Some people call Mrs. Tobin "Biddy Early." She has done a good many cures. Her brother was _away_ for a while and it was from him she got the knowledge. I believe that it's before sunrise that she gathers the herbs, anyway no one ever saw her gathering them. (_Note_ 38.) She has saved many a woman from being brought away when their child was born, by whatever she does. She told me herself that one night when she was going to the lodge gate to attend the woman there, three magpies came before her and began roaring into her mouth, to try to drive her back. Father Folan must know about her, but he is a dark man and says nothing, and anyway the priests know as much, and are as much in dread as any one else. I wish I had sent for her for my own little boy. It's often he asked me to bring him to the friars at Loughrea. But he never would tell how or where he got the touch. It came like a lump in the back, and he got weaker and smaller till you could put him into a tin can, and he twenty years. Often I asked him about it, but he'd say nothing. I believe that they are afraid to tell or they would be worse treated. I asked him was it at the jumping, for they used to be jumping over a pole, and he said it was not, and that he never took a jump that was too much for him. But some that saw his back said he had been beat. And when the Doctor came in to see him, he was lying on the bed, and he turned him over and looked at him and said, "If he had all Lady Gregory's estate he couldn't live a week." And sure enough within five days he died. And many of the neighbours said they never heard such a storm of wind as rose about the house that night. I never saw him since, and I went late and early, in the mill and down by the river. But it's maybe a hundred or two hundred miles he was brought away. _Tom Flatley:_ There is a priest now, a curate down in Cloughmore, is doing great cures. There is often silence between him and the parish priest, Father Rock, for he wouldn't like him to be doing them. There was a little chap went to bed one night as well as yourself, and in the morning he rose up with one of his ears as deaf as that he wouldn't hear you if he died. And the mother brought him to Father Dolan and he came out as well as ever he was. It was but a fortnight ago that happened, and I didn't hear did the misfortune fall on any of the stock. But wherever there is a cure something will go, and what would a sheep or a heifer be beside a misfortune on a child? There was a priest near Ennis, a woman I knew went to for a cure, and he wouldn't do it. "_Tha me bocht_," he said, "I am poor, but I will not do it." "I will pay you well," said the woman. "I will not do it," said he, "for my heart was killed two years ago with one I did. And it isn't money I'd ask of you if I did it," he said, "but to offer you my blessing and the blessing of God." _Mrs. Casey:_