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
One night passing the big tree at Raheen I heard the sound of a
handsaw in the air, and I looked up and there in the top of a larch
tree that's near to a beech I saw a man sitting and cutting it with
the handsaw. So I hurried away home. But the next time I passed that
way I took a view of it to see might it have been one of the Dillons
that might be stealing timber; and there was no sign of a cut or a
touch in it at all.
* * * * *
There was a man on the road between Chevy and Marble Hill, where
there is a faery plumb-stone, that stands straight up and it about
five feet in height, and the man was building a house and carried it
away to put above his door. And from the time he brought it away, all
his stock began to die, and whenever he went in or out, night or day,
he was severely beaten. So at last he took the stone down and put it
back where it was before, and from that time nothing has troubled him.
_John Mangan:_
Myself and two of my brothers were over at Inchy Weir to catch a
horse, and growing close by the water there was a bush the form of
an umbrella, very close and thick at the top. So we began fooling as
boys do, and I said, "I'll bet a button none of you will make a stone
go through the bush." So I took up a pebble of cow-dung and threw it,
and they all threw, and no sooner did the pebble hit the bush than
there came from it music, like a band playing. So we all ran for our
lives, and when we had got about two hundred yards we looked back and
we saw something moving round the bush, first it had the clothes of a
woman and then of a man. So we stopped to see no more.
Well, it was some years after that when Sir William ordered all the
bushes in that part to be cut down. And one Prendergast a boy that used
to be a beater here and that went to America after, went to cut them
just in the same place where I had seen that sight, and a thorn ran
into his eye and blinded him, and he never got the sight of it again.
_An Old Woman near Ballinsloe:_
There are many forths around, and in that one beyond, there is often
music heard. The smith's father heard the music one time he was
passing and he could not stop from dancing till he was tired. I heard
him tell that myself.
And over there to the left there is a forth had an opening in it, and
the steward wanted to get it closed up, and he could get no men to do
it. And at last a young man said he would, and he went to work and at
the end of the week he was dead.
And there was a girl milking a cow not long after that, and she saw
him coming to her, and she ran away, and he called to her to stop and
she did not, and he said "That you may never milk another cow!" And
within a week, she herself was dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account