There was a woman lived near Ballinasloe and she had two children, and they both died, one after the other. And when the third was born, she consulted an old woman, and she said to watch the cradle all day where it was standing by the side of the fire. And so she did, and she saw a sort of a shadow come into it, and give the child a touch. And she came in, and drove it away. And the second day the same thing happened, and she was afraid that the third time the child would go, the same as the others. So she went to the old woman again, and she bid her take down the hanger from the chimney, and the tongs and the waistcoat of the child's father and to lay them across the cradle, with a few drops of water from a blessed well. So she did all this and laid these three things in the cradle, but she saw the shadow or whatever it was come again, and she ran in and drove it away. But when she told the old woman she said "You need trouble yourself no more about it being touched or not, for no harm will come to it if you keep those three things on it for twelve days." So she did that, and reared eight children after, and never lost one. _An Old Woman from Kinvara:_ Did I know any one was taken? My own brother was, and no mistake about it. It was one day he was out following two horses with the plough, and it was about five o'clock, for a gentleman was passing when he got the touch, and one of his tenants asked him the time, and he said five o'clock. And what way it came I don't know, but he fell twice on the stones--God bless the hearers and the place I'm telling it in. And at ten o'clock the next morning he was dead in his bed. Young he was, not twenty year, and nothing ailed him when he went out, but the place he was ploughing in that day was a bad pass. Sure and certain I am it's by _them_ he was taken. I used often to hear crying in the field after, but I never saw him again. _A Connemara Woman:_ There was a boy going to America, and when he was going he said to the girl next door "Wherever I am, when you are married I'll come back to the wedding"; and not long after he went to America he died. And when the girl was married and all the friends and neighbours in the house, he appeared in the room, but no one saw him but his comrade he used to have here, and the girl's brother saw him too, but no one else. And the comrade followed him and went close to him and said, "Is it you indeed?" And he said, "It is, and from America I came tonight." And he asked, "How long did that journey take?" and he said, "Three-quarters of an hour," and then he went away. And the comrade was never the better of it, or he got the touch or the other called him, very true friends as they were, and he soon died. But the girl is now middle-aged and is living in that house we are just after passing and is married to one Kelly.