Irish Witchcraft and DemonologySeymour, St. John D. (St. John Drelincourt)
History
Irish Witchcraft and Demonology
Seymour, St. John D. (St. John Drelincourt)
Demonology; Witchcraft -- Ireland
In the following year, 1663, a quaintly humorous story[39] of a most
persistent and troublesome ghostly visitant comes from the same part of
the world, though in this particular instance its efforts to right the
wrong did not produce a lawsuit: the narrator was Mr. Alcock, who appears
in the preceding story. One David Hunter, who was neat-herd to the Bishop
of Down (Jeremy Taylor) at his house near Portmore, saw one night, as he
was carrying a log of wood into the dairy, an old woman whom he did not
recognise, but apparently some subtle intuition told him that she was not
of mortal mould, for incontinent he flung away the log, and ran terrified
into his house. She appeared again to him the next night, and from that on
nearly every night for the next nine months. "Whenever she came he must go
with her through the Woods at a good round rate; and the poor fellow
look'd as if he was bewitch'd and travell'd off his legs." Even if he were
in bed he had to rise and follow her wherever she went, and because his
wife could not restrain him she would rise and follow him till daybreak,
although no apparition was visible to her. The only member of the family
that took the matter philosophically was Hunter's little dog, and he
became so accustomed to the ghost that he would inevitably bring up the
rear of the strange procession--if it be true that the lower classes
dispensed with the use of night-garments when in bed, the sight must truly
have been a most remarkable one.
All this time the ghost afforded no indication as to the nature and object
of her frequent appearances. "But one day the said David going over a
Hedge into the Highway, she came just against him, and he cry'd out, 'Lord
bless me, I would I were dead; shall I never be delivered from this
misery?' At which, 'And the Lord bless me too,' says she. 'It was very
happy you spoke first, for till then I had no power to speak, though I
have followed you so long. My name,' says she, 'is Margaret ----. I lived
here before the War, and had one son by my Husband; when he died I married
a soldier, by whom I had several children which the former Son maintained,
else we must all have starved. He lives beyond the Ban-water; pray go to
him and bid him dig under such a hearth, and there he shall find 28_s._
Let him pay what I owe in such a place, and the rest to the charge
unpay'd at my Funeral, and go to my Son that lives here, which I had by my
latter Husband, and tell him that he lives a very wicked and dissolute
life, and is very unnatural and ungrateful to his Brother that nurtured
him, and if he does not mend his life God will destroy him.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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