[K] _Fairy Mounts_--Barrows. It is said that these high mounts were of
great service to the natives of Ireland when Ireland was invaded by the
Danes. Watch was always kept on them, and upon the approach of an
enemy a fire was lighted to give notice to the next watch, and thus the
intelligence was quickly communicated through the country. _Some years
ago_, the common people believed that these barrows were inhabited by
fairies, or, as they called them, by the _good people_. “Oh, troth, to
the best of my belief, and to the best of my judgment and opinion,”
said an elderly man to the Editor, “it was only the old people that had
nothing to do, and got together, and were telling stories about them
fairies, but to the best of my judgment there’s nothing in it. Only this
I heard myself not very many years hack from a decent kind of a man, a
grazier, that as he was coming just _fair and easy (quietly)_ from the
fair, with some cattle and sheep, that he had not sold, just at
the church of ----, at an angle of the road like, he was met by a
good-looking man, who asked him where he was going? And he answered,
‘Oh, far enough, I must be going all night.’ ‘No, that you mustn’t nor
won’t (says the man), you’ll sleep with me the night, and you’ll
want for nothing, nor your cattle nor sheep neither, nor your _beast
(horse)_; so come along with me.’ With that the grazier _lit (alighted)_
from his horse, and it was dark night; but presently he finds himself,
he does not know in the wide world how, in a fine house, and plenty of
every thing to eat and drink; nothing at all wanting that he could wish
for or think of. And he does not _mind (recollect_ or _know_) how at
last he falls asleep; and in the morning he finds himself lying, not in
ever a bed or a house at all, but just in the angle of the road where
first he met the strange man: there he finds himself lying on his back
on the grass, and all his sheep feeding as quiet as ever all round about
him, and his horse the same way, and the bridle of the beast over his
wrist. And I asked him what he thought of it; and from first to last
he could think of nothing, but for certain sure it must have been the
fairies that entertained him so well. For there was no house to see any
where nigh hand, or any building, or barn, or place at all, but only the
church and the _mote (barrow)_. There’s another odd thing enough that
they tell about this same church, that if any person’s corpse, that had
not a right to be buried in that church-yard, went to be burying there
in it, no, not all the men, women, or childer in all Ireland could get
the corpse any way into the church-yard; but as they would be trying
to go into the church-yard, their feet would seem to be going backwards
instead of forwards; ay, continually backwards the whole funeral
would seem to go; and they would never set foot with the corpse in the
church-yard. Now they say that it is the fairies do all this; but it is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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