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
_An Old Woman who was Housekeeper to the Donnellans:_
I'll tell you how the fortune of the family began.
It was Tully O'Donnellan was riding home from Ballinasloe, or some
other place, and it was raining, and he came to a river that was in
flood, and there used to be no bridges in those times. And when he
was going to ride through the river, he saw the _greasa_ leprechaun
on the bank, and he offered him a lift, and he stooped down and
lifted him up behind him on the horse.
And when he got near where the castle was, he saw it in flames before
him. And the leprechaun said, "Don't fret after it but build a new
castle in the place I'll show you, about a stone's throw from the
old one." "I have no money to do that," said Tully Donnellan. "Never
mind that," said the leprechaun, "but do as I bid you, and you'll
have plenty." So he did as he bade him, and the morning after he went
to live in the new castle, when he went into that room that has the
stone with his name on it now, it was full up of gold, and you could
be turning it like you'd turn potatoes into a shovel. And when the
children would go into the room with their father and mother, the
nurses would put bits of wax on their shoes, the way bits of the gold
would stick to them. And they had great riches and smothered the world
with it, and they used to shoe their horses with silver. It was in
racing they ran through it, and keeping hounds and horses and horns.
_Old Pegs Kelly:_
I seen the Sheogue but once, and that was five or six years ago, and
I walking the railway where I was looking after my little hens that
do be straying. And I saw them coming along, and in a minute I was in
the middle of them. Shavings, and shavings, and shavings going along
the road as fast as they could go. And I knew there was no shavings
to be seen this many year, since the stakes were made for the railway
down at Nolan's, and the carpenter that made them dead, and the shop
where he made them picked clean. And I knew well they were the horses
the Sheogue did be riding. But some that saw them said they looked
like bits of paper. And I threw three stones after them and I heard
them cry out as they went. And that night the roof was swept off Tom
Dermot's house in Ryanrush and haystacks blown down. And John Brady's
daughter that was daft those many years was taken, and Tom Horan's
little girl that was picking potatoes, she and her brothers together.
She turned black all of a minute and three days after, she was dead.
That's the only time I seen them, and that I never may again, for
believe me that time I had my enough, thinking as I did that I hadn't
more than three minutes to live.
_A Herd's Wife:_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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