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
In India, before Delhi, there was an officer's servant lodged in the
same house as me, and was thrown out of his cot every night. And as
sure as midnight came, the dogs couldn't stop outside but would come
shrinking and howling into the house. Yes indeed, I believe the faeries
are in all countries, all over the world; but the banshee is only in
Ireland, though sometimes in India I would think of her when I'd hear
the hyenas laughing. Keening, keening, you can hear her, but only for
the old Irish families, but she'll follow them even as far as Dublin.
IV
IN THE WAY
IV
IN THE WAY
_An old Athenry man who had been as a soldier all through the Indian
Mutiny and had come back to end his days here as a farmer said to me
in speaking of "The Others" and those who may be among them: "There's
some places of their own we should never touch such as the forths; and
if ever we cross their pathways we're like to know it soon enough, for
some ill turn they'll do us, and then we must draw back out of their
way.... And we should above all things leave the house clean at night,
with nothing about that would offend them. For we must all die some
day, but God knows we're not all fit for heaven just on the minute; and
what the intermediate state may be, or what friends we may want there,
I don't know. No one has come back to tell us that."_
_I was told by John Donovan:_
Before I came here I was for two years in a house outside Cloon. And
no one that lived there ever prospered but all they did went to loss.
I sowed seeds and put in the crop each year, and if I'd stopped there
I wouldn't have had enough to keep trousers to my back. _In the way_
the place must be. I had no disturbance in the house, but some nights
I could hear the barrel rolling outside the door, back and forwards,
with a sort of a warning to me.
I knew another house in Clare where the front door is always shut up
and they only use the back door, but when I asked them the reason
they said if they opened the front door a sudden blast would come in,
that would take the roof off the house. And there's another house in
Clare built in a forth, a new one, shut up and the windows closed,
for no one can live in it.
_Andrew Lee:_
"In the way?" Yes that's a thing that often happens. Sure going into
Clough, you might see a house that no man ever yet kept a roof on.
Surely it's in the way of their coming and going. And Doctor Nolan's
father began to build a barn one time, and whatever was built in the
day, in the night it would be pulled down, so at last they gave over.
It was only labour and wages wasted.
_Mrs. Cloran:_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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