Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series
History
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series
Atlantic Coast (Ireland) -- Social life and customs; Folklore -- Ireland; Ireland -- Social life and customs
There was Shane Rua that was away every night for seven years. He told
his brother-in-law that told me that in that hill behind the abbey
there is the most splendid town that was ever seen. Often he was in it,
and ought not to have been talking about it, but he said he wouldn't
give them the satisfaction of it, he didn't care what they did to him.
But he fainted that night they took him from the wake, and you know
what a strong man Peter Nestor was, and _he_ couldn't hold him.
Buried he is now beside that wall.
* * * * *
Cloran the plumber's mother was taken away, it's always said. The way
it's known is, it was not long after her baby was born but she was
doing well. And one morning very early a man and his wife were going
in a cart to Loughrea one Thursday for the market, and they met some
of _those people_ and they asked the woman that had her own child
with her, would she give a drink to their child that was with them,
and while she was doing it they said, "We won't be in want of a nurse
tonight, we'll have Mrs. Cloran of Cloon." And when they got back in
the evening, Mrs. Cloran was dead before them.
They said it of Glynn's wife last year. And anyway, her mother was
taken in the same way before her.
* * * * *
There was a boy I know lived between our house and Clough, and his
hand was lame all his life from a burn he got when he was a child.
And one evening in winter he walked out of the house and was never
heard of or seen again, or any account of him. And it was not the
time of year to go look for work, and anyway, he could never make a
living with his lame hand.
_Mrs. Casey:_
My sister told me that near Tyrone or Cloughballymore there was a man
walking home one night late, and he had to pass by a smith's forge
where one Kinealy used to work. And when he came near, he heard the
noise of the anvil, and he wondered Kinealy would be working so late in
the night. But when he went in he saw that they were strange men that
were in it. So he asked them the time, and they told him, and he said,
"I won't be home this long time yet." And one of the men said, "You'll
be home sooner than what you think." And another said, "There's a man
on a grey horse gone the road, you'll get a lift from him." And he
wondered that they'd know the road he was going to his home. But sure
enough as he was walking he came up with a man on a grey horse, and
he gave him a lift. But when he got home his wife saw that he looked
strange-like, and she asked what ailed him, and he told her all that
happened. And when she looked at him she saw that he was taken. So he
went into the bed, and the next evening he was dead. And all the people
that came in knew by the appearance of the corpse that it was an old
man had been put in his place, and that he was taken when he got on the
grey horse. For there's something not right about a grey horse or a
white horse, or about a red-haired woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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