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
There was a woman I knew in County Limerick, near Foynes--Mrs.
Doolan, a nurse. She was called out of bed one night by a small man
with a lamp, and he led her to a place she had never seen before,
and into a house, and there was a woman in a bed and the child was
born after she came. And I always heard her say it was a faery she
attended. And the man led her back and gave her a sovereign, and bid
her change it before sunrise.
* * * * *
And I know a boy lived on Lord Dunraven's property, one of a family
of large farmers, and he had a settle-bed in the kitchen, and one
night he saw the kitchen full of them, and they making up the fire
and cooking, and they set out the table and ate at it.
* * * * *
I often heard they'd fight in November at the time of harvest, and
my father told me that in the year of the famine there was great
fighting heard up in the sky, and they were crying out, "Black
potatoes, black potatoes, we'll have them now." I suppose it was one
tribe of them fighting against another for them. And the oats in that
year were all black as well as the potatoes.
_A Clare Man:_
I saw them myself one night I was going to Ennis with a load of
straw. It was when we came to Bunnahow and the moon was shining, and
I was on the top of the load of straw, and I saw them in a field.
Just like jockeys they were, and riding horses, red clothes and caps
they had like a jockey would have, but they were small. They had a
screen of bushes put up in the field and some of the horses would
jump over it, and more of them would baulk when they'd be put to it.
The men that were with me didn't see them, they were walking in the
road, but they heard the sound of the horses.
_Another Clare Man:_
I heard a churning one time in the hill up by the road beyond. I was
coming back from Kinvara, and I heard it plain, no mistake about it.
I was sorry after I didn't call down and ask for a drink. Johnny Moon
did so, and got it. If you wish for a drink and they put it out for
you, it's no harm to take it, but if you refuse it, some harm might
happen to you. Johnny Henderson often told that he heard churning in
that spot, but I wouldn't believe the sun rising from him, he had so
many lies. But after that, I said, "Well, Johnny Henderson has told
the truth for once anyhow."
_A Miller:_
There was Tom Gantly one evening was going to Coole, and he heard a
step behind him and it followed him every bit of the way, till he got
to the hall door of Coole House; but he could see nothing.
He saw a gig one night on the road there by the wall and it full of
ladies laughing and grandly dressed--the best of hats and feathers
they had. And it turned and passed him a second time. And with the
fright he got, he never would pass that bit of road by himself again.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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