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
Two men I saw one time over in Inchy. I was sitting milking the cow
and she let a snore and I looked up and I saw the two men, small men,
and their hands and their feet the smallest ever I saw, and hats
turned back on their heads, but I did not see their faces. Then the
cow rose her foot, and I thought, "it will be worse for me if she'll
put her foot down on me," and I looked at her, and when I looked up
again they were gone. Mrs. Stafford told me it was not for me they
came, but for the cow, Blackberry, that died soon after.
* * * * *
There was a man in Gort was brought for a while to Tir-na-Og, that is
a part of heaven.
* * * * *
McGarrity that was coming back one night to the new house beyond
the lake saw two children, two little girls they were, standing
beside the house. Paddy told me that, and he said they came there to
foretell him he was stopping there too late.
_John Phelan:_
I never saw them nor felt them all my life, and I walking the place
night and day, except one time when for twelve nights I slept in the
little house beyond, in the kitchen garden where the apples were being
robbed that time because there was no one living at home. In the
night-time in the loft above my head I used to hear a scratching and
a scraping, and one time a plank that was above in it began to move
about. But I had no fear but stopped there, but I did not put off my
clothes nor stretch myself on the bed for twelve nights. They say that
one man that slept in the same house was found in the morning choked in
his bed and the door locked that they had to burst it in.
And in old Richard Gregory's time there was one Horan slept there,
and one night he ran out of it and out of the Gort gate and got no
leave to put his clothes on. But there's some can see those things
and more that can't, and I'm one of those that can't. Walking Coole
demesne I am these forty years, days and nights, and never met
anything worse than myself.
But one night standing by the vinery and the moon shining, on a
sudden a wind rose and shook the trees and rattled the glass and the
slates, and no wind before, and it stopped as sudden as it came. And
there were two bunches of grapes gone, and them that took them took
them by the chimney and no other way.
_James Hill:_
One night since I lived here I found late at night that a black jennet
I had at that time had strayed away. So I took a lantern and went to
look for him, and found him near Doherty's house at the bay. And when
I took him by the halter, I put the light out and led him home. But
surely as I walked there was a footstep behind me all the way home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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