I had a son that it was mostly given in to in Aran to be the best singer to give out a couple of verses, so that he'd hardly go out of the house but some one would want to be bringing him into theirs. And he took sick of a sudden, with a pain in the shoulder. I went to the doctor and he says, "Does your wife take tea?" "She does when she can get it;" says I, and he told me then to put the spout of the kettle to where the pain was. And after that he went to Galway Hospital, but he got no better there and a Sister of Mercy said to him at last, "I'm thinking by the look of you, your family at home is poor." "That's true enough," says he. Then says she: "It's best for you to stop here, and they'll be free from the cost of burying you." But he said he'd sooner go die at home, if he had but two days to live there. So he came back and he didn't last long. It's always the like of him that's taken, that are good for singing or dancing or for any good thing at all. And young women are often taken in that way, both in the middle island and in this. _Patrick Madden:_ I'll tell you how I lost the first son I had. He was just three years old and as fine and as strong as any child you'd see. And one day my wife said she'd bring the child to her mother's house to stop the evening with her, for I was going out. And there was a neighbour of ours, a man that lived near us, and no one was the better of being spoken to by him. And as they were passing his house he came out, and he said, "That's the finest child that's in the island." And a woman that was passing at the same time stopped and said, "It was the smallest that ever I saw the day it was born, God bless it." And the mother knew what she meant, and she wanted to say "God bless him," but it was like as if a hand took and held her throat, and choked her that she couldn't say the words. And when I came to the mother's house, and began to make fun with the child, I saw a round mark on the side of his head, the size of a crown piece. And I said to the wife, "Why would you beat the child in the head, why don't you get a little rod to beat him if he wants it?" And she said that she had never touched him at all.