Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Second Series — John Shaqi
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
But they're mostly good neighbours. There was a woman they used to
help, one of them used to come and help her to clean the house, but
she never came when the husband was there. And one day she came and
said they were going to move now, to near Clifden. And she bid the
woman follow them, and whenever she'd come to a briar turned down,
with a thorn stuck in the earth, to build a house there.
_A Travelling Man:_
I was sleeping at a house one time and _they_ came in--the fallen
angels. They were pulling the clothes off me, ten times they did
that, and they were laughing like geese--just the very sound of
geese--and their boots were too large for their feet and were
clapping, clapping on the floor. I suppose they didn't like me to be
in it, or that the house was built in one of their passages.
My father was driven out of the little garden house at Castleboy one
time he went to sleep in it. In the way, I suppose it must have been.
And I knew of a herd's house, where five or six herds went one after
another and every one of them died, and their dogs and their cow. And
the gentleman that owned the place came to ask another one to go in
it, and his wife said she wouldn't go, for there was some bad luck
about it. But she went after, and she was a very clean woman, not
like some of them that do have the house dirty. Well, one day a woman
came to the door and asked for a dish of oaten meal, and she took
it from the shelf, and gave it to her. "I'll bring it back to you
tomorrow," says she, "it'll be easy getting it then when it's market
day." "Do not," says the woman of the house, "for if you do I won't
take it." "Well," says the stranger, "you'll have luck after this;
only one thing I tell you, keep that door at the back shut, and if
you want any opening there, let you open the window." Well, so she
did, and by minding that rule, and keeping the house so clean, she
was never troubled but lived there all her life.
_An Island Woman:_
There are some houses that never bring luck. There is one over there,
out of this village, and two or three died in it, and one night it
blazed up and burned down, those that were out in the fishing boats
could see it, but it was never known how it happened.
There was a house over in the other village and a woman living in it
that had two forths of land. And she had clever children, but the
most of them died one after another, boys and girls, and then the
husband died. And after that one of the boys that had died came to
her and said "You'd best leave this house or you'll be as we are,
and we are all now living in the Black Rock at the gable end of the
house. And two of the McDaraghs are with us there."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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