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
There was a man up there near Loughrea, one of the Mahers, was away
for seven years. In the night he'd be taken, and sometimes in the
daytime when he was in the bed sick, that's the time he'd be along
with them; riding out and going out across the bay, going as fast as
the wind in the sky. Did he like to be with them? Not at all, he'd
sooner be at home; and it is bad for the health too to be going out
these rough nights. There were three men near him that had horses,
Daniel O'Dea and Farragher and Flynn, and he told them they should
sell their horses. And Daniel O'Dea and Farragher sold theirs, but
the other man wouldn't mind him. And after a few days his horse died.
Of course they had been with him at night riding their own horses,
and that's how he knew what would happen and gave the warning.
_The Spinning Woman:_
There was a man got married, and he began to pine away, and after a
few weeks the mother asked him what ailed him. And he opened his coat
and showed her his breast inside, that it was all torn and bloody. And
he said: "That's the way I am; and that's what she does to me in the
nights." So the mother brought her out and bid her to pick the green
flax, and she was against touching it, but the mother made her. And no
sooner had she touched three blades of it but she said, "I'm gone now,"
and away with her. And when they went back to the room they found the
daughter lying in a deep sleep, where she had just been put back.
_An Old Woman at Kinvara:_
There was a woman put in her coffin for dead, but a man that was
passing by knew that she wasn't dead, and he brought her away and
married her and lived with her for seven years, and had seven children
by her. And one day he brought her to a fair near the place she came
from, and the people that saw her said: "If that woman that died ever
had a sister, that would be her sister." So he let it out to them then
about her. But his mother always minded her, that she wouldn't wet her
hands. But one day the mother was hurried, and the woman made a cake.
And after making it she washed her hands, and with that they had her
again and she went from the husband and from her children.
_A Herd:_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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