Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series — John Shaqi
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
The old man here that lost his hair went to Biddy Early but he didn't
want to go, and we forced him and persuaded him. And when he got to
the house she said, "It wasn't of your own free will you came here,"
and she wouldn't do anything for him.
She didn't like either for you to go too late. Dolan's sister was
sick a long time, and when the brother went at the last to Biddy
Early she gave him a bottle with a cure. But on the way home the
bottle was broke, and the car, and the horse got a fright and ran
away. She said to him then, "Why did you go to cut down the bush of
white thorn you see out of the window?" And then she told him an old
woman in the village had overlooked him--Murphy's sister--and she
gave him a bottle to sprinkle about her house. I suppose she didn't
like that bush being interfered with, she had too much charms.
And when Doctor Folan was sent for to see her he was led astray, and
it is beyond Ballylee he found himself. And surely she was _taken_ if
ever any one was.
_An Old Woman:_
I went up to Biddy Early's one time with another woman. A fine stout
woman she was, sitting straight up on her chair. She looked at me and
she told me that my son was worse than what I was, and for myself
she bid me to take what I was taking before, and that's dandelions.
Five leaves she bid me pick and lay them out on the table with three
pinches of salt on the three middle ones. As to my son, she gave me a
bottle for him but he wouldn't take it and he got better without.
The priests were against her, but there was one of them passed near
her house one day, and his horse fell forward. And he sent his boy
to her and she said, "Tell him to spit on the horse and to say,
'God bless it,'" and he did and it rose again. He had looked at it
proud-like without saying "God bless it" in his heart.
_Daniel Shea:_
It was all you could do to get to Biddy Early with your skin whole,
the priests were so set against her. I went to her one time myself,
and it was hard when you got near to know the way, for all the people
were afraid to tell it.
It was about a little chap of my own I went, that some strange thing
had been put upon. When I got to her house there were about fifty to
be attended to before me, and when my turn came she looked in the
bottle, a sort of a common greenish one that seemed to have nothing
in it. And she told me where I came from, and the shape of the
house and the appearance of it, and of the lake you see there, and
everything round about. And she told me of a lime-kiln that was near,
and then she said, "The harm that came to him came from the forth
beyond that." And I never knew of there being a forth there, but
after I came home I went to look, and there sure enough it was.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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