At childbirth there are some of the old women are able to put a part of the pain upon the man, or any man. There was a woman in labour near Oran, and there were two policemen out walking that night, and one of them went into the house to light his pipe. There were two or three women in it, and the sick woman stretched beyond them, and one of them offered him a drink of the tea she had been using, and he didn't want it but he took a drink of it, and then he took a coal off the hearth and put it on his pipe to light it and went out to his comrade. And no sooner was he there than he began to roar and to catch hold of his belly and he fell down by the roadside roaring. But the other knew something of what happened, and he took the pipe, and it having a coal on it, and he put it on top of the wall and fired a shot of the gun at it and broke it; and with that the man got well of the pain and stood up again. * * * * * No woman that is carrying should go to the house where another woman is in labour; if she does, that woman's pain will come on her along with her own pain when her time comes. * * * * * A child to come with the spring tide, it will have luck. II ASTRAY, AND TREASURE II ASTRAY, AND TREASURE _Mr. Yeats in his dedication of "The Shadowy Waters" says of some of our woods:_ "_Dim Pairc-na-tarav where enchanted eyes Have seen immortal mild proud shadows walk; Dim Inchy wood that hides badger and fox And martin-cat, and borders that old wood Wise Biddy Early called the wicked wood._" _I have heard many stories of people led astray in these by invisible power, though I myself, although born at midnight, have lived many hours of many years in their shades and shelters, and as the saying is have "never seen anything worse than myself."_ _Last May a friend staying with us had gone out early in the afternoon, and had not come back by eight o'clock dinner-time. As half-hours passed we grew anxious and sent out messengers riding and on foot, searching with lanterns here and there in the woods and on Inchy marsh, towards which he had been seen going. It was not till long after the fall of darkness that he returned, tired out with so many hours of wandering, and with no better explanation than "Yeats talks of the seven woods of Coole, but I say there are seventy times seven." It was in dim Inchy and the wicked wood it borders he had gone astray; and many said that was natural, for they have a bad name, and May is a month of danger. Yet some unbelievers may carry their credulity so far as to believe that the creator of Father Keegan's dreams may himself have dreamed the whole adventure._ _I was told by An Army Man who had been through the Indian Mutiny:_