place where it was, and it's green all through the summer and the
winter--and she went up to the north side and she married a young man
up there, for she was counted a rich woman. She had but two daughters
left, and one of them was married, and there was a match to be made
for the other, but the stepfather wouldn't allow her to give any of
the land to her, so she said she'd go to America, and the priest drew
up a stamped paper for her, that they'd keep a portion of money for
her every year till she'd come back. It wasn't long after that the
stepfather was out in one of the fields one day and two men came and
knocked him down and gave him a beating. And it was his belief it was
the father of the girl and one of the brothers that came to beat him.
And one of the neighbours that went to the house one night saw one
of the brothers standing at the window, plump and plain. And a first
cousin of theirs--a Donovan--was near the Black Rock one night, and
he saw them playing ball there, the whole of them that had gone, and
others with them. And when they saw him they whistled to make fun of
him, and he went away.
The stepfather died after that, and the woman herself died, and was
buried a week yesterday. And she had one son by the second husband and
he was always silly-like, and the night she died he went into the room
where she was, to the other side of the bed, and he called out, and
then he came out walking crooked, and his face drawn up on one side;
and so he is since, and a neighbour taking care of him. And you'd
hardly mind what a poor silly creature like him would say, but what he
says is that it was some of the boys that were gone that were in it.
And now there's no one to take up the land that so many were after; the
girl in America wouldn't for all the world come back to that place.
V
THE FIGHTING OF THE FRIENDS
V
THE FIGHTING OF THE FRIENDS
_"One time on Hy, one Brito of Columcille's brotherhood was dying,
and Columcille gave him his blessing but would not see him die,
and went out into the little court of the house. And he had hardly
gone out when the life went from Brito. And Columcille was out in
the little court, and one of the monks saw him looking upward, and
wonder on him, and he asked what was it he saw. And Columcille said,
'I have seen just at this moment the holy angels fighting in the air
against the power of the enemy, and I gave thanks to Christ, the
Judge, because the winning angels have carried to heaven the soul
of this stranger that is the first to have died among us in this
island. And do not tell his secret to any person in my lifetime,' he
said."_--"Saints and Wonders."
* * * * *
_"With that King Arthur entereth into a great forest adventurous, and
rideth the day long until he cometh about evensong into the thick of
the forest. And he espied a little house beside a little chapel, and
it well seemed to him to be a hermitage.... And it seemed to him that
there was a strife in the chapel. The ones were weeping so tenderly
and sweetly as it were angels, and the others spake so harshly as
it were fiends.... The voices ceased as soon as he was within. He
marvelleth how it came that this house and hermitage were solitary,
and what had become of the hermit that dwelt therein. He drew nigh
the altar of the chapel, and beheld in front thereof a coffin all
discovered, and he saw the hermit lying therein all clad in his
vestments, and his hands crossed upon his breast, and he had life in
him yet, but he was nigh his end, being at the point of death.... The
King departed and so returned back into the little house, and sate
him down on a seat whereon the hermit wont to sit. And he heareth
the strife and the noise begin again within the chapel, and the ones
he heareth speaking high and the others low, and he knoweth well by
the voices that the ones are angels and the others devils. And he
heareth that the devils are distraining on the hermit's soul, and
that judgment will presently be given in their favour, whereof make
they great joy. King Arthur is grieved in his heart when he heareth
that the angels' voices are stilled. And while he sitteth thus,
stooping his head toward the ground, full of vexation and discontent,
he heareth in the chapel the voice of a Lady that spake so sweet
and clear that no man in this earthly world, were his grief and
heaviness never so sore, but and he had heard the sweet voice of her
pleading would again have been in joy.... The devils go their way all
discomfit and aggrieved; and the sweet Mother of our Lord God taketh
the soul of the hermit.... And the angels take it and begin to sing
for joy 'Te Deum Laudamus.' And the Holy Lady leadeth them and goeth
her way along with them."_--"The High History of the Holy Grail."
Translated by Sebastian Evans.
* * * * *
_Before I had read this old story from "The High History of the Holy
Grail" I had heard on our own roads of the fighting at the hour of
death, and how the friends of the dying among the dead come and use
their strength on his side, and I had been shown here and there a house
where such a fight had taken place. In the old days it was a king or
saint who saw and heard this unearthly battle; but now it is not those
who live in palaces who are aware of it, and it is not around the roof
of a fair chapel the hosts of good and evil gather in combat for the
parting soul, but around the thatched and broken roof of the poor._
_I was told by An Islander:_
There are more of the Sheogue in America than what there are here, and
more of other sort of spirits. There was a man from there told me that
one night in America he had brought his wife's niece that was sick back
from the hospital, and had put her in an upper room. And in the evening
they heard a scream from her and she called out "The room is full of
them, and my father is with them, and my aunt." And he drove them away
and used the devil's name and cursed them. And she was left quiet that
night, but the next day she said "I'll be destroyed altogether tonight
with them." And he said he'd keep them out, and he locked the door of
the house. And towards midnight he heard them coming to the door and
trying to get in, but he kept it locked and he called to them by way
of the keyhole to keep away out of that. And there was talking among
them, and the girl that was upstairs said that she could hear the laugh
of her father and of her aunt. And they heard the greatest fighting
among them that ever was, and after that they went away, and the girl
got well. That's what often happens, crying and fighting for one that's
sick or going to die.
_Mrs. Meagher:_
There was an old woman the other day was telling me of a little girl
that was put to bake a cake, for her mother was sick in the room. And
when she turned away her head for a minute the cake was gone. And
that happened the second day and the third, and the mother was vexed
when she heard it, thinking some of the neighbours had come and taken
it away.
But the next day an old man appeared, and she knew he was the
grandfather, and he said "It's by me the cake was taken, for I was
watching the house these three nights when I knew there was some one
sick in it. And you never heard such a fight as there was for her last
night, and they would have brought her away but for me that had my
shoulder to the door." And the woman began to recover from that time.
_Tom Smith:_
There does often be fighting when a person is dying. John Madden's
wife that lived in this house before I came to it, the night she died
there was a noise heard, that all the village thought that every wall
of every garden round about was falling down. But in the morning
there was no sign of any of them being fallen.
And Hannay that lived at Cahir, the bonesetter, when I went to him
one time told me that one night late he was walking the road near
Ardrahan. And they heard a great noise of fighting in the castle he
was passing by, and no one living in it and it open to the sky. And
he turned in and was going up the stairs, and a lady in a white dress
stopped him and wouldn't let him pass up. But the next day he went to
look and he found the floor all covered with blood.
* * * * *
And before John Casey's death, John Leeson asked me one day were we
fighting down at our place, for he heard a great noise of fighting
the night before.
_A Farmer:_
As to fighting for those that are dying, I'd believe in that. There was
a girl died not far from here, and the night of her death there was
heard in the air the sound of an army marching, and the drums beating,
and it stopped over the house where she was lying sick. And they could
see no one, but could hear the drums and the marching plain enough, and
there were like little flames of lightning playing about it.
* * * * *
Did they fight for Johnny Casey? No, believe me it's not among the
faeries Johnny Casey is. Too old he is for them to want him among
them, and too cranky.
* * * * *
I would hardly believe they'd take the old, but we can't know what they
might want of them. And it's well to have a friend among them, and
it's always said you have no right to fret if your children die, for
it's well to have them there before you. And when a person is dying the
friends and the others will often come about the house and will give a
great challenge for him. They don't want cross people, and they won't
take you if you say so much as one cross word. It's only the good and
the pious they want. Now isn't that very good of them?
_Another:_
There was a young man I knew died, a fine young man, twenty-five
years of age. He was seven or eight days ill, and the night he died
they could hear fighting around the house, and they heard voices but
they couldn't know what they were saying. And in the morning the
ground was all covered with blood.
* * * * *
When Connors the young policeman died, sure the mother said she never
heard such fighting as went on within the house. And there was blood
splashed high up on the walls. They never let on how he got the
touch, but I suppose they knew it themselves.
_A Gatekeeper:_
There was a girl near Westport was _away_, and the way it came on her
was, she was on the road one day and two men passed her, and one of
them said, "That's a fine girl," and the other said, "She belongs to
my town," and there and then she got a pain in her knee, and couldn't
walk home but had to be brought in a car. And she used to be away at
night, and thorns in her feet in the morning, but she never said where
she went. But one time the sister brought her to Kilfenora, and when
they were crossing a bog near to there, she pointed out a house in the
bog, and she said "It's there I was last night." And the sister asked
did she know any one she saw in it, and she said "There was one I know,
that is my mother's cousin," and she told her name. And she said "But
for her they'd have me ill-treated, but she fought for me and saved
me." She was thought to be dying one time and given over, and my mother
sent me to see her, and how was she. And she was lying on the bed and
her eyes turned back, and she speechless, and I told my mother when I
came home she hadn't an hour to live. And the next day she was up and
about and not a thing on her. It might be the mother's cousin that
fought for her again there. She went to America after.
_An Aran Woman:_
There's often fighting heard about the house where one is sick, that
is what we call "the fighting of the friends" for we believe it is
the friends and the enemies of the sick person fighting for him.
* * * * *
I knew a house where there were a good many sleeping one night, and
in the morning there was blood on the threshold, and the clothes of
those that slept on the floor had blood on them. And it wasn't long
after that the woman of the house took sick and died.
* * * * *
One night there was one of the boys very sick within, and in the
morning the grandmother said she heard a great noise of fighting in the
night about the door. And she said: "If it hadn't been for Michael and
John being drowned, you'd have lost Martin last night. For they were
there fighting for him; I heard them, and I saw the shadow of Michael,
but when I turned to take hold of him he was gone."
VI
THE UNQUIET DEAD
VI
THE UNQUIET DEAD
_A good many years ago when I was but beginning my study of the
folk-lore of belief, I wrote somewhere that if by an impossible miracle
every trace and memory of Christianity could be swept out of the world,
it would not shake or destroy at all the belief of the people of
Ireland in the invisible world, the cloud of witnesses, in immortality
and the life to come. For them the veil between things seen and unseen
has hardly thickened since those early days of the world when the sons
of God mated with the daughters of men; when angels spoke with Abraham
in Hebron or with Columcille in the oakwoods of Derry, or when as an
old man at my own gate told me they came and visited the Fianna, the
old heroes of Ireland, "because they were so nice and so respectable."
Ireland has through the centuries kept continuity of vision, the vision
it is likely all nations possessed in the early days of faith. Here in
Connacht there is no doubt as to the continuance of life after death.
The spirit wanders for a while in that intermediate region to which
mystics and theologians have given various names, and should it return
and become visible those who loved it will not be afraid, but will, as
I have already told, put a light in the window to guide the mother home
to her child, or go out into the barley gardens in the hope of meeting
a son. And if the message brought seems hardly worth the hearing, we
may call to mind what Frederic Myers wrote of more instructed ghosts:_
_"If it was absurd to listen to Kepler because he bade the planets
move in no perfect circles but in undignified ellipses, because he
hastened and slackened from hour to hour what ought to be a heavenly
body's ideal and unwavering speed; is it not absurder still to refuse
to listen to these voices from afar, because they come stammering and
wandering as in a dream confusedly instead of with a trumpet's call?
Because spirits that bending to earth may undergo perhaps an earthly
bewilderment and suffer unknown limitations, and half remember and
half forget?"_
_And should they give the message more clearly who knows if it would
be welcome? For the old Scotch story goes that when S. Columcille's
brother Dobhran rose up from his grave and said, "Hell is not so bad
as people say," the Saint cried out, "Clay, clay on Dobhran!" before
he could tell any more._
_I was told by Mrs. Dennehy:_
Those that mind the teaching of the clergy say the dead go to Limbo
first and then to Purgatory and then to hell or to heaven. Hell is
always burning and if you go there you never get out; but those that
mind the old people don't believe, and I don't believe, that there is
any hell. I don't believe God Almighty would make Christians to put
them into hell afterwards.
It is what the old people say, that after death the shadow goes
wandering, and the soul is weak, and the body is taking a rest. The
shadow wanders for a while and it pays the debts it had to pay, and
when it is free it puts out wings and flies to Heaven.
_An Aran Man:_
There was an old man died, and after three days he appeared in the
cradle as a baby; they knew him by an old look in his face, and his
face being long and other things. An old woman that came into the
house saw him, and she said, "He won't be with you long, he had three
deaths to die, and this is the second," and sure enough he died at
the end of six years.
_Mrs. Martin:_
There was a man beyond when I lived at Ballybron, and it was said of
him that he was taken away--up before God Almighty. But the blessed
Mother asked for grace for him for a year and a day. So he got it. I
seen him myself, and many seen him, and at the end of the year and a
day he died. And that man ought to be happy now anyway. When my own
poor little girl was drowned in the well, I never could sleep but
fretting, fretting, fretting. But one day when one of my little boys
was taking his turn to serve the Mass he stopped on his knees without
getting up. And Father Boyle asked him what did he see and he looking
up. And he told him that he could see his little sister in the
presence of God, and she shining like the sun. Sure enough that was a
vision He had sent to comfort us. So from that day I never cried nor
fretted any more.
_A Herd:_
Do you believe Roland Joyce was seen? Well, he was. A man I know told
me he saw him the night of his death, in Esserkelly where he had a
farm, and a man along with him going through the stock. And all of a
sudden a train came into the field, and brought them both away like a
blast of wind.
* * * * *
And as for old Parsons Persse of Castleboy, there's thousands of people
has seen him hunting at night with his horses and his hounds and his
bugle blowing. There's no mistake at all about him being there.
_An Aran Woman:_
There was a girl in the middle island had died, and when she was
being washed, and a priest in the house, there flew by the window the
whitest bird that ever was seen. And the priest said to the father:
"Do not lament, unless what you like, your child's happy for ever!"
_Mrs. Casey:_
Near the strand there were two little girls went out to gather
cow-dung. And they sat down beside a bush to rest themselves, and
there they heard a groan coming from under the ground. So they ran
home as fast as they could. And they were told when they went again
to bring a man with them.
So the next time they went they brought a man with them, and they
hadn't been sitting there long when they heard the saddest groan that
ever you heard. So the man bent down and asked what was it. And a
voice from below said, "Let some one shave me and get me out of this,
for I was never shaved after dying." So the man went away, and the
next day he brought soap and all that was needful and there he found
a body lying laid out on the grass. So he shaved it, and with that
wings came and carried it up to high heaven.
_A Chimney-sweep:_
I don't believe in all I hear, or I'd believe in ghosts and faeries,
with all the old people telling you stories about them and the
priests believing in them too. Surely the priests believe in ghosts,
and tell you that they are souls that died in trouble. But I have
been about the country night and day, and I remember when I used to
have to put my hand out at the top of every chimney in Coole House;
and I seen or felt nothing to frighten me, except one night two rats
caught in a trap at Roxborough; and the old butler came down and beat
me with a belt for the scream I gave at that. But if I believed in
any one coming back, it would be in what you often hear, of a mother
coming back to care for her child.
And there's many would tell you that every time you see a tree
shaking there's a ghost in it.
* * * * *
Old Lambert of Dangan was a terror for telling stories; he told me
long ago how he was near the Piper's gap on Ballybrit race-course,
and he saw one riding to meet him, and it was old Michael Lynch of
Ballybrista, that was dead long before, and he never would go on the
race-course again. And he had heard the car with headless horses
driving through Loughrea. From every part they are said to drive, and
the place they are all going to is Benmore, near Loughrea, where there
is a ruined dwelling-house and an old forth. And at Mount Mahon a herd
told me the other day he often saw old Andrew Mahon riding about at
night. But if I was a herd and saw that I'd hold my tongue about it.
_Mrs. Casey:_
At the graveyard of Drumacoo often spirits do be seen. Old George
Fitzgerald is seen by many. And when they go up to the stone he's
sitting on, he'll be sitting somewhere else.
There was a man walking in the wood near there, and he met a woman,
a stranger, and he said "Is there anything I can do for you?" For he
thought she was some country-woman gone astray. "There is," says she.
"Then come home with me," says he, "and tell me about it." "I can't
do that," says she, "but what you can do is this, go tell my friends
I'm in great trouble, for twenty times in my life I missed going to
church, and they must say twenty Masses for me now to deliver me,
but they seem to have forgotten me. And another thing is," says she,
"there's some small debts I left and they're not paid, and those are
helping to keep me in trouble." Well, the man went on and he didn't
know what in the world to do, for he couldn't know who she was, for
they are not permitted to tell their name. But going about visiting
at country houses he used to tell the story, and at last it came out
she was one of the Shannons. For at a house he was telling it at they
remembered that an old woman they had, died a year ago, and that she
used to be running up little debts unknown to them. So they made
inquiry at Findlater's and at another shop that's done away with now,
and they found that sure enough she had left some small debts, not
more than ten shillings in each, and when she died no more had been
said about it. So they paid these and said the Masses, and shortly
after she appeared to the man again. "God bless you now," she said,
"for what you did for me, for now I'm at peace."
_A Tinker's Daughter:_
I heard of what happened to a family in the town. One night a thing
that looked like a goose came in. And when they said nothing to it,
it went away up the stairs with a noise like lead. Surely if they had
questioned it, they'd have found it to be some soul in trouble.
And there was another soul came back that was in trouble because of a
ha'porth of salt it owed.
And there was a priest was in trouble and appeared after death, and
they had to say Masses for him, because he had done some sort of a
crime on a widow.
_Mrs. Farley:_
One time myself I was at Killinan, at a house of the Clancys' where the
father and mother had died, but it was well known they often come to
look after the children. I was walking with another girl through the
fields there one evening and I looked up and saw a tall woman dressed
all in black, with a mantle of some sort, a wide one, over her head,
and the waves of the wind were blowing it off her, so that I could hear
the noise of it. All her clothes were black, and had the appearance of
being new. And I asked the other girl did she see her, and she said she
did not. For two that are together can never see such things, but only
one of them. So when I heard she saw nothing I ran as if for my life,
and the woman seemed to be coming after me, till I crossed a running
stream and she had no power to cross that. And one time my brother was
stopping in the same house, and one night about twelve o'clock there
came a smell in the house like as if all the dead people were there.
And one of the girls whose father and mother had died got up out of her
bed, and began to put her clothes on, and they had to lock the doors to
stop her from going away out of the house.
* * * * *
There was a woman I knew of that after her death was kept for seven
years in a tree in Kinadyfe, and for seven years after that she was
kept under the arch of the little bridge beyond Kilchriest, with the
water running under her. And whether there was frost or snow she had
no shelter from it, not so much as the size of a leaf.
At the end of the second seven years she came to her husband, and he
passing the bridge on the way home from Loughrea, and when he felt
her near him he was afraid, and he didn't stop to question her, but
hurried on.
So then she came in the evening to the house of her own little girl.
But she was afraid when she saw her, and fell down in a faint. And the
woman's sister's child was in the house, and when the little girl told
her what she saw, she said "You must surely question her when she comes
again." So she came again that night, but the little girl was afraid
again when she saw her and said nothing. But the third night when she
came the sister's child, seeing her own little girl was afraid, said
"God bless you, God bless you." And with that the woman spoke and said
"God bless you for saying that." And then she told her all that had
happened her and where she had been all the fourteen years. And she
took out of her dress a black silk handkerchief and said: "I took that
from my husband's neck the day I met him on the road from Loughrea,
and this very night I would have killed him, because he hurried away
and would not stop to help me, but now that you have helped me I'll
not harm him. But bring with you to Kilmacduagh, to the graveyard,
three cross sticks with wool on them, and three glasses full of salt,
and have three Masses said for me; and I'll appear to you when I am at
rest." And so she did; and it was for no great thing she had done that
trouble had been put upon her.
_John Cloran:_