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
One time I saw the old Colonel standing near the road, I know well
it was him. But while I was looking at him, he was changed into the
likeness of an ass.
I was led astray myself one day in Coole when I went to gather sticks
for the fire. I was making a bundle of them, and I saw a boy beside
me, and a little grey dogeen with him, and at first I thought it was
William Hanlon, and then I saw it was not. And he walked along with me,
and I asked him did he want any of the sticks and he said he did not,
and he seemed as we were walking to grow bigger and bigger. And when
he came to where the caves go underground he stopped, and I asked him
his name, and he said, "You should know me, for you've seen me often
enough." And then he was gone, and I know that he was no living thing.
There was a child I had, and he a year and a half old, and he got
a quinsy and a choking in the throat and I was holding him in my
arms beside the fire, and all in a minute he died. And the men
were working down by the river, washing sheep, and they heard the
crying of a child from over there in the air, and they said, "That's
Sheridan's child." So I knew sure enough that he was _taken_.
Come here close and I'll tell you what I saw at the old castle there
below (Ballinamantane). I was passing there in the evening and I
saw a great house and a grand one with screens (clumps of trees) at
the ends of it, and the windows open--Coole house is nothing like
what it was for size or grandeur. And there were people inside and
ladies walking about, and a bridge across the river. For they can
build up such things all in a minute. And two coaches came driving
up and across the bridge to the castle, and in one of them I saw
two gentlemen, and I knew them well and both of them had died long
before. As to the coaches and the horses I didn't take much notice of
them for I was too much taken up with looking at the two gentlemen.
And a man came and called out and asked me would I come across the
bridge, and I said I would not. And he said, "It would be better for
you if you did, you'd go back heavier than you came." I suppose they
would have given me some good thing. And then two men took up the
bridge and laid it against the wall. Twice I've seen that same thing,
the house and the coaches and the bridge, and I know well I'll see it
a third time before I die. (_Note_ 12.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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