The priest departed homewards, and called at the next cabin to give
notice of the strange circumstances. The remains of Sarah Kennedy were
removed to her cabin, situate at the edge of a small wood at a little
distance. She had long been a resident in that neighbourhood, but
still she was a stranger, and came there no one knew from whence. She
had no relation in that country but one daughter, now advanced in
years, who resided with her. She kept one cow, but sold more butter,
it was said, than any farmer in the parish, and it was generally
suspected that she acquired it by devilish agency, as she never made a
secret of being intimately acquainted with sorcery and fairyism. She
professed the Roman Catholic religion, but never complied with the
practices enjoined by that church, and her remains were denied
Christian sepulture, and were buried in a sand-pit near her own cabin.
On the evening of her burial, the villagers assembled and burned her
cabin to the earth. Her daughter made her escape, and never after
returned.
[Footnote 20: _Dublin University Review, 1839._]
THE WITCH HARE.
MR. AND MRS. S. C. HALL.
I was out thracking hares meeself, and I seen a fine puss of a thing
hopping, hopping in the moonlight, and whacking her ears about, now
up, now down, and winking her great eyes, and--"Here goes," says I,
and the thing was so close to me that she turned round and looked at
me, and then bounced back, as well as to say, do your worst! So I had
the least grain in life of _blessed powder_ left, and I put it in the
gun--and bang at her! My jewel, the scritch she gave would frighten a
rigment, and a mist, like, came betwixt me and her, and I seen her no
more; but when the mist wint off I saw blood on the spot where she had
been, and I followed its track, and at last it led me--whist,
whisper--right up to Katey MacShane's door; and when I was at the
thrashold, I heerd a murnin' within, a great murnin', and a groanin',
and I opened the door, and there she was herself, sittin' quite
content in the shape of a woman, and the black cat that was sittin' by
her rose up its back and spit at me; but I went on never heedin', and
asked the ould ---- how she was and what ailed her.
"Nothing," sis she.
"What's that on the floor?" sis I.
"Oh," she says, "I was cuttin' a billet of wood," she says, "wid the
reaping hook," she says, "an' I've wounded meself in the leg," she
says, "and that's drops of my precious blood," she says.
BEWITCHED BUTTER (QUEEN'S COUNTY).[21]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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