Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Second Series
General
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Second Series
Atlantic Coast (Ireland) -- Social life and customs; Folklore -- Ireland; Ireland -- Social life and customs
I met a woman coming out one day from Cloon, and she told me that
when she was a young girl, she went out one day with another girl to
pick up sticks near a wood. And she chanced to lay hold on a tuft
of grass, and it came up in her hand and the sod with it. And there
was a hole underneath full of half-crowns, and she began to fill her
apron with them, and as soon as she had the full of her apron she
called to the other girl, and the minute she came there wasn't one to
be seen. But what she had in her apron she kept.
_A Travelling Man:_
There was a sister of mine, Bridget her name was, dreamed three
nights of treasure that was buried under the bush up there, by
the chapel, a mile to the east; you can see the bush there, blown
slantwise by the wind from the sea. So she got three men to go along
with her and they brought shovels to dig for it. But it was the woman
should have lifted the first sod and she didn't do it, and they saw,
coming down from the mountains of Burren, horses and horses, bearing
horse-soldiers on them, and they came around the bush, and the
soldiers held up their shovels, and my sister and the men that were
with her made away across the field.
The time I was in America, I went out to the country to see Tom
Scanlon, my cousin, that is a farmer there and had any amount of land
and feeding for the cows, and we went out of the house and sat down
on a patch of grass the same as we're sitting on now. And the first
word he said to me was, "Did Bridget, your sister, ever tell you of
the dream she had, and the way we went digging at the bush, for I was
one of the men that was along with her?" "She did often," says I.
"Well," says he, "all she told you about it was true."
* * * * *
There were two boys digging for razor fish near Clarenbridge, and
one of them saw, as he was digging, a great lot of gold. So he said
nothing, the way the other boy would know nothing about it. But when
he came back for it it was gone.
* * * * *
There was another boy found gold under a flagstone he lifted. But
when he went back next day to get it, all the strength he had
wouldn't lift the flag.
_The Army Man:_
There was a forth sometime or other there inside the gate, and one
Kelly told me that he was coming by it one night and saw all the hollow
spread with gold, and he had not the sense to take it up, but ran away.
* * * * *
A friend I had near Athenry had more sense. He saw the ground spread
with gold and he took up the full of his pockets and paid his rent next
day and prospered ever after, as everyone does that gets the faery gold.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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