the priest and a few others, fora whale had come ashore, and the jaw-bones of itwere wanted to make the piers of a gate. And thepriest said to me, "Did you ever hear of the battleof Troy?" "I didn't hear but I read about it,"says I. "Well," says he, "there was a man atthat time called Simon, and they found thatwhenever he came out with them to fight therewas luck with them, and when he wasn't with them,there'd be no luck. And that's why we put you infront of us, to lead us on the path, you having thesame name." So that put it in my head, and Itold him about what happened that night, and Isaid, "Now would you believe that?" "I would,"says he. "And what are such things done by?"says I. "The fallen angels," he said, "for theyhave power to do such things and to raise windand storm, but yet they have the hope of salvationat the last."
One clear night and the moon shining, I waswalking home down this road, and I had a strongdog at that time. And just here where you standhe began to bark at something and he made rushesat it, and made as if he was worrying it, but Icould see nothing, though if it had been even thesize of a rat I must have seen it, the night was so[Pg 131]clear. And I had to leave him at last and heardhim barking and I was at the house-door before hecame up with me.
I know a good many on the island have seenthose, but they wouldn't say what they are like tolook at, for when they see them their tongue getslike a stone.
Mrs. Hynes of Slieve Echtge:
When you see a blast of wind pass, pick a greenrush and throw it after them, and say, "Godspeed you." There they all are, and maybe thestroke lad at the end of them.
There was a neighbour of mine in late with meone night, and when he was going home, just ashe passed that little road you see, a big man cameover the wall in front of him, and was growingbigger as he went, till he nearly fainted with thefright he got.
They can do everything. They can raise thewind, and draw the storm.
And to Drogheda they go for wine, for the bestwine is in the cellars there.
An Islander:
One night I and another lad were coming alongthe road, and the dog began to fight, as if he wasfighting another dog, but we could see nothing and[Pg 132]we called him off but he wouldn't come. Andwhen we got home he answered us, and he seemedas if tired out.
There was a strange woman came to this islandone day and told some of the women down belowwhat would happen to them. And they didn'tbelieve her, she being a stranger, but since thattime, it's all been coming true.
Mrs. Casey:
I knew a woman that every night after shewent to bed used to see some sort of a shadowthat used to appear to her. So she went tosome old woman, and she told her to sprinkleholy water about and to put a blackthorn stickbeside her bed. So she got the stick and put itthere and sprinkled the holy water, and it neverappeared since then. Three sorts of holy watershe got, from the priest and from the friars andfrom some blessed well. And she has them in threepint bottles in the window, and she'd kill you ifyou so much as looked at them.
A Fisherman:
I never saw anything myself, but one day I wasgoing over the fields near Killeen, and it thequietest day of summer you ever saw. And all of asudden I heard a great noise like thunder, and ablast of wind passed by me that laid the thistleslow, and then all was quiet again. It might be[Pg 133]that they were changing, for they change fromplace to place.
I would not give in to faeries myself but for onething. There was a little boy of my own, andthere was a wedding going to be here, and therewas no bread in the house, and none to be had inKilcolgan, and I bade him to go to Kinvara forbread. I pulled out the ass-car for him and he setout.
And from that time he was never the same, andnow he is in the asylum at Ballinasloe.
Did he tell what happened? He never told meanything, but he told a neighbour that he metawful looking people on the road to Kinvara justabout midnight, and that whatever they did tohim, he could never recover it.
A Carter:
Often and often I heard things. A great shoutingI heard one night inside Coole demesne,—ahurling it must have been. Another time I waspassing at night-time, near Reed the weaver's,and there were rocks thrown at me all along theroad, but they did not touch me, and I could notsee any one thing there. But I never went thatroad again at night-time.
It's said those that die are left in the place wherethey lived to do their penance. Often and oftenwhen I came to that house below, I felt knocksunder the bed, and like some one walking over it.
Two men I know were going from Gort one[Pg 134]night, and there near the wall of the demesnethey saw two men ploughing, and they asked oneanother what could they be to be ploughing bynight. And then they saw that as they ploughed,the land was going away from them, and they weregone 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 fromBallinasloe, or some other place, and it wasraining, and he came to a river that was in flood,and there used to be no bridges in those times. Andwhen he was going to ride through the river, hesaw the greasa leprechaun on the bank, and heoffered him a lift, and he stooped down and liftedhim up behind him on the horse.
And when he got near where the castle was, hesaw it in flames before him. And the leprechaunsaid, "Don't fret after it but build a new castle inthe place I'll show you, about a stone's throw fromthe old one." "I have no money to do that,"said Tully Donnellan. "Never mind that," saidthe leprechaun, "but do as I bid you, and you'llhave plenty." So he did as he bade him, and themorning after he went to live in the new castle,when he went into that room that has the stonewith his name on it now, it was full up of gold, andyou could be turning it like you'd turn potatoesinto a shovel. And when the children would go[Pg 135]into the room with their father and mother, thenurses would put bits of wax on their shoes, theway bits of the gold would stick to them. Andthey had great riches and smothered the worldwith it, and they used to shoe their horses withsilver. It was in racing they ran through it, andkeeping hounds and horses and horns.
Old Pegs Kelly:
I seen the Sheogue but once, and that was fiveor six years ago, and I walking the railway where Iwas looking after my little hens that do be straying.And I saw them coming along, and in a minute Iwas in the middle of them. Shavings, and shavings,and shavings going along the road as fast as theycould go. And I knew there was no shavings tobe seen this many year, since the stakes weremade for the railway down at Nolan's, and thecarpenter that made them dead, and the shopwhere he made them picked clean. And I knewwell they were the horses the Sheogue did beriding. But some that saw them said they lookedlike bits of paper. And I threw three stones afterthem and I heard them cry out as they went. Andthat night the roof was swept off Tom Dermot'shouse in Ryanrush and haystacks blown down.And John Brady's daughter that was daft thosemany years was taken, and Tom Horan's little girlthat was picking potatoes, she and her brotherstogether. She turned black all of a minute andthree days after, she was dead.
That's the only time I seen them, and that Inever may again, for believe me that time I hadmy enough, thinking as I did that I hadn't morethan three minutes to live.
A Herd's Wife:
Martin's new wife is a fine big woman, if she islucky. But it's not a lucky house. That's whathappened the last wife that lost her baby and died.William Martin knows well they are in it, but he isa dark man and would say nothing. I saw themmyself about the house one time, and I met oneon the forth going through the fields; he had theappearance of a man in his clothes. And sometimeswhen I look over at Martin's house there isa very dark look like a dark cloud over it andaround it.
The other Army Man:
The faeries are all fallen angels. Father Folantold us from the altar that they're as thick as thesands of the sea all about us, and they tempt poormortals. But as for carrying away women andthe like, there's many that says so, but they haveno proof. But you have only to bid them begoneand they will go. One night myself I was afterwalking back from Kinvara, and down by thewood beyond I felt one coming beside me, and Icould feel the horse that he was riding on and theway that he lifted his legs, but they didn't make asound like the hoofs of a horse. So I stopped and[Pg 137]turned around and said very loud "Be off!" Andhe went and never troubled me after. And I knewa man that was dying, and one came up on his bedand he cried out to it, "Get out of that, youunnatural animal!" And it left him. There's apriest I heard of that was looking along the groundlike as if he was hunting for something, and a voicesaid to him "If you want to see them you'll seeenough of them," and his eyes were opened andhe saw the ground thick with them. Singing theydo be sometimes and dancing, but all the timethey have the cloven foot.
Fallen angels they are, and after they fell Godsaid, "Let there be Hell, and there it was in amoment"—("God save us! It's a pity He said thatword and there might have been no Hell today"murmurs the wife). And then He asked thedevil what would he take for the souls of all thepeople. And the devil said nothing would satisfyhim but the blood of a Virgin's Son. So he gotthat and then the gates of Hell were opened.
The Wife:
I never seen anything, although one night I wasout after a cow till 2 o'clock in the morning andold Gantly told me he wondered at me to be outin this place, by the wood near the white gatewhere he saw a thing himself one night passing.But it's only them that's living in mortal sin cansee such things, that's so Thomas, whatever youmay say. But your ladyship's own place is[Pg 138]middling free from them, but Ratlin's full ofthem.
And there's many say they saw the banshee,and that if she heard you singing loud, she'd bevery apt to bring you away with her.
A Piper:
There was an old priest I knew—Father McManus—andwhen he would go walking in the greenlawn before the house, his man, Keary, would gowith him, and he carrying three sticks. And after awhile the priest would say, "Cur do maide"—Fireyour stick—as far as you can, and he would throwit. And he would say the same thing a second anda third time, and after that he would say, "Wehave no more to protect us now," and he wouldgo in. And another priest I was talking to theother day was telling me they are between earthand air and the grass is full of them.
Mrs. Casey:
There was a boy I knew at Tyrone was a greatcard player. And one night about 10 o'clock hewas coming home from a party, and he had thecards in his hands and he shuffling them as hewent along. And presently he saw a man beforehim on the road, and the man stopped till he cameup, and when he saw the cards, he says "Stophere and I'll have a game with you," for the moonwas shining bright. So the boy sat down, and thestranger asked him had he any money, and he[Pg 139]said he had five shillings after the night's play."Well," says the man, "we'll play the first gamefor half-a-crown." So they sat down and put outthe money on a flagstone that was much like atable, and they began to play, and the first gamewas won by the stranger. "Well now," says he,"we'll have another." So the boy began to shufflethe cards, but as he did, one card dropped on theground, and he stooped down for it, and when hedid, he saw the man's feet that were partly underthe flagstone, and they were like the feet of a cow.So with the fright he got, he jumped up and beganto run and never stopped till he got inside hishouse and had the door shut. And when he hadbeen sitting there a few minutes, a knock cameto the door, and he heard the voice of the strangersay, "It's well for you you ran away when youdid, or you'd be where I am now." And he heardno more; it was the boy himself told me this.
I hear them in this house ever since the firstnight I came, in the kitchen, when all are in bed.Footsteps, I wouldn't think so much of, butscraping the potatoes, that's another thing.
A daughter I had that went to America diedthere, and the brother that came back told me thathe was with her, and she going, and surely theyall heard the jennet coming to the door, and whenthey opened it, there was nothing there, andmany people standing and waiting about it. Iknew a woman died beyond in Boher and left a[Pg 140]house full of children and the night she died therewas 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 leavethe house without spring water. I knew a boy thatwas sleeping up in the loft of a house and one nightthey had forgotten to leave water within in thekitchen. And about midnight he awoke and hesaw through a hole in the loft two women, andone of them just after having a baby. And theysaid, "What way will we wash the child, and nowater here; we must take the pan of milk downfrom the shelf." So the boy said out loud theway they'd hear him, "I must go for spring water.I forgot to leave it below." So he went and got itand left it there, and let on not to see them. And—forI forget what time after that—there was nomorning he put his clothes on but he'd find ahalf-crown in his boot. To do you harm? No,but the best of neighbours they are, if you don'tchance to offend them.
A Schoolmaster:
In Donegal one night some of the people wereat a still in the mountains, and on a sudden theyheard a shot fired, and they thought it was a signalgiven to the police, and they made home to thevillage. And all the night they could hear likethe tramp of horses and of police and the noise ofcars passing by, but nothing could be seen. And[Pg 141]next day the police came in earnest, and searchedabout the place where they had been at work at thestill, but no one was there and they found nothing.So they knew it was a warning they were afterbeing given.
John Madden:
One day old Fogarty of Clough was cutting rodsin Coole with a black-handled knife, and he put itin his pocket, and presently he felt for it and itwas gone. But when he went home and went intothe house, there was the knife lying on the table.
My wife's brother was on a cock of hay in thatfield beyond one time, and he sat down to rest andhe saw them hurling in red caps and blue, and acrowd looking in at them. But he said nothing tothe men that were with him. They are mostly inforths and lonesome places.
An old man, Kelleher, living in the WicklowMountains, told me and W. B. Yeats and Miss Pollexfen:
I often saw them when I had my eyesight; onetime they came about me, shouting and laughingand there were spouts of water all around me.And I thought that I was coming home, but I wasnot on the right path and couldn't find it and wentwandering 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[Pg 142]stile. They were very small, like little boys andgirls, and had red caps.
I always saw them like that, but they werebigger at the butt of the river; they go along thecourse of the rivers. Another time they cameabout me playing music and I didn't know whereI was going, and at last one of them said the sameway, "Good evening, Kelleher," and I knew thatI was at the gate of the College; it is the sweetestmusic and the best that can be heard, likemelodeons 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 wasjust after I married that woman there that was anice slip of a girl at that time. It was in the winterand there was snow on the ground, and I saw oneof them outside, and I brought him in and puthim on the dresser, and he stopped in the house fora while, for about a week.
Mrs. K.: It was more than that, it was two orthree weeks.
K.: Ah! maybe it was—I'm not sure. He wasabout fifteen inches high. He was very friendly. Itis likely he slept on the dresser at night. When theboys at the public-house were full of porter, theyused to come to the house to look at him, andthey would laugh to see him but I never let themhurt him. They said I would be made up, thathe would bring me some riches, but I never got[Pg 143]them. We had a cage here, I wish I had put himin 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 wouldnot have been able to stand in it.
K.: I'm sorry I didn't keep him—I thoughtsometimes 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 notfar from the house, but more like a girl and theclothes greyer than his clothes, that were red.And that evening when I was sitting beside thefire with the Missus I told her about it, and thelittle 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 andI never saw him again. I thought it was a girl Isaw, but Geoffrey wouldn't be the name of a girl,would it?
He had never spoken before that time. SomehowI think that he liked me better than theMissus. I used to feed him with bread and milk.
Mrs. K.: I was afraid of him—I was afraidto go near him, I thought he might scratch myeyes out—I used to leave bread and milk for himbut I would go away while he was eating it.
K.: I used to feed him with a spoon, I wouldput 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 ofwrinkled look.
K.: He was fresh-looking enough, he had ahardy look.
Mrs. K.: He was wearing a red cap and alittle red cloth skirt.
K.: Just for the world like a Highlander.
Mrs. K.: He had a little short coat abovethat; it was checked and trousers under the skirtand long stockings all red. And as to his shoes,they were tanned, and you could hardly see thesoles of them, the sole of his foot was like a baby's.
K.: The time I lost my sight, it was a Thursdayevening, and I was walking through the fields.I went to bed that night, and when I rose up in themorning, the sight was gone. The boys said it waslikely I had walked on one of their paths. Thosesmall little paths you see through the fields aremade by them.
They are very often in the quarries; they havegreat fun up there, and about Peacock Well. ThePeacock Well was blessed by a saint, and anotherwell 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 himto come and to help me to catch it, but when wecame back it was gone. It was very strange-lookingand I thought that it had a head like aman.
Old Manning:
I never saw them except what I told you, thedog fighting, and I heard the horses, and at that[Pg 145]same time I saw smoke coming out of the groundnear Foley's house at Corker, by the gate.
My mother lived for twenty years in Coole, andshe often told me that when she'd pass Shanwallahill there would people come out and meet herand—with respects to you—they'd spit in herface.
Faeries of course there are and there's manypoor souls doing their penance, and how do weknow where they may be doing it?
A Farmer:
I might not believe myself there are such thingsbut for what happened not long after I was marriedwhen my first little girl was but a week old. I hadgone up to Ballybrit to tie some sheep and putfetters on them, and I was waiting for Haverty tocome and help me tie them. The baby was a littleunwell that day but I was not uneasy about her.But while I was waiting for Haverty, a blast ofwind came through the field and I heard a voicesay quite clear out of it "Katie is gone." Thatwas the little one, we had called her Catherine,but though she wasn't a week in the world, we hadit shortened already to Kate. And sure enough,the child got worse, and we attended her throughthe night, and before daybreak she was gone.
An Army Man:
Two nights ago a travelling man came andknocked at John Hanlon's house at 11 o'clock,[Pg 146]where he saw a light in the window and he askedwould there be any one out hurling so late as that.For in coming by the field beyond the chapel hesaw it full of people, some on horses, and hurlinggoing on, and they were all dressed like soldiers,and you would hear their swords clinking as theyran. And he was not sure were they faeries till heasked John Hanlon was it the custom of people inthis country to go hurling so late as that. Butthat was always a great field for them. Fromeleven 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 as1 o'clock, a right one.
It was in the night that Christ our Saviour rosethere were some Jews sitting around the fire, anda 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, andhe that was speaking got scalded with the waterthat was splashed about.
A Connemara Man:
One night I was sleeping over there by thedresser and I heard them ("Would you say theday of the week," says the old woman. "It's Thursday,"said I. "Thank you," says the old man, andgoes on)—I heard them thick all about the house—butwhat they were saying I couldn't know.
The Old Woman:
It was my uncle that was away at nights andknew the time his horse fell in the ditch, andhe out at sea. And another day he was workingat the bridge and he said, "Before this day isover, a man will be killed here." And so ithappened, and a man was killed there before12 o'clock. He was in here one day with me, andI said, "I don't give in to you being away andsuch things." And he says: "Um, Um, Um,"three times, and then he says, "May your ownliving be long." We had a horse, the grandestfrom this to Galway, had a foal when in this place—andbefore long, both horse and foal died. AndI often can hear them galloping round the house,both horse and foal. And I not the only one, butmany 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 thetrees going round and round. I'd see it maybe forfifteen minutes at a time, and then it would falllike a lamp.
In the month of May is their chief time forchanging, and it's then there's blowing away ofhay and such things and great disturbance.
A Mayo Man:
One time I was led astray in a town, in GoldenHill in Staffordshire. I was in the streets and I[Pg 148]didn't know what way to turn all of a sudden, andevery street looked like a wood before me, and so Iwent on until I met some man I knew, and I askedhim where I was, and I went in, and stayed drinkingwith 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 awhite rabbit seen there, that turns into a womanbefore any misfortune happens, such as an accident.")I was walking along the road, and it ranbeside me, and then I saw a woman in white beforeme on the road, and when I got to her, she wasgone. And that evening a woman in a house nearby fell dead on her own doorstep.
Another time near this, I was passing the barnwhere Johnny Rafferty the carpenter and his sonused to be working, but it was shut and locked andno one in it. But when I came near it, I felt as ifI was walking on wood, and my hair stood up onmy head, and I heard the noise of tools, andhammering and sawing in it.
Pete Heffernan:
Old Doran told me that he was near CastleHacket 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 othersmight have been there like him and not seenthem. It's only them that are born at midnightthat has the second sight.
Fallen angels, they say they are. And they'd[Pg 149]do more harm than what they do but for the hopethey have that some day they may get to heaven.Very small they are, and go into one another sothat what you see might only be a sort of a littlebundle. But to leave a couple of cold potatoesabout at night one should always do it, and tosweep the hearth clean. Who knows when theymight want to come in and warm themselves.
Not to keep the water you wash your feet in in thehouse at night, not to throw it out of the door whereit might go over them, but to take it a bit away fromthe house, and if by any means you can, to keep a bitof light burning at night, if you mind these threethings you'll never be troubled with them.
That woman of mine was going to Mass oneday early and she met a small little man, and himwith 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 tobe coming out at this hour and disturbing people,"says he. And when she got into the chapel shesaw him no more.
An Old Woman with Oysters from Tyrone:
Oh, I wouldn't believe in the faeries, but it's noharm to believe in fallen angels!
Mrs. Day:
My own sons are all for education and read allbooks and they wouldn't believe now in the storiesthe old people used to tell. But I know one[Pg 150]Finnegan and his wife that went to Esserkellychurchyard to cry over her brother that was dead.And all of a sudden there came a pelt of a stoneagainst the wall of the old church and no one there.And they never went again, and they had nobusiness to be crying him and it not a funeral.
Francis, my son that's away now, he was outone morning before the daybreak to look at awhite heifer in the field. And there he saw a littleold woman, and she in a red cloak—crying, crying,crying. But he wouldn't have seen that if he hadkept to natural hours.
There were three girls near your place, and theywent 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 ofchurning, churning, in the ground beneath them.And as they listened, all of a minute, there was anaggin of milk standing beside them. And thegirl that saw it first said, "I'll not drink of it lestthey might get power over me." But the othergirl said, "I'll bring it home and drink it." Andshe began to ridicule them. And because of sheridiculing them and not believing in them, thatnight in bed she was severely beaten so that shewasn't the better of it for a long time.
Often they'll upset a cart in the middle of theroad, when there's no stone nor anything to upsetit. And my father told me that sometimes afterhe had made the hay up into cocks, and on a day[Pg 151]without a breath of wind, they'd find it all in thenext field lying in wisps. One time too the cart hewas driving went over a leprechaun—and the oldwoman in the cart had like to faint.
Mr. Hosty of Slieve Echtge:
I never would have believed the shadow of asoul could have power, till that hurling match Isaw that I told you about.
It was in the old time it happened, that there waswar in heaven. He that was called the brightestof the angels raised himself up against God. Andwhen they were all to be thrown out, St. Michaelspoke up for them for he saw that when theheavens were weeded out they'd be left withoutcompany. So they were stopped in the falling, inthe air and in the earth and in the sea. And theyare about us sure enough, and whenever they'll besaved I don't know, but it is not for us to say whatGod will do in the end.
I often heard that our winter is their summer—surethey must have some time for setting theirpotatoes and their oats. But I remember a veryold man used to say when he saw the potatoesblack, that it was to them they were gone. "Sure"he used to say, "the other world must have its wayof living as well as ourselves."
Mrs. Casey:
Dolan I was talking to the other day, and I askedhim if faeries used not to be there. And he said,[Pg 152]"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 bythe lake, and I thought it was the ladies fromthe house gone out for a walk, but when I camenear, it was two strange women I saw, sittingthere by the lake, and their wings came, andthey vanished into the air."
John Phelan:
I was cutting trees in Inchy one time. Andat 8 o'clock one morning when I got there, Isaw a girl picking nuts with her hair hangingdown over her shoulders, brown hair, and she hada good clean face and was tall and nothing on herhead, and her dress was no way gaudy, but simple.And when she felt me coming, she gathered herselfup and was gone as if the earth had swallowed herup. And I followed her and looked for her, but Inever could see her again from that day to this,never again.
Mary Shannon:
There was a herd's house near Loughrea that hada bad name; and a strange woman came in onetime and told the woman of the house that she mustnever throw dirty water out of the back-door."For," said she, "if you had clean linen hanging thereon a line before the fire, how would you like any oneto come in and to throw dirty water over it?"And she bid her leave food always on the dresser.[Pg 153]"For," said she, "wherever you leave it we'll beable to find it." And she told how they oftenwent into Loughrea to buy things, and provisions,and would look like any other person, and neverbe known, for they can make themselves visibleor invisible as they like. You might be talkingto one of them and never know she was differentfrom another. At our place there used to be agood many of these people about, these Ingentrywomen or women from the North we sometimescall them. There was one came into the houseone day and told my mother she didn't get all herbutter in the milk. And she told her the servant-girlwas stealing and hiding some of it, for in thesedays 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 wentout of the house, and went off in a minute in ablast. And the husband that was coming into thehouse, he never saw her at all, and she going outof the door.
Sunset is a bad hour, and just before sunrise inthe morning, and about 12 o'clock in the day, it'sbest not to be too busy or going about too much.
An Aran Man:
Sometimes they travel like a cloud, or like astorm. One day I was setting out the manure inmy own garden and they came and rolled it in aheap and tossed it over the wall, and carried it outto sea beyond the lighthouse.
Mr. Finnerty:
People say two days of the week, they nametwo days. Some say Thursday, and some saywhatever day it is, and the day before it, and thenthey can't be heard. In the village beyond, therewere a good many people in a house one night,and lights in it, and talking, and of a suddensome one opened the door—and there outside andround the house they were listening to them—andwhen the door was open they were all seen,and made off as thick as crows to the forth nearthe Burren hills.
There was one Ward was walking one nightnear Castle Taylor, and in that big field that'snear the corner where Burke was murdered he sawa big fire, and a lot of people round about it, andamong them was a girl he used to know that haddied.
Last week in that field beyond there, the haywas all taken up, and turned into the next field inwisps.
You must put the potatoes out for them beforethey are put on the table, for they would not touchthem if they had been touched by common persons.
And I saw Horan that had the orchard herebought run to our house in the middle of the nightnaked with nothing on but his trousers, where he[Pg 155]was after being beat out of the house in the kitchengarden. Every night when he was going to bedthere did a knocking come in the loft over his head,but he gave no attention to it. But a great stormcame and a great lot of the apples was blown downand he gathered them up and filled the loft withthem, thinking when he showed them to get compensation.And that is the night he was beat out ofbed. And John Phelan knows well what thingsused 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 nodoubt in the earthly world about it. It was whenthey lived at Inchy they came over here one timefor to settle a marriage for Murty Delvin's aunt.And when they had the business settled, they weregoing home again at dead of night. And a manwas after getting married that day, one Delanefrom beyond Kilmacduagh, and the drag was afterpassing the road with him and his party goinghome. And all of a minute the road was filledwith men on horses riding along, so that my fatherhad to take shelter in Delane's big haggard by theroadside. And he heard the horsemen calling onDelane's name. And twenty-one days after, Delanelay dead.
There's no doubt at all about the truth of that,and they were no riders belonging to this worldthat were on those horses.
Thomas Brown:
There was a woman walking in the road thathad a young child at home, and she met a veryold man, having a baby in his arms. And he askedwould she give it a drop of breast-milk. So shedid, and gave it a drink. And the old man said:"It's well for you that you did that, for you savedyour cow by it. But tomorrow look over the wallinto the fields of the rich man that lives beyondthe boundary, and you'll see that one of his wastaken in the place of yours." And so it happened.
In the old times there used to be many stories ofsuch things, half the world seemed to be on theother side.
I used not to believe in them myself, until onenight I heard them hurling. I was coming homefrom town with Jamsie Flann; we were not drunkbut we were hearty. Coming along the roadbeyond we heard them hurling in the field besideus. We could see nothing but we'd hear them hitthe ball, and it fly past us like the lightning, soquick, and when they hit the goal, we heard amoan—"Oh! ah!"—that was all. But after wewent a little way we sat down by a little hill torest, and there we heard a thousand voices talking.What they said, we couldn't understand, orthe language, but we knew that it was one sidetriumphing over the other.
But the nights are queer—surely they are queerby sea or by land. There was a friend of mine told[Pg 157]me he was out visiting one night, and cominghome across the fields he came into a great crowdof them. They did him no harm, and among themhe saw a great many he knew, that were dead,five or six out of our own village. And he was inhis bed for two months after that, and he told thepriest of it. He said he couldn't understand thetalk, it was like the hissing of geese, and there wasone very big man, that seemed the master of them,and his talk was like you'll hear in a barrel whenit's being rolled.
There's a hill, Cruach-na-Sheogue down by thesea, and many have seen them there dancing inthe moonlight.
There was a man told me he was passing nearit one night, and the walls on each side of the roadwere all covered with people sitting on them, andhe walked between, and they said nothing to him.And he knew many among them that were deadbefore that. Is it only the young go there? Ah,how do we know what use they may have for theold 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 becausethey might be too big in our minds.
They are just the same in America as they arehere, and my sister that came home told me theywere, and the women that do cures, just like thewoman at Clifden, or that woman you know of.
There was one she went to out there, and whenyou'd come in to ask a cure she'd be lulled into asleep, 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 andbred in the same village as Michael Barrett. Butthe old woman that lives with me, she does betelling me that before she came to this part shewas going home one night, where she was tendinga girl that was sick, and she had to cross a hillforth. And when she came to it, she saw a man ona white horse, and he got to the house beforeher, and the horse stopped at the back-door. Andwhen she got there and went in, sure enough thegirl was gone.
I never saw anything myself, but one night Iwas passing the boreen near Kinvara, and a tallman with a tall hat and a long coat came out of it.He didn't follow me, but he looked at me for awhile, and then he went away.
And one time I saw the leprechaun. It's whenI was a young woman, and there was black friezewanting at Ballylee, and in those days they allthought there could no black frieze be spun withoutsending for me. So I was coming home late in theevening, and there I saw him sitting by the sideof the road, in a hollow between two ridges. Hewas very small, about the height of my knee, and[Pg 159]wearing a red jacket, and he went out of that sosoon as he saw me. I knew nothing about him atthat time. The boys say if I'd got a hold of hispurse I'd be rich for ever. And they say he shouldhave been making boots; but he was more in dreadof me than I of him, and had his instrumentsgathered up and away with him in one second.
There used to be a lot of things seen, but somewaythe young people go abroad less at night,and I'm thinking the souls of some of those may bedelivered by this time.
There was a boy looked out of the door, and hesaw a woman milking the cow. But after, whenhe went to milk her, he found as much milk as everthere was.
Mrs. Phelan:
There was a woman at Kilbecanty was out oneevening and she saw a woman dressed in whitecome after her, and when she looked again she haddisappeared into a hole in the wall. Small shemust have grown to get into that. And for elevendays after that, she saw the same appearance, andafter eleven days she died.
There was another woman lived at Kilbecanty,just beside the churchyard, you can see the houseyet. And one day she found a plate of food putin at the door, the best of food, meat and other[Pg 160]things. So she eat it and the next day the samething happened. And she told a neighbouringwoman about it, and she left her door open, and aplate of food was left in to her that night. Butwhen she saw it she was afraid to eat it, but took itand threw it out. And the next day she died. Butthe woman that eat the food, nothing happened toher.
There was one Halloran took that farm on theroad beyond one time, but he locked the houseup, not meaning to go and live in it yet a while,and he kept the key in his pocket. But one nightlate he was coming by and he saw a light in thewindow and looked in, and he saw a woman sittingby a fire she was after lighting. So he ran awayand never went to live in the house after.
One night myself coming back from Kelly's Isaw a man by the side of the road, and I knew himto 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 soldierat the door with a sword in his hand. And at thedoor there he was still before them; so they had toleave the two bags of apples behind.
W. Sullivan:
One night myself I was driving the jennet I hadat that time to Cappagh and I went past a placeone Halvey had bought and I saw a man havinga white front to his shirt standing by the wall, and[Pg 161]I said to myself, "Halvey is minding this placewell," and I went on, and I saw the man followingme, and the jennet let a roar and kicked at me, andat that time we passed a stile, and I saw him nomore.
Mrs. Barrett:
I don't know did old Michael see anything or wasit in his head. But James, the brother that died,told me one time that he was crossing the way beyondfrom Brennan's, where the stones are. Andthere he saw a hurling going on. He never saw afield so full before. And he stood and watchedthem and wasn't a bit frightened, but the dogthat was with him shrank between his legs andstopped there.
And my father told me that one time he wasstopping with my uncle, up there near Mrs. Quaid's,in a house that's pulled down since. And he wokeup and saw the night so bright that he went out.And there he saw a hurling going on, and they hadboots like soldiers and were all shining with thebrightness of the night.
And Micky Smith, God rest his soul, saw themat midday passing in the air above Cahir, as thickas birds.
A Gate-keeper:
Niland that met the coach that time and sawthem other times, he told me that there were two[Pg 162]sets among them. The one handsome and tall andlike the gentry; the others more like ourselves,he said, and short and wide, and the body startingout in front, and wide belts about their waists.Only the women he saw, and they were wearingwhite caps with borders, and their hair in curlsover the forehead and check aprons and plaidshawls. They are the spiteful ones that would doyou a mischief, and others that are like the gentrywould do nothing but to laugh and criticize you.
One night myself I was outside Loughrea on theroad, about 1 o'clock in the morning and the moonwas shining. And I saw a lady, a true lady shewas, dressed in a sort of a ball dress, white and shortin the skirt, and off the shoulders. And she hadlong stockings and dancing shoes with short uppers.And she had a long thin face, and a cap on herhead with frills, and every one of the frills was thebreadth of my six fingers. As to flowers or suchthings, I didn't notice, for I was more fixed inlooking at the cap. I suppose they wore them atballs in some ancient times. I followed her a bit,and then she crossed the road to Johnny Flaniganthe joiner's house, that had a gate with piers. AndI went across after her, to have a better view, andwhen she got to the pier she shrank into it andthere was nothing left.
Johnny Kelly that lives in Loughrea was overhere one evening, where he had some cattle on theland at Coole. And where the river goes away, he[Pg 163]saw two ladies sitting, ladies he thought them tobe, and they had long dresses. And they rose upand went on to that hole where the water is andthe trees. And there all of a sudden they rose astorm and went up in it, with a sort of a roar or acry and passed away through the air.
And I was in the house with my wife and I heardthe cry, and I thought it might be some drunkenman going home, and it about 10 o'clock in theevening. And I went to the door, and presentlyKelly came in and you'd have thought him adrunken man, walking and shaking as he did withthe fright he got seeing them going off away in thestorm.
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 themone time—a great lot of them, they were dressedin white blouses and black skirts and some of themhad crimson mantles, but none of them had anycovering on their head, and they had all goldenhair and were more beautiful than any one she hadever seen.
And one night she met the coach and four, andit was full of ladies, letting the window up anddown and laughing out at her. They had goldenhair, or it looked so with the lights. They weredressed in white, and there were bunches offlowers about the horses' heads. Roses, chiefly,[Pg 164]some pink and some blue. The coachmen werestrange looking, you could not say if they weremen or women—and their clothes were more likecountry clothes. They kept their heads down thatshe could not see their faces, but those in the carriagehad long faces, and thin, and long noses.
Mike Martin:
They are of the same size as we are. Peopleonly call them diminutive because they are madeso when they're sent on certain errands.
There was a man of Ardrahan used to see manythings. But he lost his eyesight after. It oftenhappens that those that see these things lose theirearthly sight.
The coach and four is seen by many. It appears indifferent forms, but there is always the same womanin it. Handsome I believe she is, and white; andthere she will always be seen till the end of the world.
It's best to be neighbourly with them anyway—bestto be neighbourly.
There was a woman woke one night and she sawtwo women by the fire, and they came over andtried to take away her baby. But she held himand she nudged her husband with her arm, but hewas fast asleep. And they tried him again, and allshe could do wouldn't waken the husband, butstill she had the baby tight, and she called out acurse in the devil's name. So then they went away,for they don't like cursing.
One night coming home from Madden's where Iwas making frames with him, I began to trembleand to shake, but I could see nothing. And atnight there came a knocking at the window, andthe dog I had that would fight any dog in Irelandbegan to shrink to the wall and wouldn't come out.And I looked out the door and saw him. Littleclothes he had on, but on his head a quarter cap,and a sort of a bawneen about him. And I wouldhave followed him, but the rest wouldn't let me.
Another time I was crossing over the stile behindKiltartan chapel into Coole, and others alongwith me. And a great blast of wind came, andtwo trees were bent and broken and fell into theriver, and the splash of water out of it went up tothe skies. And those that were with me saw manyfigures, but myself I only saw one, sitting thereby the bank where the trees fell, dark clothes hehad, and he was headless.
They can take all shapes and it's said a pig isthe worst, but I believe if you take no notice ofthem and bless yourself as they pass, they'll doyou no harm at all.
There were two men walking by a forth that'sbeyond Cloon, and one of them must have been in itat some time, for he told the other to look throughhis arm, and when he looked he could see thousandsof people about walking and driving, and ladiesand gentry among them.
There was a man in Cloon and he was veryreligious and very devout and he didn't believe inanything. But one day he was at the Punch-bowlout on the Ennis road, and there he saw twocoaches coming through the thick wood and theyfull of people and of ladies, and they went in tothe bushes on the other side. And since he sawthat he'd swear to them being there.
There was a woman living over near Tirneevan,and one morning three men came galloping upon three horses, and they stopped at the door andtied up the horses and walked in, and theystrangers. And the woman put the tongs overthe cradle where the baby was sleeping, for that isa pishogue. And when they saw the tongs, theylooked at one another and laughed, but they didhim no harm, but pulled out the table and satdown and played cards for a while, and went awayagain.
But if they're well treated, and if you knowhow to humour them, they're the best of neighbours.
There was a woman seen not long ago, all inwhite, and she standing in a stream washing herfeet. But you need never be afraid of anythingthat's white.
There was a woman I know was away sometimesand used to go into a forth among them. She told[Pg 167]me about it, and she said there were big and smallamong them as there are here. And they worecaps like hurling caps, all striped with blue anddifferent colours, and their dress striped the sameway.
A Seaside Man:
There was a girl below in Spiddal was cominghome from Galway with her father, and just at thebridge below she saw the coach and four. Like avan it was, with horses, and full of gentlemen. Andshe tried to make her father see it, and he couldn't.And it passed along the road, and then turneddown into a field, over the stones, and it got to thestrand and ran along it for a while, and whatbecame of it then I don't know. My father toldme that one night he came from a wake, and in thefield beyond, that was all a flag then, but the manthat owns it has it covered with earth now, he sawabout twelve ladies all in white, and they dancinground and round and a fiddler or a flute-player orwhatever he was, in the middle. And he thoughtthey were some ladies from Spiddal, and calledout to them that it was late to be out dancing.And he turned to open the door of the house, andwhile he was turning they were gone.
There was a man walking one night and he felta woman come and walk behind him, and she allin white. And the two of them walked on tillsunrise, and then a cock crowed, and the man said,[Pg 168]"There's the cock crowing." And she said,"That's only a weak cock of the summer." Andsoon after another cock crowed, and he asked didshe hear it, and she said, "That's but a poor cockof the harvest." And the third time a cock crowedand when the man asked her she said, "That's acock of March. And you're as wise as the man thatdoesn't tell Friday's dream on Saturday." For ifyou dream on a Friday, you must never tell thedream 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 andher sister went out to the back of the house. Andthere they saw a lot of people running as hard asthey could to the house, and knocking down thewalls as they came to them, for there were a lot ofsmall stones. And she said to her sister, "Thesemust be all the first cousins coming, and therewon't be room to sit in the house when they comein." So they hurried back. But no one ever camein 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-drivertold me—he wouldn't tell a lie—that heoften passed them walking like soldiers throughthe hollow beyond.
An Old Man on Slieve Echtge:
One night I was walking on that mountainbeyond, 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 likethe shadow of a tall fir tree, and while I was lookingit grew to be like the mast of a boat. And thenropes and rigging came at the sides and I saw thatit was a ship; and the boy that was with me, hebegan to laugh. Then I could see another boat,and then more and more till the lake was coveredwith them, and they moving from one side toanother. So we watched for a while, and then wewent away and left them there.
Mrs. Guinan:
It's only a few days ago, I was coming throughthe field between this and the boreen, and I saw aman 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 verylong 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, andlast year she told me that a strange womancame into her house, and asked had she goodpotatoes. And she said she had. And the womansaid: "You have them this year, but we'll have[Pg 170]them next year." And she said: "When you goout of the house, it's your enemy you'll see standingoutside," that was her near neighbour and washer worst enemy.
They'll often come in the night, and bring awaythe food. I wouldn't touch any food that hadbeen lying about in the night, you wouldn't knowwhat might have happened it. And my motheroften told me, best not eat it, for the food that'scooked at night and left till the morning, they willhave left none of the strength in it.
There was a hurling seen in a field near ourhouse, little men they were in green with red caps,and a sergeant of police and his men that weregoing by stopped to look at them, but JohnnyRoland a boy I know, was standing in the middleof them all the time in the field, and never sawanything at all.
A North Galway Woman:
There was a man living over at Caramina,beyond Moyne, Dick Regan was his name, andone night he was walking over a little hill near thatplace. And when he got to the top of it, he foundit like a fair green with all the people that were init, and they buying and selling just like ourselves.And they did him no harm, but they put a basketof cakes into his hand and kept him selling themall the night. And when he got home, he told the[Pg 171]story. And the neighbours when they heard itgave him the name of the cakes and to the dayof his death he was called nothing but RichardCrackers.
There was a smith, and a man called on himlate one evening, and asked him to shoe a horsefor him and so he did. And then he offered himpay but he would take none. And the man tookhim out behind the house, and there were threehundred horses with riders on them, and a hundredwithout, and he said, "We want riders for those,"and they went on.
An Aran Man:
A man that came over here from Connemaranamed Costello told me that one night he wasmaking poteen, and a man on a white horse cameup, and the horse put his head into the place theywere 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 wasempty. And then he put another bottle out, andin a little time he looked again, and it was empty.And then he put a third, but when he looked thewhiskey in it had not been stirred. And he toldme he never did so much with it or made so muchprofit as he did in that year.
They are everywhere. Tom Deruane saw themdown under the rocks hurling and they were all[Pg 172]wearing black caps. And sometimes you'd seethem coming on the sea, just like a barrel on thetop of the water, and when they'd get near you, nomatter how calm the day, you'd have a hurricaneabout you. That is when they are taking theirdiversions. And one evening late I was downwith the wife burning kelp on the rocks, where wehad a little kiln made. And we heard a talkingand a whispering about us on the rocks, and mywife thought it was the child that the sister wasbringing down to her, and she said, "God bless theson!" but no one came, and the talking went onagain, and she got uneasy, and at last we left thekelp and came home; and we weren't the first thathad to leave it for what they heard in that place.
Fallen angels they are said to be. God threwa third part of them into Hell with Lucifer, and itwas Michael that interceded for the rest, and thena third part was cast into the air and a third on theland and the sea. And here they are all about us asthick as grass.
A Needlewoman from North Galway Working atCoole:
Myself and Anne (one of the maids) went up themiddle avenue after dark last night and we got afright, seeing what we thought to be faeries. Theywere men dressed in black clothes like eveningclothes, wearing white ruffles round their necks andhigh black hats without brims. Two walked infront and one behind, and they seemed to walk or[Pg 173]march stiff like as if there was no bend in the leg.They held something in each hand and theystopped before the gate pier where there is a sortof cross in white like paint, then they disappearedand we turned and ran.
(When they were going up to bed, I am told,"Anne suddenly stopped under the picture of MaryQueen of Scots and called out, 'That is like the frillthey wore' and sank down on the stairs in a kind offaint.")
One time at home I was out about dusk, andpresently I heard a creaking, and a priest walkedby reading his prayers. But when he came closeI saw it was Father Ryan that was dead sometime before. And I ran in and told a woman, whoused to help in milking, what I had seen, andshe said, "If it's Father Ryan you saw I don'twonder, for I saw him myself at the back of thedoor there only a week ago."
There was a boy was making a wall near Cruachmaaand a lot of them came and helped him, andhe saw many neighbours that were dead amongthem. And when they had the wall near builtanother troop of them came running and knockedit down. And the boy died not long after.
A Young Man:
My father told me that he was down one timeat the north shore gathering wrack, and he saw a[Pg 174]man before him that was gathering wrack too andstooping down. He had a black waistcoat on himand the rest of his clothes were flannel just likethe people of this island. And when my fatherdrew near him, he stooped himself down behind astone; and when he looked there, there was nosight or mind of him.
One time myself when I was a little chap, aboutthe size of Michael there, I was out in the fields,and I saw a woman standing on the top of a wall,and she having a child in her hand. She had along black coat about her. And then she got downand crossed over the field, and it seemed to me allthe time that she was only about so high (threefeet) and that there was only about two feet betweenher and the ground as she walked, and thechild always along with her. And then she passedover another wall and was gone.
The Spinning Woman:
There was a new-married woman, and the husbandwas going out and he gave her wool to spinand to have ready for him. And she couldn'tknow what in the world to do, for she neverlearned to spin. And she was there sitting at itand a little man came in, and when she told himabout it he said he'd bring it away and spin it forher and bring it back again. And she asked forhis name, but he wouldn't tell that. And soonafter there was a ragman going the road and hesaw a hole and he looked down and there he saw[Pg 175]the little man, and he stirring a pot of stiraboutwith one hand and spinning with the other hand,and he was singing while he stirred: "—— is myname (that's his name in Irish but I won't tell youthe meaning of it) and she doesn't know it, andso I'll bring her along with me." So the ragmanwent in and came to the young woman's house, andtold her what the man was singing. So when hecame with the wool she called him by his name, andhe threw the wool down and went away; for hehad no power over her when she knew his name.
Mary Glynn of Slieve Echtge:
That's it, that's it, the other class of people don'tlike us to be going out late, we might be in theirway, unless it's for a case, or a thing that can't behelped. And this is Monday, no, Mrs. Deruane,not Tuesday—we'll say it's Monday. It's atnight they're seen, God bless them, and theirmusic is heard, God bless them, the finest musicyou ever heard, like all the fifers of the world andall the instruments, and all the tunes of the world.There was one of those boys that go about fromhouse to house on the morning of the new year,to get a bit of bread or a cup of tea or anythingyou'll have ready for him, and he told usthat he was coming down the hill near us, andhe had the full of his arm of bits of bread, andhe heard the music, for it was but dawn, and hewas frightened and ran and lost the bread. Iheard it sometimes myself and there's no music[Pg 176]in the world like it, but it's not all can hear it.Round the hill it comes, and you going in at thedoor. And they are quiet neighbours if you treatthem well. God bless them and bring them all toheaven!
For they were in heaven once, and heaven wasthe first place there was war, and they were all tobe done away with, and it was St. Peter asked theSaviour to help them. So he turned His hand likethis, and the sky and the earth were full of them,and they are in every place, and you know thatbetter than I do because you read books.
Mary Glynn and Mary Irwin:
One night there were bonavs in the house,—Godbless the hearers and the place it's told in—Godbless all we see and those we don't see!—And therewas a man coming to rise dung in the potatofield in the morning, and so, late at night, MaryGlynn was making stirabout and a cake to haveready for breakfast.
Mary Irwin's brother was asleep within onthe bed. And there came the sound of thegrandest music you ever heard from beyond thestream, and it stopped here. And Micky awokein the bed, and was afraid and said, "Shut up thedoor and quench the light," and so we did. It'slikely they wanted to come into the house, andthey wouldn't when they saw us up and thelights about. But one time when there werepotatoes in the loft, Mary Irwin and her brothers[Pg 177]were well pelted with them when they sat down totheir supper. And Mary Glynn got a blow on theside of her face from them one night in the bed.And they have the hope of Heaven, and God grantit to them. And one day there was a priest andhis servant riding along the road, and there was ahurling of them going on in the field. And a manof them came and stood on the road and said tothe priest, "Tell me this, for you know it, havewe a chance of Heaven?" "You have not," saidthe priest ("God forgive him," says Mary Glynn—"apriest to say that"); and the man that was of themsaid, "Put your fingers in your ears till you havetravelled two miles of the road; for when I goback and tell what you are after telling me to therest, the crying and the bawling and the roaringwill be so great that if you hear it you'llnever hear a noise again in this world." So theyput their fingers then in their ears, but aftera while the servant said to the priest, "Let metake out my fingers now." And the priestsaid, "Do not." And then the servant saidagain, "I think I might take one finger out."And the priest said, "As you are so perseveringyou may take it out." So he did, and the noiseof the crying and the roaring and the bawling wasso great that he never had the use of that ear again.
Callan of Slieve Echtge:
We know they are in it, for Father Hobbs thatwas our parish priest saw them himself one time[Pg 178]there was a station here, and when some said theywere not in it, he said, "I saw them in a field myself,more people than ever I saw at twenty fairs."It was St. Peter spoke for them, at the time of thewar, when the Saviour was casting them out; hesaid to Him not to empty the heavens. And everyMonday morning they think the Day of Judgmentmay be coming, and that they will see Heaven.
There's never a funeral they are not at, walkingafter the other people. And you can see them ifyou know the way, that is to take a green rush andto twist it into a ring, and to look through it.But if you do, you'll never have a stim of sight inthe eye again, and that's why we don't like to do it.
Resting they do be in the daytime, and goingabout in the night.
Old Hayden:
One time I was coming home from a fair and itwas late in the night and it was dark and I didn'tknow was I on the right road. And I saw a cabinin a field with a light in it, and I went and knockedat the door and a man opened the door and let mein, and he said, "Have you any strange news?"and I said, "I have not," and he said, "There is noplace for you here," and he put me out again. Forthat was a faery hill, and when they'll ask have youstrange news, and you'll say you have not, they'lldo nothing for you. So I went back in the field,and there were men carrying a coffin, and they[Pg 179]said, "Give us a hand with this." And I put myhand to it to help them to lift it. And as we walkedon we came to a house, and we went in and therewas a fire on the hearth, and they took the bodyout of the coffin and put it before the fire, and theysaid, "Now let you keep turning it." So I satthere and turned it, and then they took it up andwe went on till we came to another house and thesame thing happened there, and they put me to turnthe body. And when we went out from there theyall vanished, and there was the cabin before meagain with the light in it. And when the man cameto the door and asked me, "Is there any strangenews?" I said, "There is indeed," and told himall that had happened. And then I looked round,and I was within a few yards of my own house.
Mrs. Keely:
When you see a blast of wind, and it comessudden and carries the dust with it, you shouldsay, "God bless them," and throw somethingafter them. How do we know but one of our ownmay be in it? Half of the world is with them.
We see them often going about up and down thehill, Jack O'Lanthorn we call them. They arenot the size of your two hands. They would notdo you much harm, but to lead you astray.
The Spinning Woman:
I remember one day a strange woman comingin and sitting down there—very clever looking[Pg 180]she was, and she had a good suit of clothes. AndI bid her rest herself and I'd give her a cup of tea,and she said, "I travelled far today and you'rethe first that offered me that." And when shehad it taken she said, "If I had a bit of tobacco,and a bit of bacon for my dinner, I'd be all right."And I made a sign to the woman I have, under thetable, to give her a bit of tobacco. So she got itfor her and she said, "I shouldn't take it, and thisthe second time today you divided it." And thatwas true, for a neighbouring boy had come in inthe morning and asked for a loan of a bit, and shehad cut it for him. And I said, "Go to that housebeyond and the woman will give you a bit ofbacon"; and she said, "I won't go to that woman,for it was she told you that one of the neighbourswas bringing away her butter from her," and soshe had, sure enough. And then she said, shemust be in Cruachmaa that night, and she wentaway and I never saw her again.
A Mayo Man:
One time I was working in England near Warrington,and I was walking the road alone at night,and I saw a woman under an umbrella in the mistand I said, "Is it a living thing you are or dead?"And she vanished on the minute. And I sat downby the hedge for a while, and I heard feet walking,walking, up and down inside the hedge, and I amsure they were the same thing. And then twostrange men passed me, dressed in working clothes,[Pg 181]but talking gibberish that I could not understand,and I know that they were no right men. So Iwent in towards the town and I met a policeman,and he took up his lamp and made it shine in myface, for they carry a lamp in their belt and theywill take the measurement of your face with it,the same as by daylight. And he said, "Therenever was a worse road for an Irishman to walkthan this one." It was maybe because of the landand the rough people of it he said that.
A Gate-keeper:
My sister and her husband were driving onthe Kinvara road one day, and they saw a carriagecoming behind them, and it with brightlamps about it. And they drew the car to one sideto let it pass. And when it passed they saw ithad no horses, and the men that were sitting upwhere the drivers should be were headless.
There's many has seen the coach, in differentshapes, and some have seen the riders going overthe country. Drumconnor is a great place for thesethings. The Sheehans that lived in the castle hadno peace or rest. Mrs. Sheehan looked up one dayshe was outside, and there was some person standingat the window, and in a moment it was headless.And they'd see them coming in at the gate,sometimes in the shape of a woman, and a sort ofa cape in the old fashion and a handkerchief overthe head, and sometimes in the shape of a cow orsuch things. And noises they'd hear, and things[Pg 182]being thrown about in the house and packs ofwool thrown down the stairs.
And they had a good many children, and all thebest and the best-looking were taken. And atlast they got the owner to build them a houseoutside, and since that they have no trouble andhave lost no more children.
Mrs. Madden:
Rivers of Cloonmore one time when he was goingto Loughrea, at the fish-pond corner saw the coach.I didn't see it, but I saw him draw aside and sayto Leary not to let on they saw it.
Meagher another time saw it, and it full ofchildren all in white.
But Egan beyond, he'd never let on to believein such things and would make them out to benothing—he has such a gift of talking.
And one time in the night I and my husbandwoke and heard the car rattling by, and we thoughtit was St. George going to Ballylee Castle, till weasked in the morning. Four horses it has andthey headless, and sure and certain we heard itpass that night.
Mrs. Casey:
And I knew a boy met the coach and four onetime. Drawn by four horses it was, and lightsabout it and music, and the horses dressed withflowers. And in it were sitting ladies, very clever-lookingand wild, and their hair twisted up on their[Pg 183]heads, and when they went on a little way theycalled to some man on the road to come withthem, and he refused, and they laughed at thatand ridiculed him.
I never saw the coach and four with these twoeyes; but one time I heard it pass by, about 11o'clock at night, when I was sitting up mendingthe sole of a boot. Surely it passed by, but Iwould not look out to see what it was like.
For there was a woman I knew was walkingwith a man one night from Kilcolgan to Oranmore.And as they were sitting by the roadside theyheard the coach and four coming. And the manstood up and looked at it, but he had no right to dothat, he should have turned his head away. Andthere were grand people in it, ladies, and flowersabout them. But no sooner did he look at it thanhe was struck blind and never had his eyesightsince.
It's best not to look at them if they pass. Andwhen you go along the road and a storm comes inthe calm and raises all the dust of the road up in theair, turn your head another way, for it's they thatare passing. In the month of May is the most timethey do be travelling. And it's best not to go nearwater then, near a river or a lake.
When my father was dying my mother wassitting with him, and she heard a car pass thedoor, going light and quick, but when it passeddown the road again it went heavy, and that wasthe coach and four.
There was Sully had the forge one time, andpassing one night down the road towards Nolan'sgate, he saw a brake pass full of ladies and gentlemen,as he thought, and he believed it to be St.George's carriage. But at Nolan's gate, it turnedand came up again, and whatever he saw, when hegot home he took to his bed for some days with thefright he got.
Kelly told me one time he saw the coach andfour driving through the field above Dillon's,with four horses. And wasn't that a strange placefor it to be driving through all the rocks?
There was boys used to be stealing apples fromthe orchard at Tyrone, and something in whitewith a candle used to come after them, and thenchange to something in red. So they went to aforth, and they went to the side of it where thesun rises and there they made the mark of thecross, but after all they had to leave going afterthe apples.
There was a woman down at Silver's the othernight, and when I was standing to go home shesaid, "I wonder you not to be afraid to go throughthese fields." So I asked her did ever she seeanything, and she said, "I was with another girlone day near Inchy gate, and we heard a voice,and we saw the coach and four coming and wewere afraid, and we went in under the bushes tohide ourselves. It passed by us then, it was big[Pg 185]and long, longer than a carriage you could see now,and there were people in it, men and women dressedin all colours, blue and red and pink and black,but I could not say what had they on their heads.And there was a man on the box, not a coachmanbut just a Christian, and he driving the four horses.
"As to the horses, the two that were in front weregrey, but the two that were near the carriagewere brown; it gave me a great fright at thetime."
There is no light about it in the daytime, butat night it is all shining.
There was a girl saw it one time in the same way,drawn by horses that were without heads. Shegot a great fright and she ran home. And in themorning when she got up, she that had been adark-haired girl was as white as snow, and herhair grey. She is living yet and is up to nearly ahundred years.
Mrs. Roche:
My father would never believe in anything tillone time he was walking near Seanmor withanother smith, and he stopped and said "I can'tgo on with all the people that's in that field."And my father said "I don't see any people."And the other said "Put your right foot on myright foot, and your hand on my right shoulder."And he did, and he saw a great many in the field,[Pg 186]but not so many as the other saw; fine men andall dressed in white shirts, shining they were sowhite. He told us about it when he came home,and he said he wished he didn't see them. He wasdead within the twelvemonth, and the man thatwas with him was dead before that, not muchtime between them.
I have been told:
Butter, that's a thing that's very much meddledwith. On the first of May before sunrise it'svery apt to be all taken away out of the milk.And if ever you lend your churn or your dishes toyour neighbour, she'll be able to wish away yourbutter after that. There was a woman used to lenda drop of milk to the woman that lived next door,and one day she was churning, churning, and nobutter came. And at last some person came intothe house and said, "It's hard for you to havebutter here, and if you want to know where it is,look into the next house." So she went in andthere was her neighbour letting on to be churningin a quart bottle, and rolls of butter beside her.So she made as if to choke her, and the woman runout into the garden and picked some mulleinleaves, and said, "Put these leaves in under yourchurn, and you'll find your butter come backagain." And so she did. And she found it all inthe churn after.
To sprinkle a few drops of holy water about thechurn, and to put a coal of fire under it, that youshould always do—as was always done in theold time—and the others will never touch it.
There was a woman in the town was churning,and when the butter came she went out of thehouse to bring some water for to wash it andto make it up. And there was a tailor sittingsewing on the table. And the woman from nextdoor came in and asked the loan of a coal of fire,and that's a thing that's never refused from onepoor person to another in the morning. So he bidher take it. And presently she came in againand said that the coal of fire had gone out, andasked another, and this she did the third time.But the tailor knew well what she was doing,and that every coal of fire she brought away,there was a roll of butter out of the churn wentwith it. So whatever prayers he said is notknown, but he brought the butter all back again,and into a can on the floor, and no hands evertouched it. So when the woman of the housecame back, "There's your butter in the can,"said he. And she wondered how it came out of thechurn to be in three rolls in the can. And thenhe told her all that had happened.
There was a man was churning, churning, everyday and no butter would come only froth. So somewise woman told him to go before sunrise to a[Pg 191]running stream and bring a bottle of the waterfrom it. And so he did before sunrise, and hadto go near four miles to it. And from that dayhe had rolls and rolls of butter coming every timehe churned.
There was one Burke, he knew how to bring itback out of some old Irish book that has disappearedsince he died. There was a womana herd's wife lived beyond, and one time Burkehad his own butter taken, and he said he knew away to find who had done it, and he brought inthe coulter of the plough and put it in the fire.And when it began to get red hot, this womancame running, and fell on her knees, for it wasshe did it. And after that he never lost hisbutter again. But she took to her bed and wasthere for years until her death. And she couldn'tturn from one side to another without some personto lift her. Her son is now living in Dublin,and is the President of some Association.
If a woman in Aran is milking a cow and themilk is spilled, she says, "There's some are thebetter for it," and I think it a very nice thought,that they don't grudge it if there is any one it doesgood to.
There was a man, one Finnegan, had the knowledgehow to bring it back. And one time Laniganthat lives below at Kilgarvan had all his butter[Pg 192]taken and the milk nothing but froth rising to thetop of the pail like barm. So he went to Finneganand he bid him get the coulter of the plough, anda shoe of the wickedest horse that could be foundand some other thing, I forget what. So hebrought in the coulter of the plough, and hisbrother-in-law chanced to have a horse that wasso wicked it took three men to hold him, and noone could get on his back. So he got a shoe off ofhim. But just at that time, Lanigan's wife wentto confession, and what did she do but to tell thepriest what they were doing to get back the butter.So the priest was mad with them, and bid themto leave such things alone. And when Finneganheard it he said, "What call had she to go andconfess that? Let her get back her own butterfor herself any more, for I'll do nothing to helpher."
Grass makes a difference? So it may, butbelieve me that's not all. I've been myself inthe County Limerick, where the grass is thatrich you could grease your boots in it, and Iheard them say there, one quart of cream oughtto bring one pound of butter. And it never does.And where does the rest go to?
We had, before our quest began, heard of faeriesand banshees and the walking dead; butneither Mr. Yeats in Sligo nor I in Galway had everheard of "the worst of them all," the Fool of the Forth,the Amadán-na-Briona, he whose stroke is, as death,incurable. As to the fool in this world, the pity forhim is mingled with some awe, for who knows whatwindows may have been opened to those who are underthe moon's spell, who do not give in to our limitations,are not "bound by reason to the wheel." It is so inthe East also, and I remember the surprise of theEuropean doctor who had charge of an hospital in oneof the Native States of India, because when the rulerof the State came one day to visit it, he and his highofficials, while generous and pitiful to the bodilysick, bowed down and saluted a young lad who hadlost his wits, as if recognizing an emissary from agreater kingdom.
In one of my little comedies "The Full Moon,"the cracked woman comforts her half-witted brother,saying of his commonsense critics, "It is as dull asthemselves you would be maybe, and the world to be[Pg 196]different and the moon to change its courses with thesun." Those commonsense people of Cloon describea fool as "one that is laughing and mocking, and thatwould not have the same habits as yourself, or to haveno fear of things you would be in dread of, or to beusing a different class of food." May it not be theold story of the deaf man thinking all his fellowguests had suddenly lost their reason when they beganto dance, and he alone could not hear the call of thepipes?
There is perhaps sometimes a confusion in the mindbetween things seen and unseen, for an old womantelling me she had often heard of the Amadán-na-Brionawent on "And I knew one too, and he's notdead a twelvemonth. It's at night he used to be awaywith them, and they used to try to bring people awayinto the forth where he was.
"Was he a fool in this world too? Well, he wasmostly, and I think I know another that's livingnow."
I was told by:
A Woman Bringing Oysters from the Strand:
There was a boy, one Rivers, got the touch lastJune, from the Amadán-na-Briona, the Fool of theForth, and for that touch there is no cure. Itcame to the house in the night-time and knockedat the door, and he was in bed and he did not riseto let it in. And it knocked the second time, andeven then, if he had answered it, he might haveescaped. But when it knocked the third time hefell back on the bed, and one side of him as ifdead, and his jaw fell on the pillow.
He knew it was the Amadán-na-Briona did it,but he did not see him—he only felt him. And heused to be running in every place after that andtrying to drown himself, and he was in great dreadhis father would say he was mad, and bring himaway to Ballinasloe. He used to be asking mecould his father do that to him. He was broughtto Ballinasloe after and he died there, and his bodywas brought back and buried at Drumacoo.
Mrs. Murphy:
Cnoc-na-Briona is full of them, near Cappard.The Amadán-na-Briona is the master of them all,I heard the priest say that.
There was a man of the MacNeills passing byit one night coming back from the bog, and theybrought him in, and when he came out next day—Godsave the mark—his face was turned to hispoll. They sent then to Father Jordan, and heturned it right again. The man said they beathim while he was with them, and he saw there agreat many of his friends that were dead.
The Spinning Woman:
There are fools among them, and the fools wesee like that Amadán at Ballymore go away withthem at night. And so do the women fools, thatwe call lenshees, that means, an ape.
It's true enough there is no cure for the strokeof the Amadán-na-Briona. There was an old manI knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tellwhat disease you had with measuring you, and heknew many things. And he said to me one time"What month of the year is the worst?" And Isaid, "The month of May, of course." "It is not,"he said, "but the month of June, for that's themonth that the Amadán gives his stroke." Theysay he looks like any other man, but he's leathan—wide—andnot smart. I know a boy one time gota great fright, for a lamb looked over the wall athim, and it with a big beard on it, and he knew itwas the Amadán, for it was the month of June.And they brought him to that man I was tellingyou about, that had the tape. And when he sawhim he said "Send for the priest and get a Mass[Pg 199]said over him." And so they did, and what wouldyou say but he's living yet, and has a family.
A Seaside Man:
The stroke of the Fool is what there is no curefor; any one that gets that is gone. The Amadán-na-Brionawe call him. It's said they are mostlygood neighbours. I suppose the reason of theAmadán being wicked is he not having his wits,he strikes out at all he meets.
A Clare Man:
They, the other sort of people, might be passingyou close and they might touch you; but any onethat gets the touch of the Amadán-na-Briona isdone for. And it's true enough that it's in themonth of June he's most likely to give the touch.I knew one that got it, and told me about ithimself.
He was a boy I knew well, and he told me thatone night a gentleman came to him, that had beenhis landlord, and that was dead. And he told himto come along with him, for he wanted to fightanother man. And when he went he found twogreat troops of them, and the other troop had aliving man with them too, and he was put to fighthim. And they had a great fight and at last hegot the better of the other man, and then thetroop on his side gave a great shout, and he wasleft home again.
But about three years after that he was cuttingbushes in a wood, and he saw the Amadán comingat him. He had a big vessel in his arms, and itshining, so that the boy could see nothing else,but he put it behind his back then, and camerunning; and he said he looked wide and wild,like the side of a hill.
And the boy ran, and the Amadán threw thevessel after him, and it broke with a great noise,and whatever came out of it, his head was gonethen and there. He lived for a while after andused to be telling us many things, but his wits weregone. He thought they mightn't have liked himto beat the other man, and he used to be afraidsomething would come on him.
Mrs. Staunton:
A friend of mine saw the Amadán one time inPoul-na-shionac, low-sized and very wide, andwith a big hat on him, very high, and he'd makeshoes for you if you could get a hold of him. Butthere are some say "No, that is not the Amadán-na-Briona,that is the leprechaun."
An Old Woman:
The Amadán-na-Briona is a bad one to meet.If you don't say, "The Lord be between us andharm," when you meet him, you are gone for everand always. What does he look like? I supposelike any fool in a house—a sort of a clown.
A Man near Athenry:
Biddy Early could cure nearly all things, butshe said that the only thing that she could do nocure for was the touch of the Amadán.
Another:
Biddy Early couldn't do nothing for the touchof the Amadán, because its power was greaterthan hers.
In the Workhouse:
The Amadán-na-Briona, he changes his shapeevery two days. Sometimes he comes like ayoungster, and then he'll come like the worst ofbeasts. Trying to give the touch he used to be.I heard it said of late that he was shot, but Ithink myself it would be hard to shoot him.
Ned Meehan of Killinane:
The Amadán is the worst; I saw him myself onetime, and I'd be swept if I didn't make away on themoment. It was on a race-course at Ballybrit, andno one there but myself, and I sitting with myback to the wall and smoking my pipe. And allat once the Amadán was all around me, in everyplace, and I ran and got out of the field or I'd beswept. And I saw others of them in the field; itwas full of them, red scarfs they had on them.
I came home as quick as I could, and I didn'tget over the fright for a long time, but there hewas all about me.
Meehan's wife says: I remember you wellcoming in that night, and you trembling with thefright you got. And you told me the appearancehe had, like a jockey he was, on a grey horse.
"That is true indeed," says Ned, and he goeson:
And one night I was up in that field beyond,watching sheep that were near their time to drop,and I saw a light moving through the fields besideme, and down the road and no one with it. Itstopped for a while where the water is and went onagain.
And there was a woman in Ballygra the samenight heard the coach-a-baur passing, and she nothearing at all about the lights I saw.
A Man at Kilcolgan:
Father Callaghan that used to be in Esker wasable to do great cures; he could cure even a manthat had met the Amadán-na-Briona. But tomeet the Amadán is to be in prison for ever.
When as children we ran up and down thegreen entrenchments of the big round raths,the lisses or forths, of Esserkelly or Moneen, we knewthey had been made at one time for defence, and thatis perhaps as much as is certainly known. Thoseat my old home have never been opened, but in someof their like I have gone down steps to small stone-builtchambers that look too low for the habitation ofany living race.
Had we asked questions of the boys who led ourdonkeys they would in all likelihood have given us,from tradition or vision, news of the shadowy inhabitants,the Sidhe, whose name in the Irish is all onewith a blast of wind, and of the treasures they guard.And the old writings tell us that when blessed Patrickof the Bells walked Ireland, he did not refuse thepromise of heaven to some among those spirits inprison, the old divine race for whom Mannananhimself had chosen these hidden dwellings, after thegreat defeat in battle by the human invaders, the Gaels,or to some they had brought among them from the faceof the green earth. It was one of their musicians who[Pg 206]played to the holy Clerks till Patrick himself said,"But for some tang of the music of the Sidhe that is init, I never heard anything nearer to the music ofheaven." That music is heard yet from time to time;and it was into one of those hill dwellings that thefather of McDonough the Galway piper, my friend,was taken till the Sidhe had taught him all their wildtunes and so bewitched his pipes that they would playof themselves if he threw them up among the rafters.There were great treasures there also in Saint Patrick'stime, golden vats and horns, and crystal cups, andsilks of the colour of the foxglove. It may be of thesetreasures that so many dreams are told.
As to the women of the Sidhe, some who have seenthem, as old Mrs. Sheridan, tell of their white skinand yellow hair, for age has not come on them throughthe centuries. When one of them came claiming thefulfilment of an old promise from Caoilte of theFianna, Patrick wondered at her young beauty, whilethe man who had been her lover was withered and bentand grey. But Caoilte said that was no wonder "forshe is of the Tuatha de Danaan who are unfadingand whose life is lasting, while I am of the sons ofMilesius who are perishable and fade away." Yetthen as now, notwithstanding their beauty and grandeur,those swept away into the hill dwellings would ratherhave the world they know. One of Finn's men meetinga comely young man who had been his comradebut was now an inhabitant of one of those hiddenhouses, asked how he fared. And for all his fineclothing and his blue weapons and the hound he held in[Pg 207]a silver chain, the young man gave the names of threedrudges "who had the worst life of any who were withthe Fianna," and then he said, "I would rather beliving their life than the life I am leading now."
The name of these tribes of the goddess Dana isoften confused with that of the northern invaders whowere afterwards a terror to Ireland. And so it was ofthose unearthly tribes an old basket-maker was thinkingwhen he said, in telling of the defeat of the Irishunder James, "The Danes were dancing in the rathsaround Aughrim the night after the battle. Theirancestors were driven out of Ireland before, and theywere glad when they saw those that had put them output out themselves, and everyone of them skivered."
Many of the stories I have gathered tell how thosetribes still protect their own; and even today, March21, 1916, I have read in the "Irish Times" that "afarmer who was summoned by a road contractor forhaving failed to cut a portion of a hedge on the roadside,told the magistrates at Granard Petty Sessionsthat he objected to cutting the hedge as it grew in a fortor rath. He however had no objection to the contractor'smen cutting the hedge. The magistrates allowedthe case to stand till the next Court."
As to Knockmaa, or Cruachmaa, or, as it is calledtoday, Castle Hacket Hill, that overlooks Lough Corriband the plain of Moytura, and that we see as ablue cloud from our roads, it was in Saint Patrick'stime the habitation of Finnbarr a king among theSidhe and his seventeen sons, and it is to this dayspoken of as "a very Sheoguey place."
It was in these enchanted hills that the ale ofGoibniu the Smith kept whoever tasted it fromsickness and from death, and there is some memory ofthis in a story told me by an old farmer. "There wasa man one time set out from Ireland to go to Americaor some place; a common man looking for work hewas. And something happened to the ship on theway, and they had to put to land to mend it. And inthe country where they landed he saw a forth, and hewent into it, and there he saw the smallest people heever saw, and they were the Danes that went out ofIreland; and it was foxes they had for dogs, andweasels were their cats.
"Then he went back to get into the ship, but itwas gone away, and he left behind. So he wentback into the forth, and a young man came to meethim, and he told him what had happened. Andthe young man said 'Come into the room withinwhere my father is in the bed, for he is out of hishealth and you might be able to serve him.' So theywent in and the father was lying in the bed, and whenhe heard it was a man from Ireland was in it he said,'I will give you a great reward if you will go backand bring me a thing I want out of Castle Hacket Hill.For if I had what is there,' he said, 'I would be asyoung as my son.' So the man consented to go, andthey got a sailing ship ready, and it is what the oldman told him, to go back to Ireland. 'And buy alittle pig in Galway,' he said, 'and bring it to themouth of the forth of Castle Hacket and roast it there.And inside the forth is an enchanted cat that is[Pg 209]keeping guard there, and it will come out; and here is ashot-gun and some cross-money that will kill any faeryor any enchanted thing. And within in the forth,'he said, 'you will find a bottle and a rack-comb, andbring them back here to me.'
"So the man did as he was told and he bought thepig and roasted it at the mouth of the forth, and outcame the enchanted cat, and it having hair seveninches long. And he fired the cross-money out of theshot-gun, and the cat went away and he saw it nomore. And he got the bottle and the rack-comb andbrought them back to the old man. And he drankwhat was in the bottle and racked his hair with therack, and he got young again, as young as his ownson."
It may be some of those faery treasures are stillgiven out; for of the family who have been for a goodwhile owners of the hill, one at least had the gift ofgenius. And I remember being told in childhood,and I have never known if it were fact or folk-tale,that her mother having as a bride gone to listen tosome debate or royal speech in the House of Lords atWestminster, the whole assembly had stood up inhomage to her beauty.
I was told by a Miller:
It was the Danes built these forths. They werea fair-haired race, and they married with the Irishthat were dark-haired, just like those linen weaversyour own great-grandfather brought up from theNorth, the Hevenors and the Glosters and others,married with the Roman Catholics. There was aking of the Danes called Trevenher that had adaughter that was a great beauty. And she gavea feast, and the young men of the other racedressed like girls and came to it, and sat at it tillmidnight, and then they threw off the women'sclothes and killed all the generals and the kinghimself. So the Danes were driven out, that's whywe have the fires and the wisps on St. John's Eve.And as for Herself there, she wouldn't for all theworld let St. Martin's Day pass without killing ofcocks—one for the woman and another for the man.
As to the three lisses at Ryanrush, there musthave been a great deal of fighting there in the oldtime. There are some bushes growing on them andno one, man or woman, will ever put a hand to cutthem, no more than they would touch the littlebush by the well beyond, that used to have lightsshining out of it.
And if any one was to fall asleep within the lisshimself, he would be taken away and the spirit ofsome old warrior would be put in his place, andit's he would know everything in the whole world.There's no doubt at all but that there's the samesort of things in other countries. Sure these cango through and appear in Australia in one minute.But you hear more about them in these parts,because the Irish do be more familiar in talking ofthem.
Enchanters and magicians they were in the oldtimes, and could make the birds sing and thestones and the fishes speak.
It's in the forths they mostly live. The lastpriest that was here told us a lot about them, buthe said not to be anyway afraid of them, for theyare but poor souls doing their penance.
Mary Nagle:
That's a fine big liss at Ryanrush, and peoplesay they hear things there, and sometimes a greatlight is seen—no wonder these things should beseen there, for it was a great place for fighting inthe old centuries, and a great deal of bones havebeen turned up in the fields. There was an openpassage I remember into the liss, and two girlsgot a candle one time and went in, but they sawnothing but the ashes of the fires the Danes usedto make. The passage is closed up now I believe,with big stones no man could lift.
One time a woman from the North came to ourhouse, and she said a great deal of people is keptbelow there in the lisses; she had been there herself,and in the night-time in one moment they'd all beaway at Cruachmaa, wherever that may be, downin the North I believe. And she knew everythingthat was in the house, and told us about my sisterbeing sick, and that there was a hurling going on,as there was that day at the Isabella wood inCoole. And all about Coole House she knew as ifshe spent her life in it. I'd have picked a lot ofstories out of her but my mother got nervous whenshe heard the truth coming out, and bid me bequiet. She had a red petticoat on her, the same asany country woman, and she offered to cure me,for it was that time I was delicate and your ladyshipsent me to the salt water, but she asked ashilling and my mother said she hadn't got it."You have," says she, "and heavier metal thanthat you have in the house." So then my mothergave her the shilling, and she put it in the fire andmelted it, and says she, "After two days you'll seeyour shilling again." But we never did. And thecure she left, I never took it; it's not safe, and thepriests forbid us to take their cures—for it mustsurely be from the devil their knowledge comes.But no doubt at all she was one of the Ingentry,that can take the form of a woman by day andanother form at night. After that she went toMrs. Quaid's house and asked her for a bit oftobacco. "You'll get it again" she said, "and[Pg 214]more with it." And sure enough, that very day abit of meat came into Mrs. Quaid's house. (Note 1.)
Maurteen Joyce:
There's a forth near Clough that wanders underneath,but a man couldn't get into it without he'dcrawl on his hands and knees. Well, Kennedy'sfilly was brought in there, and lived there for fivedays without food but what she got from them,and no one knew where she was till a man passingby heard her neighing and then she was dug out.
There's a forth near our house, but it's not thegood people that are in it, only the old inhabitantsof Ireland shut up there below.
There are a few old forths about, some of themyou mightn't notice unless you understood suchthings; but sometimes passing by you'd feel a coldwind blowing from them, would nearly rend youin two.
When I was a young chap myself I used to see awhite woman walking about sometimes at midday—that'sthe worst hour there is—and she'dalways go back into a forth, the forth of Cahirnear Cloonmore, and disappear into it.
She was known to be a woman that had diednine years before; and she would sometimes comeinto the sister's house, and bid her keep it clean.But one time the sister's husband went to burn the[Pg 215]inside of the forth, and the next morning his barnwhere he had all the wheat of the harvest and neara ton of hay and two or three packs of wool, wasfound to be on fire. And his own little girl, abouteight years of age, was in the barn, and a labouringman broke through and brought a wet cloth withhim and threw it over her and carried her out.But she was as black as cinders and dead. Vexedthey were at him burning the forth.
An Old Miller:
Did they get help to make those forths? Youmay know well that they did. There was anengineer here when that road was being made—asort of an idolater or a foreigner he was—anywayhe made it through the forth, and he didn't lastlong after. Those other engineers, Edgeworthand Hemans beyond at Ardrahan when the railwaywas made, I'm told they avoided such things.
A Slieve Echtge Man:
There were two brothers taken away sudden,two O'Briens. They were cutting heath one dayand filling the cart with it, and a voice told themto leave off cutting the heath, but they went on,and a blow struck the cart on the axle. And soonafter that one of the brothers sat down in his chairand died sudden. And the other was one daygoing to market, I was going to it that day myself,and he wasn't far beyond the white gate when theaxle of the cart broke in that same place where it[Pg 216]had got the blow, and so he had to go home again,and near the river where they're cutting the larchhe turned in to talk to a poor man that was cuttinga tree, and the tree fell, and the top of it struckhim and killed him. And it was last March thathappened.
There was one Leary in Clough had the land takenthat's near Newtown racecourse. And he was outthere one day building a wall, and it was time forhis dinner, but he had none brought with him.And a man came to him and said "Is it home you'llbe going for your dinner?" And he said "It'snot worth my while to go back to Clough, I'd havethe day lost." And the man said, "Well, come inand eat a bit with me." And he brought him intoa forth, and there was everything that was grand,and the dinner they gave him of the best, so thathe eat near two plates of it. And then he went outagain to build the wall. And whether it was withlifting the heavy stones I don't know, but (withrespects to you) when he was walking the roadhome he began to vomit, and what he vomitedup was all green grass.
A Man on the Connemara Coast:
This is a faery stream we're passing; there weresome used to see them by the side of it, and washingthemselves in it. And there used to be heard afaery forge here every night, and the hammeringof the iron could be heard, and the blast of thefurnace.
There is a faery hill beyond there in the mountain,and some have seen fires in it all through thenight. And one time the police were out therestill-hunting, and the head of them, one Rogers,was in the middle of that place, and there he died,no one could say how, though some of his menwere round about him.
That's a nice flat clean place that rock we'repassing—that's the sort of place they'd be seendancing or having their play.
A Piper:
I knew twin sons, Considines, and one wasstruck with madness in England, and one athome—Pat in England, Mike in Connacht—atthe one time. Both were sent to BallinasloeAsylum, and got well in eight months, and thatwas ten year ago, and one of them is married andrearing a family. The mother used to be doingcures with herbs; it is likely that is the reason butshe gave it up after they were struck.
There were three of another family went in tothe Asylum, one this year, one next year, and onethe year after, and no reason but that their housewas close to the side of a forth.
Maurteen Joyce:
When I was in Clare there was a forth, and twoor three men went down it one time, and broughtrushes and lights with them. And they came towhere there was a woman washing at a river and[Pg 218]they heard the crying of young lambs, and itNovember, for when we have winter, there issummer there. So they got afraid, and two of themen came back, but one of them stopped thereand was never heard of after. The best of thingsthey have, and no trouble at all but to be eating;but they have no chance of being saved till theDay of Judgment.
I knew another forth that two men watched,and at night there came out of it two troops ofhorses, and they began to graze. But when themen came near them they made for the forths,and all they got was a foal. And they kept it,and it was a mare-horse, and it had foals, and thebreed was the best that was ever seen in the country.
Mrs. Leary:
There did strange things happen in that wood,noises would be heard, and those that went in tosteal rods could never get them up on their backto bring them away. But there was one man saidwhatever happened he'd bring them, and he gotthem on to his back, and then they were lifted offit over the wood. But they fell again and he gotthem and carried them away; I suppose theythought well of him having so much courage.
Cruachmaa is the great place for them.
A man who had lost a blood mare met an oldman from a forth who said "Put your right footon my right foot." And he did so, and at oncehe saw the blood mare and his foal close by.
The Old Man Who Is Making a Well:
There was a man and his wife was brought awayat Cruachmaa and he was told to go dig, and he'dget her out. And he began to dig, and when he hada hole made at the side of the hill he saw her comingout, but he couldn't stop the pick that he hadlifted for the stroke, and it went through her head.
J. Doran:
Whether they are in it or not, there are many tellstories of them. And I often saw the half of Cruachmaacovered—like as if there was a mist on it.
But one side of a wall is luckier than another,all the old people will tell you that. There was abig stone in the yard behind our house and myhusband thought to blast it, for it was in the way,and my mother said "I'm in the house longer thanyou, and take my advice and never touch thatstone," and he never did. But there was a manbuilt a house close by and he wanted to close apassage, and one morning he came early and waslaying hands on that stone to take it. But I wasout when I heard him and drove him away. Andthe house never throve with him, he lost two orthree children, and then he died himself.
A Gate-keeper:
At St. Patrick's well at Burren there used to bea great pattern every year. And every year therewas something lost and killed at it, a horse or aman or a woman.
So at last the priest put a stop to it. And therewas an old woman with me in the barracks atBurren, and she told me she remembered wellwhen she was a young girl and the time camewhen the pattern used to be, the first year it wasstopped her father put her up on a big high wallnear the well, and bid her look down. And thereshe saw the whole place full of the gentry, and theyplaying and dancing and having their own games,they were in such joy to have done away with thepattern. I suppose the well belonged to thembefore it got the name of St. Patrick.
There's a small little house not far down the roadwhere they used to be very fond of going. And awoman in the town asked the old woman that livedin it what did they look like. And she said "Forall the world like people coming in to Chapel."
There was a girl coming back here one timefrom Clough, and instead of coming here she wentthe Esserkelly road and was led astray and a manmet her and says he, "Why do you say you'regoing to Labane and it's to Roxborough you'refacing?" and he turned her around. And whenshe got home she took off the bundle she had onher back, and what jumped out of it but a younghare.
Mrs. Casey:
I have a great little story about a woman—ajobber's wife that lived a mile beyond Ardrahan.[Pg 221]She had business one time in Ballyvaughan, andwhen she was on the road beyond Kinvara a mancame to her out of a forth and he asked her to goin and to please a child that was crying. So shewent in and she pleased the child, and she saw in acorner an old man that never stopped from crying.And when she went out again she asked the manthat brought her in, why was the old man roaringand crying. The man pointed to a milch cow inthe meadow and he said, "Before the day is overhe will be in the place of that cow, and it will bebrought into the forth to give milk to the child."And she can tell herself that was true, for in theevening when she was coming back from Ballyvaughan,she saw in that field a cow dead, andbeing cut in pieces, and all the poor people bringingaway bits of it, that was the old man that hadbeen put in its place. There is poison in that meat,but no poison ever comes off the fire, but you mustmind to throw away the top of the pot.
That forth where I heard the talking long ago,and left my can, it's only the other day I was tellingPat Stephens of it that has the land. And hetold me he put a trough in it to catch the waterabout a month ago. And the next day one of hisbest bullocks died.
Mrs. O'Brien:
It's a bad piece of the road that poor boy fell offhis cart at and was killed. There's a forth near it,[Pg 222]and it's in that forth my five children are that wereswept from me. I went and I told Father CareyI knew they were there, and he said "Say yourprayers, my poor woman, that's all you can do."When they were young they were small and thinenough, they grew up like a bunch of rushes, butthey got strong and stout and good-looking. Toogood they were, so that everyone would remarkthem and would say, "Oh, look at Ellen O'Brien—lookat Catherine—look at Martin! So good towork and so handsome, so loyal to their mother."And they were all taken from me, all gone nowbut one. Consumption they were said to get,but it never was in my family or in the father's,and how would they get it without some provocation?Four of them died with that, and Martinwas drowned. One of the little girls was in Americaand the other at home, and they both got sickand at the end of nine months both of them died.
Only twice they got a warning. Michael thatwas the first to go was out one morning very earlyto bring a letter to Mr. Crowe. And he met on theroad a small little woman, and she came acrosshim and across him again, and then again, as ifto be humbugging him. And he got afraid, andtold me about her when he got home. And notlong after that he died.
And Ellen used to be going to milk the cow forthe nuns morning and evening, and there's a placeshe had to pass, a sort of enchanted place, I forgetthe name of it. And when she came home one[Pg 223]evening she said she'd go there no more, for whenshe was passing that place she saw a small littlewoman, with a little cloak about her, and her facenot the size of a doll's face. And with the onelook of her she got a fright and ran as fast as shecould, and sat down to milk the cow. And whenshe was milking she looked up, and there was thesmall little woman coming along by the wall.And she said she'd never like to go up there again.So to move the thought out of her mind I said"Sure that's the little woman is stopping up atShamus Mor's house." "Oh, it's not, Mother,"said she; "I know well by her look she was no rightperson." "Then my poor girl you're lost," saysI, "for I know it was the same woman that myhusband saw." And sure enough, it was but a fewweeks after that she died. There wasn't muchchange in them before their death, but there wasa great change after.
And Martin, the last that went, was stout andstrong and nothing ailed him, but he was drowned.He'd go down sometimes to bathe in the sea andone day he said he was going, and I said, "Do not,for you have no swim."
But a boy of the neighbours came after that andcalled to him, and I was making the little dinnerfor him, and I didn't see him from the door. AndI never knew he was gone till when I went out ofthe house the girl from next door looked at mesomeway strange, and then she told me two boyswere drowned, and then she told me one of them[Pg 224]was my own. Held down he was, they said, bysomething under water. They had him followedthere.
It wasn't long after he died I woke one night andI felt some one near, and I struck the light andthen I saw his shadow. He was wearing his littlecap, but under it I knew his face and the colour ofhis hair. And he never spoke and he was goingout the door and I called to him and said "Oh,Martin, come back to me and I'll always be watchingfor you." And every night after that I'd hearthings thrown about the house outside, and noises.So I got afraid to stop in it, and went to live inanother house, and I told the priest I knew Martinwas not dead but that he was living. And abouteight weeks after Catherine dying, I had what Ithought was a dream. I thought I dreamt that Isaw her sweeping out the floor of the room, andI said, "Catherine, why are you sweeping? Sureyou know I sweep the floor down and the hearthevery night." And I said "Tell me where you arenow?" And she said, "I'm in the forth beyond."And she said "I have a great deal of things to tellyou, but I must look out and see are they watchingme"; now wasn't that very sharp for a dream?And she went to look out the door, but she nevercame back again.
And in the morning when I told it to a fewrespectable people they said "Take care but itmight have been no dream, but herself that cameback and talked to you." And I think it was, and[Pg 225]that she came back to see me, and to keep theplace well swept.
Sure we know there were some in the forths inthe old times, for my aunt's husband was broughtaway into one, and why wouldn't they be there now?He was sent back out of it again; a girl led himhome, and she told him he was brought awaybecause he answered to the first call and that hehad a right only to answer to the third. But hedidn't want to come home. He said he saw morepeople in it than he ever saw at a hurling, and thathe'd ask no better place than it in high heaven.
The Banshee always cries for the O'Briens. AndAnthony O'Brien was a fine man when I marriedhim, and handsome, and I could have had greatmarriages if I didn't choose him, and many wonderedat me. And when he was took ill and in thebed, Johnny Rafferty came in one day, and says he"Is Anthony living?" and I said he was. "For,"says he, "as I was passing, I heard crying, crying,from the hill where the forths are, and I thought itmust be for Anthony, and that he was gone."And then Ellen, the little girl, came running in,and she says, "I heard the mournfullest cryingthat ever you heard just behind the house." AndI said "It must be the Banshee." And Anthonyheard me say that where he was lying in the bed,and he called out, "If it's the Banshee it's for me,[Pg 226]and I must die today or tomorrow." And in themiddle of the next day, he died.
One time I was passing by a forth down there,and I saw a thick smoke coming out of it, straightup it went and then it spread at the top. Andwhen it was clearing away I saw two rows of birds,one on the one side and one on the other, and Istopped to look at them. They were white, andhad shoulders and heads like dogs, and there was agreat noise like a rattling, and a man that waspassing by looked up and said "God speed you,"and they flew away.
A Seaside Man:
There were five boys of the Callinans, and theyrich and well-to-do, were out in a boat, and a shipcame out from the shore and touched it and itsank, and the ship was seen no more. And oneof the boys held on to the boat, and some mencame out and brought him to land. But thesecond time after that he went out, he was swept.
An Old Man in Gort Workhouse:
I knew an old man was in here was greatly givento card-playing. And one night he was up on thehill beyond, towards Slieve Echtge, where thereis a big forth, and he went into it, and there hefound a lot of them playing cards. Like any othercard-players they looked, and he sat down andplayed with them, and they played fair. And[Pg 227]when he woke in the morning, he was lying outsideon the hill, and nothing under his head but a tuftof rushes.
John Mangan:
Old Hanrahan one time went out to the forththat's in front of his house and cut a bush, andhe a fresh man enough. And next morning hehadn't a blade of hair on his head—not a blade.And he had to buy a wig and to wear it for therest of his life. I remember him and the wig well.
And it was some years after that that Delane,the father of the great cricketer, was passing bythat way, and the water had risen and he strayedoff the road into it. And as he got farther andfarther in, till he was covered to better than hiswaist, he heard like the voice of his wife crying,"Go on, John, go on farther." And he called out,"These are John Hanrahan's faeries that took thehair off him." "And what did you do then?"they asked him when he got safe to the house, andwas telling this. And he said, "I turned my coatinside out, and after that they troubled me nomore, and so I got safe to the road again." Butno one ever had luck that meddled with a forth,so it's always said.
There's Mrs. Lynch's daughter was comingthrough the trees about eight months ago andwhen she came to a thicket of bushes, a shortlittle man came, out, about three feet high, dressed[Pg 228]all in white, and he white himself or grey, andasked her to come with him, and she ran away asfast as she could. And with the fright she got, shefell into a sickness—what they call the sickness ofPeter and Paul—and you'd think she'd tear thehouse down when it comes on her.
I met a woman some time ago told me moreabout the forths in this place than ever I knewbefore, and well she might for she had passedseven years in them, working, working, mindingchildren and the like all the time; no singing ordancing for her.
M. Haverty:
There was one Rock, was brought into a forth.A three-legged horse came for him one night andbrought him away; and when he got there theyall called him by his name.
There was a man up there cut a tree in one ofthem, and he was took ill immediately after, anddidn't live long.
There's a bad bit of road near Kinvara Chapel,just when you get within sight of the sea. I knowa man has to pass there, and he wouldn't go on thedriver's side of the car, for it's to the right sidethose things are to be seen. Sure there was a boylost his life falling off a car there last Friday week.
One night passing the big tree at Raheen Iheard the sound of a handsaw in the air, and Ilooked up and there in the top of a larch tree that'snear to a beech I saw a man sitting and cuttingit with the handsaw. So I hurried away home.But the next time I passed that way I took a viewof it to see might it have been one of the Dillonsthat might be stealing timber; and there was nosign of a cut or a touch in it at all.
There was a man on the road between Chevy andMarble Hill, where there is a faery plumb-stone,that stands straight up and it about five feet inheight, and the man was building a house andcarried it away to put above his door. And fromthe time he brought it away, all his stock began todie, and whenever he went in or out, night or day,he was severely beaten. So at last he took thestone down and put it back where it was before,and from that time nothing has troubled him.
John Mangan:
Myself and two of my brothers were over atInchy Weir to catch a horse, and growing closeby the water there was a bush the form of anumbrella, very close and thick at the top. So webegan fooling as boys do, and I said, "I'll bet abutton none of you will make a stone go throughthe bush." So I took up a pebble of cow-dung andthrew it, and they all threw, and no sooner did[Pg 230]the pebble hit the bush than there came from itmusic, like a band playing. So we all ran for ourlives, and when we had got about two hundredyards we looked back and we saw somethingmoving round the bush, first it had the clothesof a woman and then of a man. So we stopped tosee no more.
Well, it was some years after that when SirWilliam ordered all the bushes in that part to becut down. And one Prendergast a boy that usedto be a beater here and that went to Americaafter, went to cut them just in the same placewhere I had seen that sight, and a thorn ran intohis eye and blinded him, and he never got thesight of it again.
An Old Woman near Ballinsloe:
There are many forths around, and in that onebeyond, there is often music heard. The smith'sfather heard the music one time he was passingand he could not stop from dancing till he was tired.I heard him tell that myself.
And over there to the left there is a forth had anopening in it, and the steward wanted to get itclosed up, and he could get no men to do it. Andat last a young man said he would, and he went towork and at the end of the week he was dead.
And there was a girl milking a cow not longafter that, and she saw him coming to her, and sheran away, and he called to her to stop and shedid not, and he said "That you may never milk[Pg 231]another cow!" And within a week, she herselfwas dead.
There was a woman over there in that houseyou can see, and she wanted to root up a forth;covetousness it was, she had plenty and she wantedmore. And she tried to get a man to do it and shecould not, but at last a man that had been turnedout of his holding, and that was in want, said hewould do it. And before he went to work he wenton his two knees, and he wished that whateverharm might come from it might come on her, andnot on himself. And so it did, and her hands gotcrippled and crappled. And they travelled theworld and could get no relief for her, and her cattlebegan to die, and she died herself in the end. Andthe daughter and the son-in-law had to leave thathouse and to build another, for they were losingall the cattle, and they are left alone now, but thedaughter lost a finger by it.
A Man near Corcomroe:
I saw a light myself one night in the big forthover there near the sea. Like a bonfire it was, andgoing up about thirty feet into the air.
Ghosts are to be heard about the forths. Theymake a heavy noise, and there are creaks in theirshoes. Doing a penance I suppose they are. Andthere's many see the lights in the forths at Newtown.
J. Doheny:
One time I was cutting bushes up there near theriver, and I cut a big thorn bush, I thought it noharm to do it when it wasn't standing by itself,but in a thicket, and it old and half-rotten. Andwhen I had it cut, I heard some one talking veryloud to my wife, that was gathering kippeensdown in the field the other side of the wall. AndI went down to know who it was talking to her.And when I asked her she said "No, it's to yourselfsome one was talking, for I heard his voice whereyou were, and I saw no one." So I said, "Surelyit's one of them mourning for the bush I cut," forthe sound of his voice was as if he was mad vexed.
I think it's not in the tree at the corner there'sanything, it's something in the place. Not longago there was one Greeley going to Galway with aload of barley, and when he came to that corner heheard the sound of a train crossing from inside thewall, and the horse stopped. And then he heardit a second time and the horse refused to go on, andat the end he had to turn back home again, for hehad no use trying to make the horse go on.
There were ash trees growing around the blessedwell at Corker, and one night Deeley, the uncle ofPat Deeley that lives beyond, and two other menwent to cut them down, to get the makings of acar-body. And the next day Deeley's lip wasdrawn down—like this—and water running from[Pg 233]it for the rest of his life. I often see him; and as tothe two other men, they died soon after.
And big Joyce that was a servant to John O'Hara,he went to cut trees one night near that hole atRaheen, near the corner of the road, and he wasprevented, and never could get the handsaw neara tree, nor the other men that were with him.
And there was another man went and cut abush not far from the Kinvara road, and with thefirst stroke he heard a sort of a cough or a groancome from beneath it, that was a token to him toleave it alone. But he wouldn't leave off, and hismouth was drawn to one side all of a sudden andin two days after he was dead. Surely, one shouldleave such things alone.
A Piper:
I had a fall myself in Galway the other day thatI couldn't move my arm to play the pipes if yougave me Ireland. And a man said to me—andthey are very smart people in Galway—that twoor three got a fall and a hurt in that same place."There is places in the sea where there is drowning,"he said, "and places on the land as wellwhere there do be accidents, and no man can savehimself from them, for it is the will of God."
A Man Asking Alms:
It's not safe sometimes to meddle with walls.There was a man beyond Gort knocked some oldwalls not long ago, and he's dead since.
But it's by the big tree outside Raheen where youtake the turn to Kinvara that the most things areseen. There was a boy living with Conor in Gortthat was out before daylight with a load of hay in acart, and he sitting on top of it, and he was foundlying dead just beside the tree, where he fell fromthe top of the cart, and the horse was standingthere stock-still. There was a shower of rain fellwhile he was lying there, and I passed the roadtwo hours later, and saw where the dust was drywhere his body had been lying. And it was onlyyesterday I was hearing a story of that very sameplace. There was a man coming from Galwaywith a ton weight of a load on his cart, and when hecame to that tree the linching of his wheel cameout, and the cart fell down. And presently a littleman, about two and a half feet in height, cameout from the wall and lifted up the cart, and heldit up till he had the linching put up again. And henever said a word but went away as he came, andthe man came in to Gort. And I remember myself,the black and white dog used to be on the road betweenHanlon's gate and Gort. It was there for tenyears and no one ever saw it, but one evening FatherBoyle's man was going out to look at a few littlesheep and lambs belonging to the priest, and whenhe came to the stile the dog put up its paws on itand looked at him, and he was afraid to go on. Sonext morning he told Father Boyle about it and hesaid "I think that you won't see it any more." Andsure enough from that day it never was seen again.
Steve Simon:
I don't know did I draw down to you before,your ladyship, the greatest wonder ever I saw inmy life?
I was passing by the forth at Corcomroe, comingback from some shopping I had done in Belharbour,and I saw twelve of the finest horses everI saw, and riders on them racing round the forth.Many a race I saw since I lived in this world,but never a race like that, for tipping and tuggingand welting the horses; the jockeys in colouredclothes, striped and blue, and little blue caps onthem, and a lady in the front of them on a bayishhorse and wearing a scarlet jacket.
I told what I saw the same evening to an oldwoman living near and she said, "Whatever yousaw keep it secret, or some harm will come uponyou." There was another thing I saw besides theriders. There were crowds and crowds of people,standing as we would against walls or on a stage,and taking a view. They were shouting, but themen racing on the horses said nothing at all. Nevera race like that one, with the swiftness and thewelting and fine horses that were in it.
What clothing had these people? They hadcoats on them, and on their back there werepictures, pictures in the form of people. ShieldsI think they were. Anyway there were pictureson them. Striped the coats were, and a sort ofscollop on them the same as that screen in thewindow (a blind with Celtic design). They had[Pg 236]little blue caps, such as wore them, but some hadnothing on the head at all; and they had blueslippers—those I saw of them—but I was afearedto take more than a side view except of the racers.
An Old Army Man:
You know the forth where the old man losthis hair? Well there's another man, Waters, thatmarried Brian's sister, has the second sight, andthere's a big bush left in that forth, and when hegoes there he sees a woman sitting under it, andshe lighting a fire.
Cloran's father was living over at Knockmaa onetime and his wife died, and he believed it was takeninto the hill she was. So he went one morningand dug a hole in the side of the hill. But thenext morning when he went back to dig again, thehole was filled up and the grass growing over itas before. And this he did two or three times.And then some one told him to put his pick and hisspade across the hole. And so he did, and itwasn't filled up again. But what happened after Idon't know.
An Old Army Man:
That's a bad bit of road near Kinvara where theboy lost his life last week; I know it well. And Iknew him, a quiet boy, and married to a widowwoman; she wanted the help of a man, and he wasyoung. What would ail him to fall off the side ofan ass-car and to be killed?
I have been told:
Yes, they say blacksmiths have somethingabout them, and if there's a seventh blacksmithin succession, from generation to generation, hecan do many things, and if he gave you his curseyou wouldn't be the better of it. There wasone near the cliffs, Pat Doherty, but he did noharm to any one, but was as quiet as another.He is dead now and his son is a blacksmith too.(Note 2.)
There was a man one time that was a blacksmith,and he used to go every night playingcards, and for all his wife could say he wouldn'tleave off doing it. So one night she got a boyto go stand in the old churchyard he'd have topass, and to frighten him. So the boy did so, andbegan to groan and to try to frighten him whenhe came near. But it's well known that nothingof that kind can do any harm to a blacksmith.So he went in and got hold of the boy, and toldhim he had a mind to choke him, and went his way.
But no sooner was the boy left alone than therecame about him something in the shape of a dog,and then a great troop of cats. And they surroundedhim and he tried to get away home, but hehad no power to go the way he wanted but hadto go with them. And at last they came to an oldforth and a faery bush, and he knelt down andmade the sign of the cross and said a great many"Our Fathers," and after a time they went intothe faery bush and left him. And he was goingaway and a woman came out of the bush, andcalled to him three times, to make him look back.And he saw that it was a woman that he knewbefore, that was dead, and so he knew that shewas amongst the faeries.
And she said to him, "It's well for you thatI was here, and worked hard for you, or you wouldhave been brought in among them, and be likeme." So he got home. And the blacksmith gothome too and his wife was surprised to see he wasno way frightened. But he said, "You mightknow that there's nothing of that sort could harmme."
For a blacksmith is safe from all, and when hegoes out in the night he keeps always in his pocketa small bit of wire, and they know him by that.So he went on playing, and they grew very poorafter.
And I knew a woman from the County Limerickhad been away, and she could tell you all about[Pg 241]the forths in this place and how she was recovered.She met a man she knew on the road, and she outriding with them all on horseback, and told him tobring a bottle of forge-water and to throw it onher, and so he did, and she came back again.
Blacksmiths surely are safe from these things.And if a blacksmith was to turn his anvil upsidedown and to say malicious words, he could do yougreat injury.
There was a child that was changed, and mymother brought it a nice bit of potato cake onetime, for tradesmen often have nice things on thetable. But the child wouldn't touch it, for theydon't like the leavings of a smith.
Blacksmiths have power, and if you could stealthe water from the trough in the forge, it wouldcure all things.
And as to forges, there's some can hear workingand hammering in them through the night.
The Dragon that was the monster of the earlyworld now appears only in the traditional folk-tales,where the hero, a new Perseus, fights for the lifeof the Princess who looks on crying at the brink of thesea, bound to a silver chair, while the Dragon is "putin a way he will eat no more kings' daughters." Inthe stories of today he has shrunk to eel or worm, for thepersons and properties of the folk-lore of all countrieskeep being transformed or remade in the imagination,so that once in New England on the eve of GeorgeWashington's birthday, the decorated shop windowsset me wondering whether the cherry tree itself mightnot be a remaking of the red-berried dragon-guardedrowan of the Celtic tales, or it may be of a yet moreancient apple. I ventured to hint at this in a lectureat Philadelphia, and next day one of the audiencewrote me that he had looked through all the early biographiesof Washington, and either the first three orthe first three editions of the earliest—I have mislaidthe letter—never mention the cherry tree at all.
The monstrous beasts told of today recall thevisions of Maeldune on his strange dream-voyage,[Pg 246]where he saw the beast that was like a horse and thathad "legs of a hound with rough sharp nails," and thefiery pigs that fed on golden fruit, and the cat thatwith one flaming leap turned a thief to a heap of ashes;for the folk-tales of the world have long roots, andthere is nothing new save their reblossoming.
I have been told by a Car-driver:
I went to serve one Patterson at a place calledGrace Dieu between Waterford and Tramore,and there were queer things in it. There was awoman lived at the lodge the other side fromthe gate, and one day she was looking out and shesaw a woolpack coming riding down the road ofitself.
There was a room over the stable I was put tosleep in, and no one near me. One night I felta great weight on my feet, and there was somethingvery weighty coming up upon my bodyand I heard heavy breathing. Every night afterthat I used to light the fire and bring up coal andmake up the fire with it that it would be near asgood in the morning as it was at night. And Ibrought a good terrier up every night to sleepwith me on the bed. Well, one night the firewas lighting and the moon was shining in at thewindow, and the terrier leaped off the bed andhe was barking and rushing and fighting andleaping, near to the ceiling and in under the bed.And I could see the shadow of him on the wallsand on the ceiling, and I could see the shadow ofanother thing that was about two foot long andthat had a head like a pike, and that was fighting[Pg 248]and leaping. They stopped after a while and allwas quiet. But from that night the terrier neverwould come to sleep in the room again.
By Others:
The worst form a monster can take is a cow or apig. But as to a lamb, you may always be surea lamb is honest.
A pig is the worst shape they can take. Iwouldn't like to meet anything in the shape ofa pig in the night.
No, I saw nothing myself, I'm not one ofthose that can see such things; but I heard of aman that went with the others on rent day, andbecause he could pay no rent but only madeexcuses, the landlord didn't ask him in to get adrink with the others. So as he was cominghome by himself in the dark, there was somethingon the road before him, and he gave it a hit withthe toe of his boot, and it let a squeal. So thenhe said to it, "Come in here to my house, forI'm not asked to drink with them; I'll give drinkand food to you." So it came in, and the nextmorning he found by the door a barrel full of wineand another full of gold, and he never knew a day'swant after that.
Walking home one night with Jack Costello,there was something before us that gave a roar,[Pg 249]and then it rose in the air like a goose, and thenit fell again. And Jackeen told me after that ithad laid hold on his trousers, and he didn't sleepall night with the fright he got.
There's a monster in Lough Graney, but it'sonly seen once in seven years.
There is a monster of some sort down by Duras,it's called the ghost of Fiddeen. Some say it'sonly heard every seven years. Some say it was aflannel seller used to live there that had a shortfardel. We heard it here one night, like a calfroaring.
One night my grandfather was beyond at Inchywhere the lads from Gort used to be stealing rods,and he was sitting by the wall, and the dog besidehim. And he heard something come runningfrom Inchy Weir and he could see nothing, butthe sound of its feet on the ground was like thesound of the feet of a deer. And when it passedby him the dog got in between him and the wall andscratched at him, but still he could see nothingbut only could hear the sound of hoofs. So whenit was passed he turned away home.
Another time, my grandfather told me, he was ina boat out on the lake here at Coole with two orthree men from Gort. And one of them had aneel-spear and he thrust it into the water and it hit[Pg 250]something, and the man fainted, and they had tocarry him in out of the boat to land. And whenhe came to himself he said that what he struckwas like a horse or like a calf, but whatever itwas, it was no fish.
There is a boy I knew, one Curtin near Ballinderreen,told me that he was going along the roadone night and he saw a dog. It had claws likea cur, and a body like a person, and he couldn'tsee what its head was like. But it was moaninglike a soul in pain, and presently it vanished, andthere came most beautiful music, and a womancame out and he thought at first it was the Banshee,and she wearing a red petticoat. And astriped jacket she had on, and a white band abouther waist. And to hear more beautiful singingand music he never did, but to know or to understandwhat she was expressing, he couldn't do it.And at last they came to a place by the roadsidewhere there were some bushes. And she went inthere and disappeared under them, and the mostbeautiful lights came shining where she went in.And when he got home, he himself fainted, andhis mother put her beads over him, and blessedhim and said prayers. So he got quiet at last.
I would easily believe about the dog havinga fight with something his owner couldn't see.That often happens in this island, and that'swhy every man likes to have a black dog with[Pg 251]him at night—a black one is the best for fightingsuch things.
And a black cock everyone likes to have intheir house—a March cock it should be.
I knew the captain of a ship used to go whalefishing, and he said he saw them by scores. Butby his account they were no way like the onesMcDaragh saw; it was I described them to him.
We don't give in to such things here as theydo in the middle island; but I wouldn't doubtthat about the dog. For they can see what wecan't see. And there was a man here was out onenight and the dog ran on and attacked somethingthat was in front of him—a faery it was—but hecould see nothing. And every now and again itwould do the same thing, and seemed to be fightingsomething before him, and when they got homethe man got safe into the house, but at the thresholdthe dog was killed.
And a horse can see many things, and if everyou're out late, and the horse to stop as if therewas something he wouldn't pass, make the sign ofthe cross between his ears, and he'll go on then.And it's well to have a cock always in the house,if you can have it from a March clutch, and thenext year if you can have another cock from aMarch clutch from that one, it's the best. Andif you go late out of the house, and that there[Pg 252]is something outside it would be bad to meet,that cock will crow before you'll go out.
I'm sorry I wasn't in to meet you surely,knowing as much as I do about the faeries. Onenight I went with four or five others down by themill to hunt rabbits. And when we got to the fieldby the river there was the sound of hundreds, somecrying and the other part laughing, that we all heardthem. And something came down to the river, firstI thought he was a dog and then I saw he was toobig and strange looking. And you'd think therewouldn't be a drop of water left in the river with allhe drank. And I bid the others say nothing aboutit, for Patrick Green was lying sick at the mill,and it might be taken for a bad sign. And itwasn't many days after that he died.
My father told me that one night he was crossingthis road, and he turned to the wall to close hisshoe. And when he turned again there was somethingrunning through the field that was the sizeof a yearling calf, and black, and it ran across theroad, and there was like the sound of chains in it.And when it came to that rock with the bushon it, it stopped and he could see a red light inits mouth. And then it disappeared. He usedoften to see a black dog in this road, and it usedto be following him, and others saw it too. Butone night the brother of the priest, Father Mitchel,saw it and he told the priest and he banished it.
The lake down there (Lough Graney) is an enchantedplace, and old people told me that one timethey were swimming there, and a man had gone outinto the middle and they saw something like a greatbig eel making for him, and they called out, "Ifever you were a great swimmer show us now howyou can swim to the shore," for they wouldn'tfrighten him by saying what was behind him.So he swam to the shore, and he only got therewhen the thing behind him was in the place wherehe was. For there are queer things in lakes. Inever saw anything myself, but one time I wascoming home late from Scariff, and I felt my hairstanding up on my head, and I began to feel a sortof shy and fearful, and I could feel that therewas something walking beside me. But after awhile there was a little stream across the road,and after I passed that I was all right again andcould feel nothing near.
I never saw anything myself but once, early inthe morning and I going to the May fair of Loughrea.It was a little way outside of the town I sawsomething that had the appearance of a blackpig, and it was running in under the cart andunder the ass's feet. And the ass would keepbacking away from it, that it was hardly I couldbring her along, till we got to the bridge of Cloon,and once we were over that we saw it no more,for it couldn't pass the running water. And allthe time it was with us I was hitting at it with[Pg 254]my stick, and it would run from me then, for itwas a hazel stick, and the hazel is blessed, and nowicked thing can stay when it is touched withit. It is likely the nuts are blessed too. Aren'tthey growing on the same tree?
I was over at Phayre's mill one time to get someboards sawed and they said I must wait an houror so, where the mill wasn't free. And I had aload of turf to get, and I went along the road.And I heard something coming after me in thegutter, and it stood up over me like an elephant,and I put my hands behind me and I said, "MadadFior," and he went away. It was just at thebridge he was, near Kilchriest, and when I wascoming back after a while, just when I got to thebridge there, he was after me again. But I neversaw him since then.
One time I was at the fair at Ballinasloe, andI but a young lad at the time, and a comradewith me that was but a young lad too. Webrought in the sheep the Monday evening, andthey were sold the Tuesday morning, and themaster bid us to go home on the train. "Badcess," said my comrade, "are we to get no good atall out of the fair? Let us stop," says he, "and getthe good of it and go back by the mail train."So we went through the fair together and wentto a dance, and the master never knew, and wewent home on the mail train together. We got[Pg 255]out at Woodlawn and we were going home, andwe heard a sort of a groaning and we could seenothing, and the boy that was with me wasfrightened, for though he was a strong boy, he wasa timorous man. We found then the groaningcoming from beyond the wall, and I went and putmy two fists on the wall and looked over it. Therewere two trees on the other side of the wall, and I sawwalking off and down from one tree to the other,something that was like a soldier or a sentry.The body was a man's body, and there was a blacksuit on it, but it had the head of a bear, the veryhead and puss of a bear. I asked what was onhim. "Don't speak to me, don't speak to me,"he said, and he stopped by the tree and wasgroaning and went away.
That is all that ever I saw, and I herding sheepin the lambing season, and falling asleep as I didsometimes, and walking up and down the fieldin my sleep.
My father told me that in the bad times, about theyear '48, he used to be watching about in the fields,where the people did be stealing the crops. Andthere was no field in Coole he was afraid to go intoby night except one, that is number three in theLake Farm. For the dog that was about in thosetimes stopped the night in the clump there.And Johnny Callan told me one night passing thatfield he heard the noise of a cart of stones thrownagainst the wall. But when he went back there[Pg 256]in the morning there was no sign of anything atall. My father never saw the dog himself but hewas known to be there and he felt him.
And as for the monster, I never saw it in CooleLake, but one day I was coming home with mytwo brothers from Tirneevan school, and thereas we passed Dhulough we heard a great splashing,and we saw some creature put up its head, with ahead and a mane like a horse. And we didn'tstop but ran.
But I think it was not so big as the monsterover here in Coole Lake, for Johnny Callan saw it,and he said it was the size of a stack of turf. Butthere's many could tell about that for there'smany saw it, Dougherty from Gort and others.
As to the dog that used to be in the road, afriend of his own was driving Father Boyle fromKinvara late one night and there it was—firston the right side and then on the left of the car.And at last he told Father Boyle, and he said,"Look out now for it, and you'll see it no more,"and no more he did, and that was the last of it.
But the driver of the mail-car often seen afigure of a woman following the car till it cameto the churchyard beyond Ardrahan, and there itdisappeared.
Father Boyle was a good man indeed—a childmight speak to him. They said he had the dogor whatever it may be banished from the road,but of late I heard the driver of the mail-car[Pg 257]saying he sees it on one spot on the road everynight. And there's a very lonely hollow beyondDoran's house, and I know a man that neverpassed by that hollow but what he'd fall asleep.But one night he saw a sort of a muffled figureand he cried out three times some good wish—suchas "God have mercy on you"—and then itgave a great laugh and vanished and he saw itno more. As to the forths or other old places, howdo we know what poor soul may be shut upthere, confined in pain?
Sure a man the other day coming back from yourown place, Inchy, when he came to the big tree,heard a squealing, and there he saw a sort of adog, and it white, and it followed as if holdingon to him all the way home. And when he gotto the house he near fainted, and asked for aglass of water.
There's some sort of a monster at Tyrone, risingand slipping up and down in the sun, and when itcries, some one will be sure to die.
I didn't believe in them myself till one nightI was coming home from a wedding, and standingon the road beside me I saw John Kelly's donkeythat he always used to call Neddy. So he wasstanding in my way and I gave a blow at him andsaid, "Get out of that, Neddy." And he movedoff only to come across me again, and to stop me[Pg 258]from going in. And so he did all the way, tillas I was going by a bit of wood I heard come outof it two of the clearest laughs that ever youheard, and then two sorts of shouts. So I knewthat it was having fun with me they were, andthat it was not Neddy was there, but his likeness.
I knew a priest was stopped on the road onenight by something in the shape of a big dog,and he couldn't make the horse pass it.
One night I saw the dog myself, in the boreennear my house. And that was a bad bit of road,two or three were killed there.
And one night I was between Kiltartan Chapeland Nolan's gate where I had some sheep to lookafter for the priest. And the dog I had withme ran out into the middle of the road, andthere he began to yelp and to fight. I stood andwatched him for a while, and surely he was fightingwith another dog, but there was nothing tobe seen.
And in the same part of the road one night Iheard horses galloping, galloping past me. I couldhear their hoofs, and they shod, on the stonesof the road. But though I stood aside andlooked—and it was bright moonlight—there wereno horses to be seen. But they were there, andbelieve me they were not without riders.
Well, myself I once slept in a house with somestrange thing. I had my aunt then, Mrs. Leary,[Pg 259]living near, and I but a small little girl at thetime. And one day she came to our house andasked would I go sleep with her, and I said Iwould if she'd give me a ride on her back, and soshe did. And for many a night after that shebrought me to sleep with her, and my mother usedto be asking why, and she'd give no reason.
Well, the cause of her wanting me was this.Every night so sure as she put the candle out,it would come and lie upon her feet and acrossher body and near smother her, and she could feelit breathing but could see nothing. I never feltanything at all myself, I being sound asleepbefore she quenched the light. At last she wentto Father Smith—God rest his soul!—and he gaveher a prayer to say at the moment of the Elevationof the Mass. So the next time she attended Massshe used it, and that night it was wickeder thanever it had been.
So after that she wrote to her son in Americato buy a ticket for her, and she went out tohim and remained some years. And it was onlyafter she came back she told me and my motherwhat used to happen on those nights, and thereason she wanted me to be beside her.
There was never any one saw so many of thosethings as Johnny Hardiman's father on this estate,and now he's old and got silly, and can'ttell about them any more. One time he waswalking into Gort along the Kiltartan road, and[Pg 260]he saw one of them before him in the form of atub, and it rolling along.
Another time he was coming home from Kinvara,and a black and white dog came out againsthim from the wall, but he took no notice of it.But when he got near his own house it came outagainst him again and bit him in the leg, and hegot hold of it and lifted it up and took it by thethroat and choked it; and when he was sure itwas dead he threw it by the roadside. But inthe morning he went out first thing early to lookat the body, and there was no sign at all of itthere.
So I believe indeed that old Michael Barretthears them and sees them. But they do him nomischief nor harm at all. They wouldn't, and hesuch an old resident. But there's many wouldn'tbelieve he sees anything because they never seenthem themselves.
I never did but once, when I was a slip of a girlbeyond at Lissatiraheely, and one time I wentacross to the big forth to get a can of water. Andwhen I got near to it I heard voices, and when Icame to where the water runs out they weregetting louder and louder. And I stopped andlooked down, and there in the passage where thewater comes I seen a dog within, and there was agreat noise—working I suppose they were. AndI threw down the can and turned and ran, andnever went back for it again. But here since I[Pg 261]lived in Coole I never seen anything and neverwas afeared of anything except one time onlyin the evening, when I was walking down thelittle by-lane that leads to Ballinamantane. Andthere standing in the path before me I seen thevery same dog that was in the old forth before.And I believe I leaped the wall to get away intothe high-road. And what day was that butthe very same day that Sir William—the Lordbe with his soul!—was returned a Member ofParliament, and a great night it was in Kiltartan.
But I'm noways afeared of anything and I giveyou my word I'd walk in the dead of night in thenut-wood or any other place—except only thecross beyond Inchy, I'd sooner not go by there.There's two or three has their life lost there—Heffernanof Kildesert, one of your ladyship'sown tenants, he was one. He was at a fair, andthere was a horse another man wanted, but hegot inside him and got the horse. And whenhe was riding home, when he came to that spotit reared back and threw him, and he was takenup dead. And another man—one Gallagher—felloff the top of a creel of turf in the same placeand lost his life. And there was a woman hurtedsome way another time. What's that you'resaying, John—that Gallagher had a drop toomuch taken? That might be so indeed; andwhat call has a man that has drink taken to gotravel upon top of a creel of turf?
That dog I met in the boreen at Ballinamantane,he was the size of a calf, and black, and his pawsthe size of I don't know what. I was sitting inthe house one day, and he came in and sat downby the dresser and looked at me. And I didn'tlike the look of him when I saw the big eyes ofhim, and the size of his legs. And just then aman came in that used to make his living bymaking mats, and he used to lodge with me for anight now and again. And he went out to bringhis cart away where he was afraid it'd be knockedabout by the people going to the big bonefire atKiltartan cross-roads. And when he went out Ilooked out the door, and there was the dog sittingunder the cart. So he made a hit at it with astick, and it was in the stones the stick stuck, andthere was the dog sitting at the other side of him.So he came in and gave me abuse and said I mustbe a strange woman to have such things aboutme. And he never would come to lodge with meagain. But didn't the dog behave well not to dohim an injury after he hitting it? It was surelysome man that was in that dog, some soul introuble.
Beasts will sometimes see more than a man will.There were three young chaps I know went upnear Ballyturn to hunt coneens (young rabbits)and they threw the dog over the wall. And whenhe was in the field he gave a yelp and drew backas if something had struck him on the head. And[Pg 263]with all they could do, and the rabbits and theconeens running about the field, they couldn'tget him to stir from that and they had to comehome with no rabbits.
One time I was helping Sully, the butcher inLoughrea, and I had to go to a country house tobring in a measly pig the people had, and thathe was to allow them something for. So I gotthere late and had to stop the night. And in themorning at daylight I looked from the windowand saw a cow eating the potatoes, so I wentdown to drive him off. And in the kitchen therewas lying by the hearth a dog, a speckled one,with spots of black and white and yellow. Andwhen he saw me he got up and went over to thedoor and went out through it. And then I sawthat the door was shut and locked. So I wentback again and told the people of the house whatI saw and they were frightened and made me stopthe next night. And in the night the clotheswere taken off me and a heavy blow struck me inthe chest, and the feel of it was like the feel ofice. So I covered myself up again and put myhand under the bedclothes, and I never came tothat house again.
I never seen anything myself, but I rememberwell that when I was a young chap there was ablack dog between Coole gatehouse and Gortfor many a year, and many met him there. Tom[Pg 264]Miller came running into our house one time whenhe was after seeing him, and at first sight hethought he was a man, where he was standingwith his paws up upon the wall, and then hevanished out of sight. But there never was anycommon dog the size of him, and it's many a onesaw him, and it was Father Boyle that banishedhim out of it at last.
Except that thing at Inchy Weir, I never sawanything myself. But one evening I parted fromLarry Cuniffe in the yard, and he went awaythrough the path in Shanwalla and bid me goodnight.But two hours after, there he was backagain in the yard, and bid me light a candle was inthe stable. And he told me that when he got intoShanwalla a little chap about as high as his knee,but having a head as big as a man's body, camebeside him and led him out of the path and roundabout, and at last it brought him to the limekiln,and there left him.
There is a dog now at Lismara, black and biggerthan a natural dog, is about the roads at night.He wouldn't be there so long if any one had thecourage to question him.
Stephen O'Donnell in Connemara told me thatone time he shot a hare, and it turned into a woman,a neighbour of his own. And she had his buttertaken for the last two years, but she begged[Pg 265]and prayed for life on her knees, so he sparedher, and she gave him back his butter after that,a double yield.
There was a woman at Glenlough when I wasyoung could change herself into an eel. It was inGalway Workhouse Hospital she got the knowledge.A woman that had the knowledge of doing it bywitchcraft asked her would she like to learn, andshe said that she would, for she didn't know whatit would bring on her. For every time she didit, she'd be in bed a fortnight after with all she'dgo through. Sir Martin O'Neill when he was ayoung lad heard of it, and he got her into a room,and made her do it for him, and when he saw herchange to an eel he got frightened and tried to getaway, but she got between him and the door,and showed her teeth at him and growled. Shewasn't the better of that for a fortnight after.
Indeed the porter did me great good, a goodthat I'd hardly like to tell you, not to make ascandal. Did I drink too much of it? Not atall, I have no fancy for it, but the nights seemedto be long. But this long time I am feeling aworm in my side that is as big as an eel, and there'smore of them in it than that, and I was told toput sea-grass to it, and I put it to the side theother day, and whether it was that or the porterI don't know, but there's some of them gone outof it, and I think it's the porter.
I knew a woman near Clough was out milking hercow, and when she got up to go away she saw oneof those worms coming after her, and it eight feetlong, and it made a jump about eight yards afterher. And I heard of a man went asleep by awall one time, and one of them went down histhroat and he never could get rid of it till a womanfrom the North came. And what she bade him dowas to get a bit of old crock butter and to make abig fire on the hearth, and to put the butter in ahalf round on the hearth, and to get two men tohold him over it. And when the worms got the smellof the butter they jumped out of his mouth, sevenor eight one after another, and it was in the firethey fell and they were burned, and that was anend of them.
As to hares, there's something queer aboutthem, and there's some that it's dangerous tomeddle with, and that can go into any form wherethey like. Sure, Mrs. Madden is after having ayoung son, and it has a harelip. But she saysthat she doesn't remember that ever she met ahare or looked at one. But if she did, she had aright to rip a small bit of the seam of her dressor her petticoat, and then it would have no powerto hurt her at all.
Doran the herd says, he wouldn't himself eatthe flesh of a hare. There's something unnaturalabout it. But as to them being unlucky,[Pg 267]that may be all talk. But there's no doubt at allthat a cow is found sometimes to be run dry, andthe hare to be seen coming away from her.
One time when we lived just behind Gort myfather was going to a fair. And it was the customin those days to set out a great deal earlier thanwhat it is now. So it was not much past midnightwhen he got up and went out the door, and themoon shining bright. And then he saw a harewalk in from the street and turn down by thegarden, and another after it, and another andanother till he counted twelve. And they all wentstraight one after another and vanished. Andmy father came in and shut the door, and neverwent out again till it was broad daylight.
There was a man watching the fire where twohares were cooking and he heard them whistlingin the pot. And when the people of the housecame home they were afraid to touch them, butthe man that heard the whistling ate a good mealof them and was none the worse.
There was an uncle of my own lived over nearGarryland. And one day himself and another manwere going through the field, and they saw a hare,and the hound that was with them gave chase,and they followed.
And the hound was gaining on the hare and itmade for a house, where the half-door was open.[Pg 268]And the hound made a snap at it and touchedit as it leaped the half-door. And when myuncle and the others came up, they could find nohare, but only an old woman in the house—andshe bleeding. So there's no doubt at all butit was she took the form of a hare. My unclespent too much money after, and gave up his landand went to America.
As to hares, there was a man out with his greyhoundand it gave chase to a hare. And it madefor a house, and went in at the window, andthe hound just touched the leg. And when theman came up, he found an old woman in thehouse, and he asked leave to search the house andso he did in every place, but there was no hareto be seen. But when he came in she was puttinga pot on the fire, so he said that he must look inthe pot, and he took the cover off, and it was fullof blood. And before the hound gave chase, hehad seen the hare sucking the milk from a cow.
As to hares, there's no doubt at all there'ssome that's not natural. One night I was makingpot-whiskey up in that hill beyond. Yesindeed, for three year, I did little but run toand fro to the still, and one December, I wasmaking it for the Christmas and I was takenand got nine weeks in gaol for it—and £16worth of whiskey spilled that night. But there'smean people in the world; and he did it for[Pg 269]half a sovereign, and had to leave the countryafter and go to England. Well, one night,I was watching by the fire where it was toofierce, and it would have burned the oats. Andover the hill and down the path came two haresand walked on and into the wood. And twomore after that, and then by fours they came,and by sixes, and I'd want a slate and a pencilto count all I saw, and it just at sunrise. Andsome of them were as thin as thin. And there'sno doubt at all that those were not hares I sawthat night.
As to hares, they're the biggest fairies of all.Last year the boys had one caught, and I put itin the pot to wash it and it after being skinned,and I heard a noise come from the pot—grr-grr—andnothing but cold water in it. And I ran tosave my life, and I told the boys to have nothingto do with it, but they wouldn't mind me. Andwhen they tried to eat it, and it boiled, theycouldn't get their teeth into the flesh of it, and asfor the soup, it was no different from potato-water.
The village of Lissavohalane has a great namefor such things. And it's certain that once onenight every year, in the month of November,all the cats of the whole country round gathertogether there and fight. My own two cats werenearly dead for days after it last year, and theneighbours told me the same of theirs.
There was a woman had a cat and she wouldfeed it at the table before any other one; and if itdid not get the first meat that was cooked, thehair would rise up as high as that. Well, there werepriests came to dinner one day, and when theywere helped the first, the hair rose up on the cat'sback. And one of them said to the woman it wasa queer thing to give in to a cat the way she did,and that it was a foolish thing to be giving it thefirst of the food. So when it heard that, it walkedout of the house, and never came into it again.
There's something not right about cats. SteveSmith says he knew a keeper that shot one, andit went into a sort of a heap, and when he camenear, it spoke, and he found it was some person,and it said it had to walk its seven acres. Andthere's some have heard them together at nighttalking Irish.
There was a hole over the door of the housethat I used to live in, where Murphy's house isnow, to let the smoke out, for there was no chimney.And one day a black cat jumped in at the hole,and stopped in the house and never left us for ayear. But on the day year he came he jumpedout again at the same hole and didn't go out ofthe door that was standing open. There was nomistake about it, it was the day year.
As to cats, they're a class in themselves. They're[Pg 271]good to catch mice and rats, but just let them comein and out of the house for that; they're abouttheir own business all the time. And in the oldtimes they could talk. And it's said that thecats gave a shilling for what they have; fourpencethat the housekeeper might be careless and leavethe milk about that they'd get at it; and fourpencethat they'd tread so light that no onewould hear them, and fourpence that they'd beable to see in the dark. And I might as wellthrow out that drop of tea I left on the dresserto cool, for the cat is after tasting it and I wouldn'ttouch it after that. There might be a hair in it,and the hair of a cat is poison.
There was a man had a house full of children,and one day he was taking their measurefor boots. And the cat that was sitting on thehearth said, "Take my measure for a pair ofboots along with the rest." So the man did,and when he went to the shoemaker he toldhim of what the cat had said. And there wasa man in the shop at the time, and he having twogreyhounds with him, and one of them all blackwithout a single white hair. And he said, "Bringthe cat here tomorrow. You can tell it that theboots can't be made without it coming for itsmeasure." So the next day he brought the catin a bag, and when he got to his shop the man wasthere with his greyhounds, and he let the cat out,and it praying him not to loosen the bag. And[Pg 272]it made away through the fields and the houndsafter it, and whether it killed one of them I don'tknow, but anyhow the black hound killed it, theone that had not a white hair on its body.
You should never be too attentive to a cat, butjust to be civil and to give it its share.
Cats were serpents, and they were made intocats at the time, I suppose, of some change in theworld. That's why they're hard to kill and whyit's dangerous to meddle with them. If you annoya cat it might claw you or bite you in a way thatwould put poison in you, and that would be theserpent's tooth.
There was an uncle of mine near Galway, andone night his wife was very sick, and he had to goto the village to get something for her. And it'sa very lonely road, and as he was going whatshould he see but a great number of cats, walkingalong the road, and they were carrying a youngcat, and crying it.
And when he was on his way home again fromthe village he met them again, and one of the catsturned and spoke to him like a person would,and said, "Bid Lady Betty to come to thefuneral or she'll be late." So he ran on home ina great fright, and he couldn't speak for some timeafter getting back to the house, but sat thereby the fire in a chair. And at last he began to tell[Pg 273]his wife what had happened. And when he saidthat he had met a cat's funeral, his own cat thatwas sleeping by the hearth began to stir her tail, andlooked up at him, affectionate like. But when hegot to where he was bid send Lady Betty to thefuneral, she made one dash at his face and scrapedit, she was so mad that she wasn't told at once.And then she began to tear at the door, that theyhad to let her out.
For cats is faeries, and every night they'reobliged to travel over seven acres; that's whyyou hear them crying about the country. Itwas an old woman at the strand told me that, andshe should know, for she lived to a hundred yearsof age.
I saw three young weasels out in the sea,squealing, squealing, for they couldn't get to land,and I put out a bunch of seaweed and broughtthem to the land, and they went away after. Idid that for them. Weasels are not right, nomore than cats; and I'm not sure about foxes.
Rats are very bad, because a rat if one gotthe chance would do his best to bite you, and Iwouldn't like at all to get the bite of a rat. Butweasels are serpents, and if they would spit atany part of your body it would fester, and youwould get blood poisoning within two hours.
I knew an old doctor—Antony Coppinger atClifden—and he told me that if the weasels had[Pg 274]the power of other beasts they would not leavea human living in the world. And he said thewild wide wilderness of the sea was full of beastsmostly the same as on earth, like bonavs andlike cattle, and they lying at the bottom of thesea as quiet as cows in a field.
It is wrong to insult a weasel, and if you peltthem or shoot them they will watch for you foreverto ruin you. For they are enchanted andunderstand all things.
There is Mrs. Coneely that lives up the road,she had a clutch of young geese on the floor, and aweasel walked in and brought away one of them,but she said nothing to that.
But it came in again, and took a hold of anotherof the geese and Mrs. Coneely said, "Oh, I'm notbegrudging you what you have taken, but leavethese to me for it is hard I earned them, and itis great trouble I had rearing them. But go,"she said, "to the shoemaker's home beyond,where they have a clutch, and let you sparemine. And that I may never sin," she said,"but it walked out, for they can understandeverything, and it did not leave one of the clutchthat was at the shoemaker's."
It is why I called to you now when I saw yousitting there so near to the sea; I thought the tidemight steal up on you, or a weasel might chanceto come up with a fish in its mouth, and to giveyou a start. It's best if you see one to speak[Pg 275]nice to it, and to say, "I wouldn't be begrudgingyou a pair of boots or of shoes if I had them."If you treat them well they will treat you well.
And to see a weasel passing the road before you,there's nothing in the world like that to bringyou all sorts of good luck.
I was out in the field one time tilling potatoes,and two or three more along with me, and aweasel put its head out of the wall—a doublestone wall it was—and one of the lads fired astone at it. Well, within a minute there wasn'ta hole of the wall but a weasel had put its headout of it, about a thousand of them, I saw thatmyself. Very spiteful they are. I wouldn't likethem.
The weasels, the poor creatures, they will donothing at all on you if you behave well to themand let them alone, but if you do not, they willnot leave a chicken in the yard. And magpies,let you do nothing on them, or they will suckevery egg and leave nothing in the garden; butif you leave them to themselves they will donothing but to come into the street to pick a bitwith the birds.
The granyóg (hedgehog) will do no harm tochickens or the like; but if he will get into anorchard he will stick an apple on every thorn,[Pg 276]and away with him to a scalp with them to beeating through the winter.
I met with a granyóg one day on the mountain,and that I may never sin, he was running up theside of it as fast as a race-horse.
There is not much luck in killing a seal. Therewas a man in these parts was very fond of shootingand killing them. And seals have claws thesame as cats, and he had two daughters, and whenthey were born, they had claws the same as seals.I believe there is one of them living yet.
But the thing it is not right to touch is the ron(seal) for they are in the Sheogue. It is often I seethem on the strand, sitting there and wipingthemselves on the rocks. And they have a handwith five fingers, like any Christian. I seen sixof them, coming in a boat one time with a manfrom Connemara, that is the time I saw they hadthe five fingers.
There was a man killed one of them overthere near the point. And he came to theshore and it was night, and he was near deadwith the want of a blast of a pipe, and he sawa light from a house on the side of a mountain,and he went in to ask a coal of fire to kindlethe pipe. And when he went in, there was awoman, and she called out to a man that waslying stretched on the bed in the room, and shesaid, "Look till you see who this man is." And[Pg 277]the man that was on the bed says, "I know you,for I have the sign of your hand on me. And letyou get out of this now," he said, "as fast as youcan, and it will be best for you." And the daughtersaid to him, "I wonder you to let him go aseasy as that." And you may be sure the manmade off and made no delay. It was a Sheoguehouse that was; and the man on the bed wasthe ron he had killed, but he was not dead, beingof the Sheogues.
An old woman begging at the door one day spokeof the cures done in her early days by theFriars at Esker to the north of our county. I askedif she had ever been there, and she burst into thispraise of it:
"Esker is a grand place; this house and the houseof Lough Cutra and your own house at Roxborough,to put the three together it wouldn't be as big as it; it isas big as the whole town of Gort, in its own way; youwouldn't have it walked in a month.
"To go there you would get cured of anythingunless it might be the stroke of the Fool that does begoing with them; it's best not be talking of it. Theclout he would give you, there is no cure for it.
"Three barrels there are with water, and to see thefirst barrel boiling it is certain you will get a cure.A big friar will come out to meet us that is as big asthree. Fat they do be that they can't hardly getthrough the door. Water there does be rushing down;you to stoop you would hear it talking; you would beafraid of the water.
"One well for the rich and one well for the common;[Pg 282]blue blinds to the windows like little bars of timberwithout. You can see where the friars are burieddown dead to the end of the world.
"They give out clothes to the poor, bedclothes andday clothes; it is the beautifullest place from heavenout; summer houses and pears; glass in the wallsaround."
I have been told:
The Esker friars used to do great cures—FatherCallaghan was the best of them. Theyused to do it by reading, but what it was they readno one knew, some secret thing.
There was a girl brought from Clare one time,that had lost her wits, and she tied on a cart withropes. And she was brought to Father Callaghanand he began reading over her, and then he madea second reading, and at the end of that, he bidthem unloose the ropes, and when they did she gotup quite quiet, but very shy looking and ashamed,and would not wait for the cart but walked away.
Father Callaghan was with a man near thisone time, one Tully, and they were talking aboutthe faeries and the man said he didn't believe inthem at all. And Father Callaghan called himto the door and put up his fingers and bade himlook out through them, and there he saw hundredsand hundreds of the smallest little men he eversaw and they hurling and killing one another.
The friars are gone and there are missionerscome in their place and all they would do for[Pg 284]you is to bless holy water, and as long as youwould keep it, it would never get bad.
My daughter, Mrs. Meehan, that lives therebelow, was very bad after her first baby beingborn, and she wasted away and the doctors coulddo nothing for her. My husband went to BiddyEarly for her, but she said, "Mother for daughter,father for son" and she could do nothing for herbecause I didn't go. But I had promised Godand the priest I would never go to her, and soI kept to my word. But Mrs. Meehan was sobad she kept to the bed, and one day one of theneighbours said I had a right to bring her tothe friars at Esker. And he said, "It's todayyou should be in it, Monday, for a Monday gospelis the best, the gospel of the Holy Ghost." SoI got the cart after and put her in it, and she lyingdown, and we had to rest and to take out the horseat Lenane, and we got to Craughwell for thenight. And the man of the house where we gotlodging for the night said the priest that wasdoing cures now was Father Blake and he showedus the way to Esker. And when we got therehe was in the chapel, and my daughter wasbrought in and laid on a form, and I went out andwaited with the cart, and within half an hour thechapel door opened, and my daughter walked outthat was carried in. And she got up on the cartherself. It was a gospel had been read over her.And I said, "I wish you had asked a gospel to[Pg 285]bring with you home." And after that we saw apriest on the other side of a dry stone wall, and helearning three children. And she asked a gospelof him, and he said, "What you had today willdo you, and I haven't one made up at this time."So she came home well. She went another timethere, when she had something and asked for agospel, and Father Blake said, "We're out ofdoing it now, but as you were with us before, I'lldo it for you." And she wanted to give him£1 but he said, "If I took it I would do nothingfor you." So she said, "I'll give it to the otherman," and so she did.
I often saw Father Callaghan in Esker and thepeople brought to him in carts. Many cures hedid, but he was prevented often. And I knewanother priest did many cures, but he was carriedaway himself after, to a lunatic asylum. Andwhen he came back, he would do no more.
There was a little chap had but seven years,and he was doing no good, but whistling andtwirling, and the father went to Father Callaghan,that was just after coming out of the gaol whenhe got there, for doing cures; it is a gaol of theirown they had. The man asked him to do acure on his son, and Father Callaghan said, "Iwouldn't like him to be brought here, but I will gosome day to your house; I will go with my dogand my hound as if fowling, and I will bring no[Pg 286]sign of a car or a carriage at all." So he came oneday to the house and knocked at the door. Andwhen he came in he said to the father, "Go outand bring me in a bundle of sally rods that willbe as thin as rushes, and divide them into sixsmall parts," he said, "and twist every one of thesix parts together." And when that was done,he took the little bundle of rods, and he beat thechild on the head with them one after anothertill they were in flitters and the child roaring.Then he laid the child in the father's arms, andno sooner there than it fell asleep, and FatherCallaghan said to the father, "What you havenow is your own, but it wasn't your own thatwas in it before."
There used to be swarms of people going toEsker, and Father Callaghan would say in Irish,"Let the people in the Sheogue stand at one side,"and he would go over and read over them what hehad to read.
There was an uncle of my own was working atBallycluan the time the Quakers were making aplace there, and it was the habit when the summerwas hot to put the beds out into the barn. Andone night he was sleeping in the barn, and somethingcame and lay on him in the bed; he could notsee what it was, but it was about the size of thefoal of a horse. And the next night it cameagain and the next, and lay on him, and he put out[Pg 287]his left hand to push it from him, and it wentfrom him quite quiet, but if it did, when he rosein the morning, he was not able to stretch out hishand, and he was a long time like that and thenhis father brought him to the friars at Esker,and within twelve minutes one of them had himcured, reading over him, but I'm not sure was itFather Blake or Father Callaghan.
But it was not long after that till he fell off hiscart as if he was knocked off it, and broke his leg.The coppinger had his leg cured, but he did notlive long, for the third thing happened was, hethrew up his heart's blood and died.
For if you are cured of one thing that comeson you like that, another thing will come on youin its place, or if not on you, on some other person,maybe some one in your own family. It is veryoften I noticed that to happen.
The priests in old times used to have the powerto cure strokes and madness and the like, but thePope and the Bishops have that stopped; theysaid that the people will get out of witchcraft littleby little.
Priests can do cures if they will, and it's notout of the Gospel they do them, but out of a bookspecially for the purpose, so I believe. But somethingfalls on them or on the things belonging tothem, if they do it too often.
But Father Keeley for certain did cures. It washe cured Mike Madden's neck, when everyone elsehad failed—so they had—though Mike has neverconfessed to it.
The priests can do cures surely, and surely theycan put harm on you. But they wouldn't dothat unless they'd be sure a man would deserveit. One time at that house you see up therebeyond, Roche's, there was a wedding and therewas some fighting came out of it, and bad blood.And Father Boyle was priest at that time, and hewas vexed and he said he'd come and have stationsat the house, and they should all be reconciled.
So he came on the day he appointed and thehouse was settled like a chapel, and some of thepeople there was bad blood between came, butnot all of them, and Roche himself was not there.And when the stations were over Father Boylegot his book, and he read the names of those hehad told to be there, and they answered, like aschoolmaster would call out the names of hisscholars. And when Roche's name was read andhe not there to answer, with the dint of madnessFather Boyle quenched the candles on the altar,and he said this house and all that belong to it willgo away to nothing, like the froth that's goingdown the river.
And if you look at the house now you'll see theway it is, not a stable or an outhouse left standing,and not one of the whole family left in it but[Pg 289]Roche, and he paralysed. So they can do bothharm and good.
There was a man out in the mountains used todo cures, and one day on a little road the priestmet him, and stopped his car and began to abusehim for the cures he was doing.
And then the priest went on, and when he hadgone a bit of the road his horse fell down. Andhe came back and called to the man and said,"Come help me now, for this is your doing, tomake the horse fall." And the man said, "It'snone of my doing, but it's the doing of my master,for he was vexed with the way you spoke. But goback now and you'll find the horse as he wasbefore." So he went back and the horse had gotup and was standing, and nothing wrong withhim at all. And the priest said no more againsthim from that day.
My son is lame this long time; a fine youngman he was, about seventeen years—and a paincame in his knee all of a moment. I tried doctorswith him and I brought him to the friars in Loughrea,and one of them read a gospel over him, andthe pain went after that, but the knee grew out tobe twisted like. The friar said it was surely hehad been overheated. A little old maneen he was,very ancient. I knew well it was the drochuilthat did it; there by the side of the road he wassitting when he got the frost.
There was a needlewoman used to be sewinglate on a Saturday night, and sometimes if therewas a button or a thread wanting she would putit in, even if it was Sunday morning; and she livedin Loughrea that is near your own home. Andone day she went to the loch to get a can of water,and it was in her hand. And in a minute a blastof wind came that rose all the dust and the strawsand knocked herself. And more than that, hermouth was twisted around to her poll.
There were some people saw her, and theybrought her home, and within a week her motherbrought her to the priest. And when he sawher he said, "You are the best mother everthere was, for if you had left her nine days withoutbringing her to me, all I could do would nothave taken off her what is on her." He askedthen up to what time did she work on the Saturdaynight, and she said up to one or two o'clock,and sometimes on a Sunday morning. So hetook off what was on her, and bade her do thatno more, and she got well, but to the last therewas a sort of a twisted turn in her mouth.
That woman now I am telling you of was anaunt of my own.
Father Nolan has a kind heart, and he'd docures. But it's hard to get them, unless it wouldbe for some they had a great interest in. ButFather McConaghy is so high in himself, hewouldn't do anything of that sort. When Johnny[Pg 291]Dunne was bad, two years ago, and all but givenover, he begged and prayed Father McConaghyto do it for him. And he refused and said, "Youmust commit yourself to the mercy of AlmightyGod," and Johnny Dunne, the poor man, said,"It's a hard thing for a man that has a housefull of children to be left to the mercy of AlmightyGod."
But there's some that can help. My father toldme long ago that my sister was lying sick for along time, and one night a beggarman came tothe door and asked for shelter. And he said, "Ican't give you shelter, with my daughter lyingsick in the room." "Let me in, it's best for you,"says he. And in the morning he went away, andthe sick girl rose up, as well as ever she was before.
Father Flaherty, when he was a curate, couldopen the eyes that were all but closed in death,but he wouldn't have such things spoken of now.Losses they may have, but that's not all. Whateverevil thing they raise, they may not havestrength after to put it down again, and so theymay be lost themselves in the end.
Surely they can do cures, and they can tellsometimes the hour you'd go. There was a girlI knew was sick, and when the priest came andsaw her, he said, "Between the two Massestomorrow she'll be gone," and so she was. And[Pg 292]those that saw her after, said that it was theface of her mother that died before that was onthe bed, and that it was her mother had takenher to where she was.
And Mike Barrett surely saw a man brought ina cart to Father Curley's house when he lived inCloon, and carried upstairs to him, and he walkeddown out of the house again, sound and well.But they must lose something when they do cures—eithertheir health or something else, thoughmany say no one did so many cures as FatherFitzgerald when he was a curate. Father Airlieone time was called in to Glover's house where hewas lying sick, and did a cure on him. And he hada cow at the time that was in calf. And soon aftersome man said to him "The cow will be apt soonto calve," though it wasn't very near the time.And Father Airlie said "She'll never live to dothat." And sure enough in a couple of days aftershe was dead.
Some fifteen years ago I was in bad health andcould not work, and Lady Gregory broughtme from cottage to cottage while she began to collectthe stories in this book, and presently when Iwas at work again she went on with her collectionalone till it grew to be, so far as I know, the mostconsiderable book of its kind. Except that I hadheard some story of "The Battle of the Friends"at Aran and had divined that it might be thelegendary common accompaniment of death, shewas not guided by any theory of mine, but recordedwhat came, writing it out at each day'send and in the country dialect. It was at this timemainly she got the knowledge of words that makesher little comedies of country life so beautiful andso amusing. As that ancient system of beliefunfolded before us, with unforeseen probabilitiesand plausibilities, it was as though we had begunto live in a dream, and one day Lady Gregory saidto me when we had passed an old man in the wood:"That old man may know the secret of the ages."
I had noticed many analogies in modern spiritismand began a more careful comparison, going agood deal to séances for the first time and readingall writers of any reputation I could find in Englishor French. I found much that was moving, when Ihad climbed to the top story of some house in Sohoor Holloway, and, having paid my shilling, awaited,among servant girls, the wisdom of some fat oldmedium. That is an absorbing drama, though ifmy readers begin to seek it they will spoil it, forits gravity and simplicity depends on all, or all butall, believing that their dead are near.
I did not go there for evidence of the kind theSociety for Psychical Research would value, anymore than I would seek it in Galway or in Aran.I was comparing one form of belief with another,and like Paracelsus, who claimed to have collectedhis knowledge from midwife and hangman, I wasdiscovering a philosophy. Certain things hadhappened to me when alone in my own roomwhich had convinced me that there are spiritualintelligences which can warn us and advise us,and, as Anatole France has said, if one believesthat the Devil can walk the streets of Lisbon, it isnot difficult to believe that he can reach his armover the river and light Don Juan's cigarette.And yet I do not think I have been easily convinced,for I know we make a false beauty by adenial of ugliness and that if we deny the causesof doubt we make a false faith, and that we mustexcite the whole being into activity if we would[Pg 297]offer to God what is, it may be, the one thinggermane to the matter, a consenting of all ourfaculties. Not but that I doubt at times, with theanimal doubt of the Middle Ages that I havefound even in pious countrywomen when theyhave seen some life come to an end like the stoppingof a clock, or that all the perceptions of thesoul, or the weightiest intellectual deductions,are not at whiles but a feather in the dailyshow.
I pieced together stray thoughts written outafter questioning the familiar of a trance mediumor automatic writer, by Allen Cardec, or by someAmerican, or by myself, or arranged the fragmentsinto some pattern, till I believed myself the discovererof a vast generalization. I lived in excitement,amused to make Holloway interpret Aran,and constantly comparing my discoveries withwhat I have learned of mediæval tradition amongfellow students, with the reveries of a Neo-platonist,of a seventeenth-century Platonist, ofParacelsus or a Japanese poet. Then one day Iopened The Spiritual Diary of Swedenborg, whichI had not taken down for twenty years, and foundall there, even certain thoughts I had not set onpaper because they had seemed fantastic fromthe lack of some traditional foundation. It wasstrange I should have forgotten so completely awriter I had read with some care before thefascination of Blake and Boehme had led meaway.
It was indeed Swedenborg who affirmed for themodern world, as against the abstract reasoningof the learned, the doctrine and practice of thedesolate places, of shepherds and of midwives, anddiscovered a world of spirits where there was ascenery like that of earth, human forms, grotesqueor beautiful, senses that knew pleasure and pain,marriage and war, all that could be painted uponcanvas, or put into stories to make one's hairstand up. He had mastered the science of histime, he had written innumerable scientific worksin Latin, had been the first to formulate the nebularhypothesis and wrote a cold abstract style, theresult it may be of preoccupation with stones andmetals, for he had been assessor of mines to theSwedish Government, and of continual compositionin a dead language.
In his fifty-eighth year he was sitting in an innin London, where he had gone about the publicationof a book, when a spirit appeared before himwho was, he believed, Christ himself, and toldhim that henceforth he could commune withspirits and angels. From that moment he wasa mysterious man describing distant events asif they were before his eyes, and knowing deadmen's secrets, if we are to accept testimony thatseemed convincing to Emmanuel Kant. Thesailors who carried him upon his many voyagesspoke of the charming of the waves and of favouring[Pg 299]winds that brought them sooner than everbefore to their journey's end, and an ambassadordescribed how a queen, he himself looking on,fainted when Swedenborg whispered in her earsome secret known only to her and to her deadbrother. And all this happened to a man withoutegotism, without drama, without a sense of thepicturesque, and who wrote a dry language, lackingfire and emotion, and who to William Blakeseemed but an arranger and putter away of theold Church, a Samson shorn by the churches, anauthor not of a book, but of an index. He consideredheaven and hell and God, the angels, thewhole destiny of man, as if he were sitting before alarge table in a Government office putting littlepieces of mineral ore into small square boxes for anassistant to pack away in drawers.
All angels were once men, he says, and it istherefore men who have entered into what he callsthe Celestial State and become angels, who attendus immediately after death, and communicate to ustheir thoughts, not by speaking, but by lookingus in the face as they sit beside the head of ourbody. When they find their thoughts are communicatedthey know the time has come toseparate the spiritual from the physical body. If aman begins to feel that he can endure them nolonger, as he doubtless will, for in their presencehe can think and feel but sees nothing, lesserangels who belong to truth more than to love taketheir place and he is in the light again, but in all[Pg 300]likelihood these angels also will be too high andhe will slip from state to state until he finds himselfafter a few days "with those who are in accordwith his life in the world; with them he finds hislife, and, wonderful to relate, he then leads a lifesimilar to that he led in the world." This firststate of shifting and readjustment seems to correspondwith a state of sleep more modern seersdiscover to follow upon death. It is characteristicof his whole religious system, the slow driftingof like to like. Then follows a period which maylast but a short time or many years, while thesoul lives a life so like that of the world that itmay not even believe that it has died, for "whenwhat is spiritual touches and sees what is spiritualthe effect is the same as when what is naturaltouches what is natural." It is the other world ofthe early races, of those whose dead are in therath or the faery hill, of all who see no place ofreward and punishment but a continuance of thislife, with cattle and sheep, markets and war. Hedescribes what he has seen, and only partly explainsit, for, unlike science which is founded uponpast experience, his work, by the very nature ofhis gift, looks for the clearing away of obscuritiesto unrecorded experience. He is revealing somethingand that which is revealed, so long as itremains modest and simple, has the same rightwith the child in the cradle to put off to the futurethe testimony of its worth. This earth-resemblinglife is the creation of the image-making power of[Pg 301]the mind, plucked naked from the body, and mainlyof the images in the memory. All our work has gonewith us, the books we have written can be openedand read or put away for later use, even thoughtheir print and paper have been sold to the buttermen;and reading his description one notices, adiscovery one had thought peculiar to the lastgeneration, that the "most minute particularswhich enter the memory remain there and arenever obliterated," and there as here we do notalways know all that is in our memory, but atneed angelic spirits who act upon us there ashere, widening and deepening the consciousnessat will, can draw forth all the past, and makeus live again all our transgressions and see ourvictims "as if they were present, together withthe place, words, and motives"; and that suddenly,"as when a scene bursts upon the sight"and yet continues "for hours together," andlike the transgressions, all the pleasure and painof sensible life awaken again and again, all ourpassionate events rush up about us and not asseeming imagination, for imagination is now theworld. And yet another impulse comes and goes,flitting through all, a preparation for the spiritualabyss, for out of the celestial world, immediatelybeyond the world of form, fall certain seeds as itwere that exfoliate through us into forms, elaboratescenes, buildings, alterations of form that arerelated by "correspondence" or "signature" tocelestial incomprehensible realities. Meanwhile[Pg 302]those who have loved or fought see one anotherin the unfolding of a dream, believing it may bethat they wound one another or kill one another,severing arms or hands, or that their lips arejoined in a kiss, and the countryman has needbut of Swedenborg's keen ears and eagle sightto hear a noise of swords in the empty valley,or to meet the old master hunting with all hishounds upon the stroke of midnight among themoonlit fields. But gradually we begin to changeand possess only those memories we have relatedto our emotion or our thought; all thatwas accidental or habitual dies away and webegin an active present life, for apart from thatcalling up of the past we are not punished orrewarded for our actions when in the world butonly for what we do when out of it. Up till nowwe have disguised our real selves and those whohave lived well for fear or favour have walked withholy men and women, and the wise man and thedunce have been associated in common learning,but now the ruling love has begun to remake circumstanceand our body.
Swedenborg had spoken with shades that hadbeen learned Latinists, or notable Hebrew scholars,and found, because they had done everythingfrom the memory and nothing from thought andemotion, they had become but simple men. Wehave already met our friends, but if we were tomeet them now for the first time we should notrecognize them, for all has been kneaded up anew,[Pg 303]arrayed in order and made one piece. "Everyman has many loves, but still they all have referenceto his ruling love and make one with it ortogether compose it," and our surrender to thatlove, as to supreme good, is no new thought, forVilliers de l'Isle Adam quotes Thomas Aquinasas having said, "Eternity is the possession of one'sself, as in a single moment." During the fusingand rending man flits, as it were, from one flockof the dead to another, seeking always those whoare like himself, for as he puts off disguise hebecomes unable to endure what is unrelated to hislove, even becoming insane among things thatare too fine for him.
So heaven and hell are built always anew andin hell or heaven all do what they please and all aresurrounded by scenes and circumstance which arethe expression of their natures and the creationof their thought. Swedenborg because he belongsto an eighteenth century not yet touched by theromantic revival feels horror amid rocky uninhabitedplaces, and so believes that the evil are insuch places while the good are amid smooth grassand garden walks and the clear sunlight of ClaudeLorraine. He describes all in matter-of-fact words,his meeting with this or that dead man, and theplace where he found him, and yet we are not tounderstand him literally, for space as we know ithas come to an end and a difference of state hasbegun to take its place, and wherever a spirit'sthought is, the spirit cannot help but be. Nor[Pg 304]should we think of spirit as divided from spirit,as men are from each other, for they share eachother's thoughts and life, and those whom he hascalled celestial angels, while themselves mediumsto those above, commune with men and lowerspirits, through orders of mediatorial spirits, notby a conveyance of messages, but as though ahand were thrust within a hundred gloves,[1] oneglove outside another, and so there is a continualinflux from God to man. It flows to us throughthe evil angels as through the good, for the darkfire is the perversion of God's life and the evilangels have their office in the equilibrium that isour freedom, in the building of that fabulous bridgemade out of the edge of a sword.
To the eyes of those that are in the high heaven"all things laugh, sport, and live," and not merelybecause they are beautiful things but because theyarouse by a minute correspondence of form andemotion the heart's activity, and being founded,as it were, in this changing heart, all things continuallychange and shimmer. The garments ofall befit minutely their affections, those that havemost wisdom and most love being the most noblygarmented, in ascending order from shimmeringwhite, through garments of many colours andgarments that are like flame, to the angels of thehighest heaven that are naked.
In the west of Ireland the country people saythat after death every man grows upward ordownward to the likeness of thirty years, perhapsbecause at that age Christ began his ministry,and stays always in that likeness; and these angelsmove always towards "the springtime of theirlife" and grow more and more beautiful, "themore thousand years they live," and women whohave died infirm with age, and yet lived in faithand charity, and true love towards husband orlover, come "after a succession of years" to anadolescence that was not in Helen's Mirror, "forto grow old in heaven is to grow young."
There went on about Swedenborg an intermittent"Battle of the Friends" and on certainoccasions had not the good fought upon his side,the evil troop, by some carriage accident or thelike, would have caused his death, for all associationsof good spirits have an answeringmob, whose members grow more hateful to lookon through the centuries. "Their faces in generalare horrible, and empty of life like corpses, thoseof some are black, of some fiery like torches, ofsome hideous with pimples, boils, and ulcers;with many no face appears, but in its place asomething hairy or bony, and in some one canbut see the teeth." And yet among themselvesthey are seeming men and but show their rightappearance when the light of heaven, which of allthings they most dread, beats upon them; andseem to live in a malignant gaiety, and they burn[Pg 306]always in a fire that is God's love and wisdom,changed into their own hunger and misbelief.
In Lady Gregory's stories there is a man whoheard the newly dropped lambs of faery crying inNovember, and much evidence to show a topsy-turvydomof seasons, our spring being theirautumn, our winter their summer, and MaryBattle, my Uncle George Pollexfen's old servant,was accustomed to say that no dream had a truemeaning after the rise of the sap; and LadyGregory learned somewhere on Sleive Ochta that ifone told one's dreams to the trees fasting the treeswould wither. Swedenborg saw some like oppositionof the worlds, for what hides the spirits fromour sight and touch, as he explains, is that theirlight and heat are darkness and cold to us and ourlight and heat darkness and cold to them, butthey can see the world through our eyes and somake our light their light. He seems however towarn us against a movement whose philosophy heannounced or created, when he tells us to seek noconscious intercourse with any that fall short of thecelestial rank. At ordinary times they do not seeus or know that we are near, but when we speakto them we are in danger of their deceits. "Theyhave a passion for inventing," and do not alwaysknow that they invent. "It has been shown memany times that the spirits speaking with me did[Pg 307]not know but that they were the men and womenI was thinking of; neither did other spirits knowthe contrary. Thus yesterday and today oneknown of me in life was personated. The personationwas so like him in all respects, so far as knownto me, that nothing could be more like. For thereare genera and species of spirits of similar faculty(? as the dead whom we seek), and when likethings are called up in the memory of men and soare represented to them they think they are thesame persons. At other times they enter into thefantasy of other spirits and think that they arethem, and sometimes they will even believe themselvesto be the Holy Spirit," and as they identifythemselves with a man's affection or enthusiasmthey may drive him to ruin, and even an angel willjoin himself so completely to a man that hescarcely knows "that he does not know of himselfwhat the man knows," and when they speak with aman they can but speak in that man's mothertongue, and this they can do without takingthought, for "it is almost as when a man is speakingand thinks nothing about his words." Yetwhen they leave the man "they are in their ownangelical or spiritual language and know nothingof the language of the man." They are not evenpermitted to talk to a man from their own memoryfor did they do so the man would not know "butthat the things he would then think were his whenyet they would belong to the spirit," and it isthese sudden memories occurring sometimes by[Pg 308]accident, and without God's permission thatgave the Greeks the idea they had lived before.They have bodies as plastic as their minds thatflow so readily into the mould of ours and heremembers having seen the face of a spirit changecontinuously and yet keep always a certain genericlikeness. It had but run through the features ofthe individual ghosts of the fleet it belonged to, ofthose bound into the one mediatorial communion.
He speaks too, again and again, of seeing palacesand mountain ranges and all manner of scenerybuilt up in a moment, and even believes in imponderabletroops of magicians that build the likeout of some deceit or in malicious sport.
There is in Swedenborg's manner of expressiona seeming superficiality. We follow an easynarrative, sometimes incredulous, but always, aswe think, understanding, for his moral conceptionsare simple, his technical terms continually repeated,and for the most part we need but turn for his"correspondence," his symbolism as we would say,to the index of his Arcana Celestia. Presently,however, we discover that he treads upon thissurface by an achievement of power almost as fullof astonishment as if he should walk upon watercharmed to stillness by some halcyon; while hisdisciple and antagonist Blake is like a man swimmingin a tumbling sea, surface giving way to surface[Pg 309]and deep showing under broken deep. A latermystic has said of Swedenborg that he but halffelt, half saw, half tasted the kingdom of heaven,and his abstraction, his dryness, his habit ofseeing but one element in everything, his lack ofmoral speculation have made him the founder of achurch, while William Blake, who grows alwaysmore exciting with every year of life, grows alsomore obscure. An impulse towards what isdefinite and sensuous, and an indifference towardsthe abstract and the general, are the lineaments,as I understand the world, of all that comes notfrom the learned, but out of common antiquity, outof the "folk" as we say, and in certain languages,Irish for instance—and these languages are allpoetry—it is not possible to speak an abstractthought. This impulse went out of Swedenborgwhen he turned from vision. It was inseparablefrom this primitive faculty, but was not a partof his daily bread, whereas Blake carried it to apassion and made it the foundation of his thought.Blake was put into a rage by all painting wheredetail is generalized away, and complained thatEnglishmen after the French Revolution becameas like one another as the dots and lozenges in themechanical engraving of his time, and he hatedhistories that gave us reasoning and deduction inplace of the events, and St. Paul's Cathedralbecause it came from a mathematical mind, andtold Crabb Robinson that he preferred to anyothers a happy, thoughtless person. Unlike Swedenborg[Pg 310]he believed that the antiquities of allpeoples were as sacred as those of the Jews, and sorejecting authority and claiming that the samelaw for the lion and the ox was oppression, he couldbelieve "all that lives is holy," and say that a manif he but cultivated the power of vision would seethe truth in a way suited "to his imaginativeenergy," and with only so much resemblance tothe way it showed in for other men, as thereis between different human forms. Born whenSwedenborg was a new excitement, growing upwith a Swedenborgian brother, who annoyed him"with bread and cheese advice," and having, itmay be, for nearest friend the SwedenborgianFlaxman with whom he would presently quarrel, heanswered the just translated Heaven and Hellwith the paradoxical violence of The Marriageof Heaven and Hell. Swedenborg was but "thelinen clothes folded up" or the angel sitting by thetomb, after Christ, the human imagination, hadarisen. His own memory being full of images frompainting and from poetry he discovered moreprofound "correspondences," yet always in hisboys and girls walking or dancing on smooth grassand in golden light, as in pastoral scenes cut uponwood or copper by his disciples Palmer and Calvertone notices the peaceful Swedenborgian heaven. Wecome there, however, by no obedience but by theenergy that "is eternal delight," for "the treasuresof heaven are not negations of passion but realitiesof intellect from which the passions emanate[Pg 311]uncurbed in their eternal glory." He would haveus talk no more "of the good man and the bad,"but only of "the wise man and the foolish," andhe cries, "Go put off holiness and put on intellect."
Higher than all souls that seem to theology tohave found a final state, above good and evil,neither accused, nor yet accusing, live those, whohave come to freedom, their senses sharpened byeternity, piping or dancing or "like the gay fisheson the wave when the moon sucks up the dew."Merlin, who in the verses of Chrétien de Troyeswas laid in the one tomb with dead lovers, is verynear and the saints are far away. Believing toothat crucifixion and resurrection were the soul'sdiary and no mere historical events, which hadbeen transacted in vain should a man come againfrom the womb and forget his salvation, he couldcleave to the heroic doctrine the angel in thecrystal made Sir Thomas Kelly renounce andhave a "vague memory" of having been "withChrist and Socrates"; and stirred as deeply by hilland tree as by human beauty, he saw all Merlin'speople, spirits "of vegetable nature" and fairieswhom we "call accident and chance." He madepossible a religious life to those who had seen thepainters and poets of the romantic movementsucceed to theology, but the shepherd and themidwife had they known him would have celebratedhim in stories, and turned away from histhought, understanding that he was upon anerrand to their masters. Like Swedenborg he[Pg 312]believed that heaven came from "an improvementof sensual enjoyment," for sight and hearing, tasteand touch grow with the angelic years, but unlikehim he could convey to others "enlarged andnumerous senses," and the mass of men knowinstinctively they are safer with an abstract andan index.
It was, I believe, the Frenchman Allen Cardecand an American shoemaker's clerk called JacksonDavis, who first adapted to the séance room thephilosophy of Swedenborg. I find Davis whosestyle is vague, voluble, and pretentious, almostunreadable, and yet his books have gone to manyeditions and are full of stories that had beencharming or exciting had he lived in Connaught orany place else, where the general mass of thepeople has an imaginative tongue. His motherwas learned in country superstition, and hadcalled in a knowledgeable man when she believeda neighbour had bewitched a cow, but it wasnot till his fifteenth year that he discovered hisfaculty, when his native village, Poughkeepsie,was visited by a travelling mesmerist. He wasfascinated by the new marvel, and mesmerizedby a neighbour he became clairvoyant, describingthe diseases of those present and reading watcheshe could not see with his eyes. One night theneighbour failed to awake him completely from[Pg 313]the trance and he stumbled out into the streetand went to his bed ill and stupefied. In the middleof the night he heard a voice telling him to get upand dress himself and follow. He wandered formiles, now wondering at what seemed the unusualbrightness of the stars and once passing a visionaryshepherd and his flock of sheep, and then againstumbling in cold and darkness. He crossed thefrozen Hudson and became unconscious. Heawoke in a mountain valley to see once more thevisionary shepherd and his flock, and a very little,handsome, old man who showed him a scroll andtold him to write his name upon it.
A little later he passed, as he believed, from thismesmeric condition and found that he was amongthe Catskill Mountains and more than forty milesfrom home. Having crossed the Hudson again hefelt the trance coming upon him and began to run.He ran, as he thought, many miles and as he ranbecame unconscious. When he awoke he wassitting upon a gravestone in a graveyard surroundedby a wood and a high wall. Many of thegravestones were old and broken. After muchconversation with two stately phantoms, he wentstumbling on his way. Presently he foundhimself at home again. It was evening and themesmerist was questioning him as to where hehad been since they lost him the night before. Hewas very hungry and had a vague memory of hisreturn, of country roads passing before his eyesin brief moments of wakefulness. He now seemed[Pg 314]to know that one of the phantoms with whom hehad spoken in the graveyard was the physicianGalen, and the other, Swedenborg.
From that hour the two phantoms came to himagain and again, the one advising him in thediagnosis of disease, and the other in philosophy.He quoted a passage from Swedenborg, and itseemed impossible that any copy of the newlytranslated book that contained it could have comeinto his hands, for a Swedenborgian minister inNew York traced every copy which had reachedAmerica.
Swedenborg himself had gone upon more thanone somnambulistic journey, and they occur anumber of times in Lady Gregory's stories, onewoman saying that when she was among thefaeries she was often glad to eat the food fromthe pigs' troughs.
Once in childhood, Davis, while hurrying homethrough a wood, heard footsteps behind him andbegan to run, but the footsteps, though theydid not seem to come more quickly and werestill the regular pace of a man walking, camenearer. Presently he saw an old, white-hairedman beside him who said: "You cannot run awayfrom life," and asked him where he was going."I am going home," he said, and the phantomanswered, "I also am going home," and then vanished.Twice in later childhood, and a third timewhen he had grown to be a young man, he was overtakenby the same phantom and the same words[Pg 315]were spoken, but the last time he asked why it hadvanished so suddenly. It said that it had not,but that he had supposed that "changes of state"in himself were "appearance and disappearance."It then touched him with one finger upon the sideof his head, and the place where he was touchedremained ever after without feeling, like thoseplaces always searched for at the witches' trials.One remembers "the touch" and "the stroke" inthe Irish stories.
Allen Cardec, whose books are much morereadable than those of Davis, had himself nomediumistic gifts. He gathered the opinions, ashe believed, of spirits speaking through a greatnumber of automatists and trance speakers, andall the essential thought of Swedenborg remains,but like Davis, these spirits do not believe in aneternal Hell, and like Blake they describe unhumanraces, powers of the elements, and declare thatthe soul is no creature of the womb, having livedmany lives upon the earth. The sorrow of death,they tell us again and again, is not so bitter as thesorrow of birth, and had our ears the subtlety wecould listen amid the joy of lovers and the pleasurethat comes with sleep to the wailing of the spiritbetrayed into a cradle. Who was it that wrote:"O Pythagoras, so good, so wise, so eloquent,upon my last voyage, I taught thee, a soft lad, tosplice a rope"?
This belief, common among continental spiritists,is denied by those of England and America,and if one question the voices at a séance theytake sides according to the medium's nationality.I have even heard what professed to be the shadeof an old English naval officer denying it with afine phrase: "I did not leave my oars crossed;I left them side by side."
Much as a hashish eater will discover in thefolds of a curtain a figure beautifully drawn andfull of delicate detail all built up out of shadowsthat show to other eyes, or later to his own, adifferent form or none, Swedenborg discoveredin the Bible the personal symbolism of his vision.If the Bible was upon his side, as it seemed, hehad no need of other evidence, but had he livedwhen modern criticism had lessened its authority,even had he been compelled to say that the primitivebeliefs of all peoples were as sacred, he couldbut have run to his own gift for evidence. Hemight even have held of some importance hispowers of discovering the personal secrets of thedead and set up as medium. Yet it is more likelyhe had refused, for the medium has his gift fromno heightening of all the emotions and intellectualfaculties till they seem as it were to take fire, butcommonly because they are altogether or in partextinguished while another mind controls his body.[Pg 317]He is greatly subject to trance and awakes toremember nothing, whereas the mystic and thesaint plead unbroken consciousness. Indeed theauthor of Sidonia the Sorceress, a really learnedauthority, considered this lack of memory a certainsign of possession by the devil, though this istoo absolute. Only yesterday, while walking in afield, I made up a good sentence with an emotionof triumph, and half a minute after could noteven remember what it was about, and severalminutes had gone by before I as suddenly found it.For the most part, though not always, it is thisunconscious condition of mediumship, a dangerouscondition it may be, that seems to makepossible "physical phenomena" and that overshadowingof the memory by some spirit memory,which Swedenborg thought an accident and unlawful.
In describing and explaining this mediumshipand so making intelligible the stories of Aranand Galway I shall say very seldom, "it is said,"or "Mr. So-and-So reports," or "it is claimed bythe best authors." I shall write as if what Idescribe were everywhere established, everywhereaccepted, and I had only to remind my reader ofwhat he already knows. Even if incredulous hewill give me his fancy for certain minutes, for atthe worst I can show him a gorgon or chimerathat has never lacked gazers, alleging nothing(and I do not write out of a little knowledge) thatis not among the sober beliefs of many men, or[Pg 318]obvious inference from those beliefs, and if hewants more—well, he will find it in the bestauthors.[2]
All spirits for some time after death, and the"earth-bound," as they are called, the larvæ, asBeaumont, the seventeenth-century Platonist, preferredto call them, those who cannot become disentangledfrom old habits and desires, for manyyears, it may be for centuries, keep the shape oftheir earthly bodies and carry on their old activities,wooing or quarrelling, or totting figures ona table, in a round of dull duties or passionateevents. Today while the great battle in NorthernFrance is still undecided, should I climbto the top of that old house in Soho where amedium is sitting among servant girls, someone would, it may be, ask for news of GordonHighlander or Munster Fusilier, and the fat oldwoman would tell in Cockney language how thedead do not yet know they are dead, but stumbleon amid visionary smoke and noise, and how[Pg 319]angelic spirits seek to awaken them but still invain.
Those who have attained to nobler form, whenthey appear in the séance room, create temporarybodies, commonly like to those they wore whenliving, through some unconscious constraint ofmemory, or deliberately, that they may be recognized.Davis, in his literal way, said the firstsixty feet of the atmosphere was a reflector andthat in almost every case it was mere images wespoke with in the séance room, the spirit itselfbeing far away. The images are made of a substancedrawn from the medium who loses weight,and in a less degree from all present, and for thislight must be extinguished or dimmed or shadedwith red as in a photographer's room. Theimage will begin outside the medium's body as aluminous cloud, or in a sort of luminous mudforced from the body, out of the mouth it may be,from the side or from the lower parts of the body.[3]One may see a vague cloud condense and diminishinto a head or arm or a whole figure of a man, orto some animal shape.
I remember a story told me by a friend's steward[Pg 320]in Galway of the faeries playing at hurley in afield and going in and out of the bodies of twomen who stood at either goal. Out of the mediumwill come perhaps a cripple or a man bent withyears and sometimes the apparition will explainthat, but for some family portrait, or for what itlit on while rumaging in our memories, it had notremembered its customary clothes or features, orcough or limp or crutch. Sometimes, indeed, thereis a strange regularity of feature and we suspectthe presence of an image that may never have lived,an artificial beauty that may have shown itself inthe Greek mysteries. Has some cast in the Vatican,or at Bloomsbury been the model? Or theremay float before our eyes a mask as strange andpowerful as the lineaments of the Servian's FrowningMan or of Rodin's Man with the Broken Nose.And once a rumour ran among the séancerooms to the bewilderment of simple believers,that a heavy middle-aged man who took snuff,and wore the costume of a past time, had appearedwhile a French medium was in his trance,and somebody had recognized the Tartuffe of theComédie Française. There will be few completeforms, for the dead are economical, and a head,or just enough of the body for recognition, mayshow itself above hanging folds of drapery thatdo not seem to cover solid limbs, or a hand or footis lacking, or it may be that some Revenant hasseized the half-made image of another, and a younggirl's arm will be thrust from the withered body of[Pg 321]an old man. Nor is every form a breathing andpulsing thing, for some may have a distributionof light and shade not that of the séance room,flat pictures whose eyes gleam and move; andsometimes material objects are thrown together(drifted in from some neighbour's wardrobe, itmay be, and drifted thither again) and an appearancekneaded up out of these and that luminousmud or vapour almost as vivid as are thosepictures of Antonio Mancini which have fragmentsof his paint tubes embedded for the highlights into the heavy masses of the paint. Sometimesthere are animals, bears frequently for someunknown reason, but most often birds and dogs.If an image speak it will seldom seem very able oralert, for they come for recognition only, and theirminds are strained and fragmentary; and shouldthe dogs bark, a man who knows the language ofour dogs may not be able to say if they are hungryor afraid or glad to meet their master again. Allmay seem histrionic or a hollow show. We arethe spectators of a phantasmagoria that affectsthe photographic plate or leaves its moulded imagein a preparation of paraffin. We have come tounderstand why the Platonists of the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, and visionaries likeBoehme and Paracelsus confused imaginationwith magic, and why Boehme will have it that it"creates and substantiates as it goes."
Most commonly, however, especially of recentyears, no form will show itself, or but vaguely and[Pg 322]faintly and in no way ponderable, and instead therewill be voices flitting here and there in darkness,or in the half-light, or it will be the mediumhimself fallen into trance who will speak, orwithout a trance write from a knowledge andintelligence not his own. Glanvil, the seventeenth-centuryPlatonist, said that the higher spirits werethose least capable of showing material effects,and it seems plain from certain Polish experimentsthat the intelligence of the communicators increaseswith their economy of substance andenergy. Often now among these faint effects onewill seem to speak with the very dead. They willspeak or write some tongue that the medium doesnot know and give correctly their forgotten names,or describe events one only verifies after weeks oflabour. Here and there amongst them one discoversa wise and benevolent mind that knows alittle of the future and can give good advice.They have made, one imagines, from some finersubstance than a phosphorescent mud, or cobwebvapour that we can see or handle, imagesnot wholly different from themselves, figures in agalanty show not too strained or too extravagantto speak their very thought.
Yet we never long escape the phantasmagorianor can long forget that we are among the shape-changers.Sometimes our own minds shape thatmysterious substance, which may be life itself,according to desire or constrained by memory, andthe dead no longer remembering their own names[Pg 323]become the characters in the drama we ourselveshave invented. John King, who has delightedmelodramatic minds for hundreds of séanceswith his career on earth as Henry Morgan thebuccaneer, will tell more scientific visitors that heis merely a force, while some phantom long accustomedto a decent name, questioned by somepious Catholic, will admit very cheerfully that heis the devil. Nor is it only present minds thatperplex the shades with phantasy, for friends ofCount Albert de Rochas once wrote out namesand incidents but to discover that though thesurname of the shade that spoke had been historical,Christian name and incidents were from aromance running at the time in some clericalnewspaper no one there had ever opened.
All these shadows have drunk from the pool ofblood and become delirious. Sometimes they willuse the very word and say that we force deliriumupon them because we do not still our minds, orthat minds not stupefied with the body force themmore subtly, for now and again one will withdrawwhat he has said, saying that he was constrainedby the neighbourhood of some more powerfulshade.
When I was a boy at Sligo, a stable boy methis late master going round the yard, and havingtold him to go and haunt the lighthouse, was dismissedby his mistress for sending her husband tohaunt so inclement a spot. Ghosts, I was told,must go where they are bid, and all those threatenings[Pg 324]by the old grimoires to drown some disobedientspirit at the bottom of the Red Sea, andindeed all exorcism and conjuration affirm thatour imagination is king. Revenants are, to use themodern term, "suggestable," and may be studiedin the "trance personalities" of hypnoses and inour dreams which are but hypnosis turned insideout, a modeller's clay for our suggestions, or, if wefollow The Spiritual Diary, for those of invisiblebeings. Swedenborg has written that we are eachin the midst of a group of associated spirits whosleep when we sleep and become the dramatispersonæ of our dreams, and are always the otherwill that wrestles with our thought, shaping it toour despite.
We speak, it may be, of the Proteus of antiquitywhich has to be held or it will refuse its prophecy,and there are many warnings in our ears. "Stoopnot down," says the Chaldæan Oracle, "to thedarkly splendid world wherein continually lieth afaithless depth and Hades wrapped in cloud,delighting in unintelligible images," and amidthat caprice, among those clouds, there is alwayslegerdemain; we juggle, or lose our money withthe same pack of cards that may reveal the future.The magicians who astonished the Middle Ageswith power as incalculable as the fall of a meteorwere not so numerous as the more amusing jugglers[Pg 325]who could do their marvels at will; and in our ownday the juggler Houdin, sent to Morocco by theFrench Government, was able to break the prestigeof the dervishes whose fragile wonders were butworked by fasting and prayer.
Sometimes, indeed, a man would be magician,jester, and juggler. In an Irish story a strangerlays three rushes upon the flat of his hand andpromises to blow away the inner and leave theothers unmoved, and thereupon puts two fingersof his other hand upon the outer ones andblows. However, he will do a more wonderfultrick. There are many who can wag both ears,but he can wag one and not the other, andthereafter, when he has everybody's attention, hetakes one ear between finger and thumb. Butnow that the audience are friendly and laughingthe moment of miracle has come. He takes out ofa bag a skein of silk thread and throws it into theair, until it seems as though one end were madefast to a cloud. Then he takes out of his bag firsta hare and then a dog and then a young man andthen "a beautiful, well-dressed young woman"and sends them all running up the thread. Nor,the old writers tell us, does the association ofjuggler and magician cease after death, which onlygives to legerdemain greater power and subtlety.Those who would live again in us, becoming apart of our thoughts and passion have, it seems,their sport to keep us in good humour, and a younggirl who has astonished herself and her friends in[Pg 326]some dark séance may, when we have persuadedher to become entranced in a lighted room, tell usthat some shade is touching her face, while we cansee her touching it with her own hand, or we maydiscover her, while her eyes are still closed, in somejugglery that implies an incredible mastery ofmuscular movement. Perhaps too in the fragmentarymiddle world there are souls that remainalways upon the brink, always children. Dr.Ochorowicz finds his experiments upset by anaked girl, one foot one inch high, who is constantlyvisible to his medium and who claimsnever to have lived upon the earth. He hasphotographed her by leaving a camera in an emptyroom where she had promised to show herself,but is so doubtful of her honesty that he is notsure she did not hold up a print from an illustratedpaper in front of the camera. In one of LadyGregory's stories a countryman is given by astranger he meets upon the road what seemswholesome and pleasant food, but a little later hisstomach turns and he finds that he has eatenchopped grass, and one remembers Robin Goodfellowand his joint stool, and witches' gold thatis but dried cow dung. It is only, one doesnot doubt, because of our preoccupation with asingle problem, our survival of the body, and withthe affection that binds us to the dead, that all thegnomes and nymphs of antiquity have not beguntheir tricks again.
Plutarch, in his essay on the dæmon, describeshow the souls of enlightened men return to be theschoolmasters of the living, whom they influenceunseen; and the mediums, should we ask how theyescape the illusions of that world, claim theprotection of their guides. One will tell you thatwhen she was a little girl she was minding geeseupon some American farm and an old man cametowards her with a queer coat upon him, and howat first she took him for a living man. He saidperhaps a few words of pious commonplace orpractical advice and vanished. He had come againand again, and now that she has to earn her livingby her gift, he warns her against deceiving spirits,or if she is working too hard, but sometimes shewill not listen and gets into trouble. The oldwitch doctor of Lady Gregory's story learned hiscures from his dead sister whom he met from timeto time, but especially at Hallowe'en, at the endof the garden, but he had other helpers harsherthan she, and once he was beaten for disobedience.
Reginald Scott gives a fine plan for picking aguide. You promise some dying man to pray forthe repose of his soul if he will but come to youafter death and give what help you need, whilestories of mothers who come at night to be amongtheir orphan children are as common amongspiritists as in Galway or in Mayo. A Frenchservant girl once said to a friend of mine who[Pg 328]helped her in some love affair: "You have yourstudies, we have only our affections"; and this Ithink is why the walls are broken less often amongus than among the poor. Yet according to thedoctrine of Soho and Holloway and in Plutarch,those studies that have lessened in us the sap ofthe world may bring to us good, learned, masterfulmen who return to see their own or some likework carried to a finish. "I do think," wrote SirThomas Browne, "that many mysteries ascribedto our own invention have been the courteousrevelations of spirits; for those noble essences inheaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellowcreatures on earth."
Much that Lady Gregory has gathered seemsbut the broken bread of old philosophers, or elseof the one sort with the dough they made intotheir loaves. Were I not ignorant, my Greekgone and my meagre Latin all but gone, I do notdoubt that I could find much to the point in Greek,perhaps in old writers on medicine, much inRenaissance or Medieval Latin. As it is, I mustbe content with what has been translated or withthe seventeenth-century Platonists who are thehandier for my purpose because they found in theaffidavits and confessions of the witch trials,descriptions like those in our Connaught stories.I have Henry More in his verse and in his prose[Pg 329]and I have Henry More's two friends, JosephGlanvil, and Cudworth in his Intellectual Systemof the Universe, three volumes violently annotatedby an opposed theologian; and two essays by Mr.G. R. S. Meade clipped out of his magazine, TheQuest. These writers quote much from Plotinusand Porphyry and Plato and from later writers,especially Synesius and John Philoponus in whomthe School of Plato came to an end in the seventhcentury.
We should not suppose that our souls began atbirth, for as Henry More has said, a man might aswell think "from souls new souls" to bring as "topress the sunbeams in his fist" or "wring therainbow till it dye his hands." We have within usan "airy body" or "spirit body" which was ouronly body before our birth as it will be again whenwe are dead and its "plastic power" has shapedour terrestrial body as some day it may shapeapparition and ghost. Porphyry is quoted byMr. Meade as saying that "Souls who love thebody attach a moist spirit to them and condenseit like a cloud," and so become visible, and so areall apparitions of the dead made visible; thoughnecromancers, according to Henry More, can easeand quicken this condensation "with reek of oil,meal, milk, and such like gear, wine, water,honey." One remembers that Dr. Ochorowicz'snaked imp once described how she filled out anappearance of herself by putting a piece of blottingpaper where her stomach should have been and[Pg 330]that the blotting paper became damp because, asshe said, a materialization, until it is completed, isa damp vapour. This airy body which so compressesvapour, Philoponus says, "takes the shapeof the physical body as water takes the shape ofthe vessel that it has been frozen in," but it iscapable of endless transformations, for "in itselfit has no especial form," but Henry More believesthat it has an especial form, for "its plastic power"cannot but find the human form most "natural,"though "vehemency of desire to alter the figureinto another representation may make the appearanceto resemble some other creature; but noforced thing can last long." "The better genii"therefore prefer to show "in a human shape yet notit may be with all the lineaments" but with suchas are "fit for this separate state" (separate fromthe body that is) or are "requisite to perfect thevisible features of a person," desire and imaginationadding clothes and ornament. The materialization,as we would say, has but enough likenessfor recognition. It may be that More but copiesPhiloponus who thought the shade's habitualform, the image that it was as it were frozen infor a time, could be again "coloured and shapedby fantasy," and that "it is probable that whenthe soul desires to manifest it shapes itself, settingits own imagination in movement, or even that itis probable with the help of dæmonic co-operationthat it appears and again becomes invisible, becomingcondensed and rarefied." Porphyry, Philoponus[Pg 331]adds, gives Homer as his authority for thebelief that souls after death live among images oftheir experience upon earth, phantasms impressedupon the spirit body. While Synesius, who livedat the end of the fourth century and had Hypatiaamong his friends, also describes the spirit body ascapable of taking any form and so of enabling usafter death to work out our purgation; and saysthat for this reason the oracles have likened thestate after death to the images of a dream. Theseventeenth century English translation of CorneliusAgrippa's De Occulta Philosophia was onceso famous that it found its way into the handsof Irish farmers and wandering Irish tinkers, andit may be that Agrippa influenced the commonthought when he wrote that the evil dead seerepresented "in the fantastic reason" those shapesof life that are "the more turbulent and furious... sometimes of the heavens falling upon theirheads, sometimes of their being consumed withthe violence of flames, sometimes of being drownedin a gulf, sometimes of being swallowed up in theearth, sometimes of being changed into divers kindsof beasts ... and sometimes of being taken andtormented by demons ... as if they were in adream." The ancients, he writes, have called thesesouls "hobgoblins," and Orpheus has called them"the people of dreams" saying "the gates of Plutocannot be unlocked; within is a people of dreams."They are a dream indeed that has place and weightand measure, and seeing that their bodies are of an[Pg 332]actual air, they cannot, it was held, but travel inwind and set the straws and the dust twirling;though being of the wind's weight they need not,Dr. Henry More considers, so much as feel its ruffling,or if they should do so, they can shelter in ahouse or behind a wall, or gather into themselvesas it were, out of the gross wind and vapour.But there are good dreams among the airy people,though we cannot properly name that a dreamwhich is but analogical of the deep unimaginablevirtues and has, therefore, stability and a commonmeasure. Henry More stays himself in the midstof the dry learned and abstract writing of histreatise The Immortality of the Soul to praise"their comely carriage ... their graceful dancing,their melodious singing and playing with an accentso sweet and soft as if we should imagine air itselfto compose lessons and send forth musical soundswithout the help of any terrestrial instrument"and imagines them at their revels in the thin upperair where the earth can but seem "a fleecy andmilky light" as the moon to us, and he cries outthat they "sing and play and dance together,reaping the lawful pleasures of the very animallife, in a far higher degree than we are capable ofin this world, for everything here does, as it were,taste of the cask and has some measure of foulnessin it."
There is, however, another birth or death whenwe pass from the airy to the shining or etherealbody, and "in the airy the soul may inhabit for[Pg 333]many ages and in the ethereal for ever," and indeedit is the ethereal body which is the root "of allthat natural warmth in all generations" thoughin us it can no longer shine. It lives while in itstrue condition an unimaginable life and is sometimesdescribed as of "a round or oval figure"and as always circling among gods and among thestars, and sometimes as having more dimensionsthan our penury can comprehend.
Last winter Mr. Ezra Pound was editing thelate Professor Fenollosa's translations of the NohDrama of Japan, and read me a great deal ofwhat he was doing. Nearly all that my fat oldwoman in Soho learns from her familiars is therein an unsurpassed lyric poetry and in strange andpoignant fables once danced or sung in the housesof nobles. In one a priest asks his way of somegirls who are gathering herbs. He asks if it is along road to town; and the girls begin to lamentover their hard lot gathering cress in a cold wetbog where they sink up to their knees and tocompare themselves with ladies in the big townwho only pull the cress in sport, and need not whenthe cold wind is flapping their sleeves. He askswhat village he has come to and if a road near byleads to the village of Ono. A girl replies thatnobody can know that name without knowing theroad, and another says: "Who would not knowthat name, written on so many pictures, and knowthe pine trees they are always drawing." Presentlythe cold drives away all the girls but one[Pg 334]and she tells the priest she is a spirit and has takensolid form that she may speak with him and askhis help. It is her tomb that has made Ono sofamous. Conscience-struck at having allowed twoyoung men to fall in love with her she refused tochoose between them. Her father said he wouldgive her to the best archer. At the match to settleit both sent their arrows through the same wingof a mallard and were declared equal. She beingashamed and miserable because she had caused somuch trouble and for the death of the mallard,took her own life. That, she thought, would endthe trouble, but her lovers killed themselves besideher tomb, and now she suffered all manner ofhorrible punishments. She had but to lay herhand upon a pillar to make it burst into flame;she was perpetually burning. The priest tells herthat if she can but cease to believe in her punishmentsthey will cease to exist. She listens in gratitudebut she cannot cease to believe, and whileshe is speaking they come upon her and she rushesaway enfolded in flames. Her imagination hascreated all those terrors out of a scruple, and oneremembers how Lake Harris, who led LaurenceOliphant such a dance, once said to a shade, "Howdid you know you were damned?" and that itanswered, "I saw my own thoughts going pastme like blazing ships."
In a play still more rich in lyric poetry a priestis wandering in a certain ancient village. He describesthe journey and the scene, and from time[Pg 335]to time the chorus sitting at the side of the stagesings its comment. He meets with two ghosts, theone holding a red stick, the other a piece of coarsecloth and both dressed in the fashion of a past age,but as he is a stranger he supposes them villagerswearing the village fashion. They sing as ifmuttering, "We are entangled up—whose faultwas it, dear? Tangled up as the grass patterns aretangled up in this coarse cloth, or that insect whichlives and chirrups in dried seaweed. We do notknow where are today our tears in the undergrowthof this eternal wilderness. We neither wake norsleep and passing our nights in sorrow, which is inthe end a vision, what are these scenes of springto us? This thinking in sleep for some one whohas no thought for you, is it more than a dream?And yet surely it is the natural way of love. Inour hearts there is much, and in our bodies nothing,and we do nothing at all, and only the waters ofthe river of tears flow quickly." To the priestthey seem two married people, but he cannotunderstand why they carry the red stick and thecoarse cloth. They ask him to listen to a story.Two young people had lived in that village longago and night after night for three years the youngman had offered a charmed red stick, the token oflove, at the young girl's window, but she pretendednot to see and went on weaving. So the youngman died and was buried in a cave with hischarmed red sticks, and presently the girl died too,and now because they were never married in life[Pg 336]they were unmarried in their death. The priest,who does not yet understand that it is their owntale, asks to be shown the cave, and says it will bea fine tale to tell when he goes home. The chorusdescribes the journey to the cave. The lovers goin front, the priest follows. They are all daypushing through long grasses that hide the narrowpaths. They ask the way of a farmer who ismowing. Then night falls and it is cold andfrosty. It is stormy and the leaves are falling andtheir feet sink into the muddy places made by theautumn showers; there is a long shadow on theslope of the mountain, and an owl in the ivy ofthe pine tree. They have found the cave and itis dyed with the red sticks of love to the colourof "the orchids and chrysanthemums which hidethe mouth of a fox's hole"; and now the two lovershave "slipped into the shadow of the cave."Left alone and too cold to sleep the priest decidesto spend the night in prayer. He prays that thelovers may at last be one. Presently he sees to hiswonder that the cave is lighted up "where peopleare talking and setting up looms for spinning andpainted red sticks." The ghosts creep out andthank him for his prayer and say that through hispity "the love promises of long past incarnations"find fulfilment in a dream. Then he sees the lovestory unfolded in a vision and the chorus comparesthe sound of weaving to the clicking of crickets.A little later he is shown the bridal room and thelovers drinking from the bridal cup. The dawn is[Pg 337]coming. It is reflected in the bridal cup and nowsingers, cloth, and stick break and dissolve like adream, and there is nothing but "a deserted graveon a hill where morning winds are blowing throughthe pine."
I remember that Aran story of the lovers whocame after death to the priest for marriage. It isnot uncommon for a ghost, "a control" as we say,to come to a medium to discover some old earthlylink to fit into a new chain. It wishes to meet aghostly enemy to win pardon or to renew an oldfriendship. Our service to the dead is not narrowedto our prayers, but may be as wide as our imagination.I have known a control to warn a medium tounsay her promise to an old man, to whom, thatshe might be rid of him, she had promised herselfafter death. What is promised here in our loves orin a witch's bond may be fulfilled in a life whichis a dream. If our terrestrial condition is, as itseems the territory of choice and of cause, the oneground for all seed sowing, it is plain why ourimagination has command over the dead and whythey must keep from sight and earshot. At theBritish Museum at the end of the Egyptian Roomand near the stairs are two statues, one an augustdecoration, one a most accurate looking naturalisticportrait. The august decoration was for apublic site, the other, like all the naturalistic art ofthe epoch, for burial beside a mummy. So buriedit was believed, the Egyptologists tell us, to be ofservice to the dead. I have no doubt it helped a[Pg 338]dead man to build out of his spirit-body a recognizableapparition, and that all boats or horses orweapons or their models buried in ancient tombswere helps for a flagging memory or a too weakfancy to imagine and so substantiate the old surroundings.A shepherd at Doneraile told me someyears ago of an aunt of his who showed herselfafter death stark naked and bid her relatives tomake clothes and to give them to a beggar, thewhile remembering her.[4] Presently she appearedagain wearing the clothes and thanked them.
Certainly in most writings before our time thebody of an apparition was held for a brief, artificial,dreamy, half-living thing. One is always meetingsuch phrases as Sir Thomas Browne's "they stealor contrive a body." A passage in the Paradisocomes to mind describing Dante in conversationwith the blessed among their spheres, althoughthey are but in appearance there, being in truth inthe petals of the yellow rose; and another in theOdyssey where Odysseus speaks not with "themighty Heracles," but with his phantom, for hehimself "hath joy at the banquet among the deathlessgods and hath to wife Hebe of the fair ankles,[Pg 339]child of Zeus, and Hero of the golden sandals,"while all about the phantom "there was a clamourof the dead, as it were fowls flying everywhere infear and he, like black night with bow uncased,and shaft upon the string, fiercely glancing aroundlike one in the act to shoot."
W.B.Y.
14th October, 1914.
Note 1. A woman from the North would probably be afaery woman or at any rate a "knowledgeable" woman, one whowas "in the faeries" and certainly not necessarily at all a womanfrom Ulster. The North where the old Celtic other world wasthought to lie is the quarter of spells and faeries. A visionarystudent, who was at the Dublin Art School when I was there,described to me a waking dream of the North Pole. There wereluxuriant vegetation and overflowing life though still but ice tothe physical eye. He added thereto his conviction that whereverphysical life was abundant, the spiritual life was vague and thin,and of the converse truth.
Note 2. St. Patrick prayed, in The Breastplate of St. Patrick,to be delivered from the spells of smiths and women.
[1] The Japanese Noh play Awoi no Uye has for its theme theexorcism of a ghost which is itself obsessed by an evil spirit.This evil spirit, drawn forth by the exorcism, is represented by adancer wearing a "terrible mask with golden eyes."
[2] Besides the well-known books of Atsikof, Myers, Lodge,Flammarion, Flournoy, Maxwell, Albert De Rochas, Lombroso,Madame Bisson, Delanne, etc., I have made considerable use ofthe researches of D'Ochorowicz published during the last ten ortwelve years in Annales des Science Psychiques and in the EnglishAnnals of Psychical Science, and of those of Professor Hysloppublished during the last four years in the Journal and Transactionsof the American Society for Psychical Research. I havemyself been a somewhat active investigator.
[3] Henry More considered that "the animal spirits" were "theimmediate instruments of the soul in all vital and animal functions"and quotes Harpocrates, who was contemporary withPlato, as saying, "that the mind of man is ... not nourishedfrom meats and drinks from the belly but by a clear and luminoussubstance that redounds by separation from the blood." Ochorowiczthought that certain small oval lights were perhaps the rootof personality itself.
[4] Herodotus has an equivalent tale. Periander, because theghost of his wife complained that it was "cold and naked," gotthe women of Corinth together in their best clothes and hadthem stripped and their clothes burned.