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
When they are friendly to a man they give him help in his work,
putting their strength into his body. Or they may tell him where to
find treasure, hidden gold; or through certain wise men or women
who have learned from them or can ask and get their knowledge they
will tell where cattle that have strayed may be found, or they will
cure the sick or tell if a sickness is not to be cured. They will
sometimes work as if against their own will or intention, giving back
to the life of our world one who had received the call to go over to
their own. They call many there, summoning them perhaps through the
eye of a neighbour, the evil eye, or by a touch, a blow, a fall, a
sudden terror. Those who have received their touch waste away from
this world, lending their strength to the invisible ones; for the
strength of a human body is needed by the shadows, it may be in their
fighting, and certainly in their hurling to win the goal. Young men
are taken for this, young mothers are taken that they may give the
breast to newly born children among the Sidhe, young girls that they
may themselves become mothers there.
While these are away a body in their likeness, or the likeness of a
body, is left lying in their place. They may be given leave to return
to their village after a while, seven years it may be, or twice or
three times seven. But some are sent back only at the end of the
years allotted them at the time of their birth, old spent men and
women, thought to have been dead a long time, given back to die and
be buried on the face of the earth.
There are two races among the Sidhe. One is tall and handsome, gay,
and given to jesting and to playing pranks, leading us astray in
the fields, giving gold that turns to withered leaves or to dust.
These ride on horses through the night-time in large companies and
troops, or ride in coaches, laughing and decked with flowers and
fine clothes. The people of the other race are small, malicious,
wide-bellied, carrying before them a bag. When a man or woman is
about to die, a woman of the Sidhe will sometimes cry for a warning,
keening and making lamentation. At the hour of death fighting may be
heard in the air or about the house--that is, when the man in danger
has friends among the shadows, who are fighting on his behalf.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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