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
Mary Irwin's brother was asleep within on the bed. And there came the
sound of the grandest music you ever heard from beyond the stream,
and it stopped here. And Micky awoke in the bed, and was afraid and
said, "Shut up the door and quench the light," and so we did. It's
likely they wanted to come into the house, and they wouldn't when
they saw us up and the lights about. But one time when there were
potatoes in the loft, Mary Irwin and her brothers were well pelted
with them when they sat down to their supper. And Mary Glynn got a
blow on the side of her face from them one night in the bed. And they
have the hope of Heaven, and God grant it to them. And one day there
was a priest and his servant riding along the road, and there was a
hurling of _them_ going on in the field. And a man of them came and
stood on the road and said to the priest, "Tell me this, for you know
it, have we a chance of Heaven?" "You have not," said the priest
(_"God forgive him," says Mary Glynn--"a priest to say that"_); and
the man that was of them said, "Put your fingers in your ears till
you have travelled two miles of the road; for when I go back and tell
what you are after telling me to the rest, the crying and the bawling
and the roaring will be so great that if you hear it you'll never
hear a noise again in this world." So they put their fingers then in
their ears, but after a while the servant said to the priest, "Let me
take out my fingers now." And the priest said, "Do not." And then the
servant said again, "I think I might take one finger out." And the
priest said, "As you are so persevering you may take it out." So he
did, and the noise of the crying and the roaring and the bawling was
so great that he never had the use of that ear again.
_Callan of Slieve Echtge:_
We know they are in it, for Father Hobbs that was our parish priest
saw them himself one time there was a station here, and when some
said they were not in it, he said, "I saw them in a field myself, more
people than ever I saw at twenty fairs." It was St. Peter spoke for
them, at the time of the war, when the Saviour was casting them out;
he said to Him not to empty the heavens. And every Monday morning they
think the Day of Judgment may be coming, and that they will see Heaven.
* * * * *
There's never a funeral they are not at, walking after the other
people. And you can see them if you know the way, that is to take a
green rush and to twist it into a ring, and to look through it. But
if you do, you'll never have a stim of sight in the eye again, and
that's why we don't like to do it.
Resting they do be in the daytime, and going about in the night.
_Old Hayden:_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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