he turned to the wall to close his shoe. And when he turned again
there was something running through the field that was the size of a
yearling calf, and black, and it ran across the road, and there was
like the sound of chains in it. And when it came to that rock with
the bush on it, it stopped and he could see a red light in its mouth.
And then it disappeared. He used often to see a black dog in this
road, and it used to be following him, and others saw it too. But one
night the brother of the priest, Father Mitchel, saw it and he told
the priest and he banished it.
The lake down there (Lough Graney) is an enchanted place, and old
people told me that one time they were swimming there, and a man had
gone out into the middle and they saw something like a great big eel
making for him, and they called out, "If ever you were a great swimmer
show us now how you can swim to the shore," for they wouldn't frighten
him by saying what was behind him. So he swam to the shore, and he only
got there when the thing behind him was in the place where he was. For
there are queer things in lakes. I never saw anything myself, but one
time I was coming home late from Scariff, and I felt my hair standing
up on my head, and I began to feel a sort of shy and fearful, and I
could feel that there was something walking beside me. But after a
while there was a little stream across the road, and after I passed
that I was all right again and could feel nothing near.
* * * * *
I never saw anything myself but once, early in the morning and I going
to the May fair of Loughrea. It was a little way outside of the town
I saw something that had the appearance of a black pig, and it was
running in under the cart and under the ass's feet. And the ass would
keep backing away from it, that it was hardly I could bring her along,
till we got to the bridge of Cloon, and once we were over that we saw
it no more, for it couldn't pass the running water. And all the time it
was with us I was hitting at it with my stick, and it would run from
me then, for it was a hazel stick, and the hazel is blessed, and no
wicked thing can stay when it is touched with it. It is likely the nuts
are blessed too. Aren't they growing on the same tree?
* * * * *
I was over at Phayre's mill one time to get some boards sawed and
they said I must wait an hour or so, where the mill wasn't free. And
I had a load of turf to get, and I went along the road. And I heard
something coming after me in the gutter, and it stood up over me like
an elephant, and I put my hands behind me and I said, "Madad Fior,"
and he went away. It was just at the bridge he was, near Kilchriest,
and when I was coming back after a while, just when I got to the
bridge there, he was after me again. But I never saw him since then.
* * * * *
One time I was at the fair at Ballinasloe, and I but a young lad at the
time, and a comrade with me that was but a young lad too. We brought in
the sheep the Monday evening, and they were sold the Tuesday morning,
and the master bid us to go home on the train. "Bad cess," said my
comrade, "are we to get no good at all out of the fair? Let us stop,"
says he, "and get the good of it and go back by the mail train." So
we went through the fair together and went to a dance, and the master
never knew, and we went home on the mail train together. We got out at
Woodlawn and we were going home, and we heard a sort of a groaning and
we could see nothing, and the boy that was with me was frightened, for
though he was a strong boy, he was a timorous man. We found then the
groaning coming from beyond the wall, and I went and put my two fists
on the wall and looked over it. There were two trees on the other side
of the wall, and I saw walking off and down from one tree to the other,
something that was like a soldier or a sentry. The body was a man's
body, and there was a black suit on it, but it had the head of a bear,
the very head and _puss_ of a bear. I asked what was on him. "Don't
speak to me, don't speak to me," he said, and he stopped by the tree
and was groaning and went away.
That is all that ever I saw, and I herding sheep in the lambing
season, and falling asleep as I did sometimes, and walking up and
down the field in my sleep.
* * * * *
My father told me that in the bad times, about the year '48, he used
to be watching about in the fields, where the people did be stealing
the crops. And there was no field in Coole he was afraid to go into
by night except one, that is number three in the Lake Farm. For the
dog that was about in those times stopped the night in the clump
there. And Johnny Callan told me one night passing that field he
heard the noise of a cart of stones thrown against the wall. But when
he went back there in the morning there was no sign of anything at
all. My father never saw the dog himself but he was known to be there
and he felt him.
And as for the monster, I never saw it in Coole Lake, but one day I
was coming home with my two brothers from Tirneevan school, and there
as we passed Dhulough we heard a great splashing, and we saw some
creature put up its head, with a head and a mane like a horse. And we
didn't stop but ran.
But I think it was not so big as the monster over here in Coole Lake,
for Johnny Callan saw it, and he said it was the size of a stack of
turf. But there's many could tell about that for there's many saw it,
Dougherty from Gort and others.
* * * * *
As to the dog that used to be in the road, a friend of his own
was driving Father Boyle from Kinvara late one night and there it
was--first on the right side and then on the left of the car. And at
last he told Father Boyle, and he said, "Look out now for it, and
you'll see it no more," and no more he did, and that was the last of it.
But the driver of the mail-car often seen a figure of a woman
following the car till it came to the churchyard beyond Ardrahan, and
there it disappeared.
Father Boyle was a good man indeed--a child might speak to him. They
said he had the dog or whatever it may be banished from the road, but
of late I heard the driver of the mail-car saying he sees it on one
spot on the road every night. And there's a very lonely hollow beyond
Doran's house, and I know a man that never passed by that hollow
but what he'd fall asleep. But one night he saw a sort of a muffled
figure and he cried out three times some good wish--such as "God have
mercy on you"--and then it gave a great laugh and vanished and he saw
it no more. As to the forths or other old places, how do we know what
poor soul may be shut up there, confined in pain?
* * * * *
Sure a man the other day coming back from your own place, Inchy, when
he came to the big tree, heard a squealing, and there he saw a sort
of a dog, and it white, and it followed as if holding on to him all
the way home. And when he got to the house he near fainted, and asked
for a glass of water.
* * * * *
There's some sort of a monster at Tyrone, rising and slipping up and
down in the sun, and when it cries, some one will be sure to die.
* * * * *
I didn't believe in them myself till one night I was coming home from
a wedding, and standing on the road beside me I saw John Kelly's
donkey that he always used to call Neddy. So he was standing in my
way and I gave a blow at him and said, "Get out of that, Neddy." And
he moved off only to come across me again, and to stop me from going
in. And so he did all the way, till as I was going by a bit of wood I
heard come out of it two of the clearest laughs that ever you heard,
and then two sorts of shouts. So I knew that it was having fun with
me they were, and that it was not Neddy was there, but his likeness.
I knew a priest was stopped on the road one night by something in the
shape of a big dog, and he couldn't make the horse pass it.
* * * * *
One night I saw the dog myself, in the boreen near my house. And that
was a bad bit of road, two or three were killed there.
And one night I was between Kiltartan Chapel and Nolan's gate where I
had some sheep to look after for the priest. And the dog I had with
me ran out into the middle of the road, and there he began to yelp
and to fight. I stood and watched him for a while, and surely he was
fighting with another dog, but there was nothing to be seen.
And in the same part of the road one night I heard horses galloping,
galloping past me. I could hear their hoofs, and they shod, on the
stones of the road. But though I stood aside and looked--and it was
bright moonlight--there were no horses to be seen. But they were
there, and believe me they were not without riders.
* * * * *
Well, myself I once slept in a house with some strange thing. I had my
aunt then, Mrs. Leary, living near, and I but a small little girl at
the time. And one day she came to our house and asked would I go sleep
with her, and I said I would if she'd give me a ride on her back, and
so she did. And for many a night after that she brought me to sleep
with her, and my mother used to be asking why, and she'd give no reason.
Well, the cause of her wanting me was this. Every night so sure as
she put the candle out, _it_ would come and lie upon her feet and
across her body and near smother her, and she could feel it breathing
but could see nothing. I never felt anything at all myself, I being
sound asleep before she quenched the light. At last she went to Father
Smith--God rest his soul!--and he gave her a prayer to say at the
moment of the Elevation of the Mass. So the next time she attended Mass
she used it, and that night it was wickeder than ever it had been.
So after that she wrote to her son in America to buy a ticket for
her, and she went out to him and remained some years. And it was only
after she came back she told me and my mother what used to happen on
those nights, and the reason she wanted me to be beside her.
* * * * *
There was never any one saw so many of those things as Johnny
Hardiman's father on this estate, and now he's old and got silly, and
can't tell about them any more. One time he was walking into Gort
along the Kiltartan road, and he saw one of them before him in the
form of a tub, and it rolling along.
Another time he was coming home from Kinvara, and a black and white
dog came out against him from the wall, but he took no notice of it.
But when he got near his own house it came out against him again and
bit him in the leg, and he got hold of it and lifted it up and took
it by the throat and choked it; and when he was sure it was dead he
threw it by the roadside. But in the morning he went out first thing
early to look at the body, and there was no sign at all of it there.
* * * * *
So I believe indeed that old Michael Barrett hears them and sees
them. But they do him no mischief nor harm at all. They wouldn't, and
he such an old resident. But there's many wouldn't believe he sees
anything because they never seen them themselves.
I never did but once, when I was a slip of a girl beyond at
Lissatiraheely, and one time I went across to the big forth to get a
can of water. And when I got near to it I heard voices, and when I
came to where the water runs out they were getting louder and louder.
And I stopped and looked down, and there in the passage where the
water comes I seen a dog within, and there was a great noise--working
I suppose they were. And I threw down the can and turned and ran, and
never went back for it again. But here since I lived in Coole I never
seen anything and never was afeared of anything except one time only
in the evening, when I was walking down the little by-lane that leads
to Ballinamantane. And there standing in the path before me I seen the
very same dog that was in the old forth before. And I believe I leaped
the wall to get away into the high-road. And what day was that but
the very same day that Sir William--the Lord be with his soul!--was
returned a Member of Parliament, and a great night it was in Kiltartan.
But I'm noways afeared of anything and I give you my word I'd walk
in the dead of night in the nut-wood or any other place--except only
the cross beyond Inchy, I'd sooner not go by there. There's two or
three has their life lost there--Heffernan of Kildesert, one of your
ladyship's own tenants, he was one. He was at a fair, and there was
a horse another man wanted, but he got inside him and got the horse.
And when he was riding home, when he came to that spot it reared
back and threw him, and he was taken up dead. And another man--one
Gallagher--fell off the top of a creel of turf in the same place and
lost his life. And there was a woman hurted some way another time.
What's that you're saying, John--that Gallagher had a drop too much
taken? That might be so indeed; and what call has a man that has
drink taken to go travel upon top of a creel of turf?
That dog I met in the boreen at Ballinamantane, he was the size of a
calf, and black, and his paws the size of I don't know what. I was
sitting in the house one day, and he came in and sat down by the
dresser and looked at me. And I didn't like the look of him when I
saw the big eyes of him, and the size of his legs. And just then a
man came in that used to make his living by making mats, and he used
to lodge with me for a night now and again. And he went out to bring
his cart away where he was afraid it'd be knocked about by the people
going to the big bonefire at Kiltartan cross-roads. And when he went
out I looked out the door, and there was the dog sitting under the
cart. So he made a hit at it with a stick, and it was in the stones
the stick stuck, and there was the dog sitting at the other side of
him. So he came in and gave me abuse and said I must be a strange
woman to have such things about me. And he never would come to lodge
with me again. But didn't the dog behave well not to do him an injury
after he hitting it? It was surely some man that was in that dog,
some soul in trouble.
* * * * *
Beasts will sometimes see more than a man will. There were three
young chaps I know went up near Ballyturn to hunt coneens (young
rabbits) and they threw the dog over the wall. And when he was in the
field he gave a yelp and drew back as if something had struck him
on the head. And with all they could do, and the rabbits and the
coneens running about the field, they couldn't get him to stir from
that and they had to come home with no rabbits.
* * * * *
One time I was helping Sully, the butcher in Loughrea, and I had to go
to a country house to bring in a measly pig the people had, and that he
was to allow them something for. So I got there late and had to stop
the night. And in the morning at daylight I looked from the window and
saw a cow eating the potatoes, so I went down to drive him off. And in
the kitchen there was lying by the hearth a dog, a speckled one, with
spots of black and white and yellow. And when he saw me he got up and
went over to the door and went out through it. And then I saw that the
door was shut and locked. So I went back again and told the people of
the house what I saw and they were frightened and made me stop the next
night. And in the night the clothes were taken off me and a heavy blow
struck me in the chest, and the feel of it was like the feel of ice. So
I covered myself up again and put my hand under the bedclothes, and I
never came to that house again.
* * * * *
I never seen anything myself, but I remember well that when I was a
young chap there was a black dog between Coole gatehouse and Gort for
many a year, and many met him there. Tom Miller came running into
our house one time when he was after seeing him, and at first sight
he thought he was a man, where he was standing with his paws up upon
the wall, and then he vanished out of sight. But there never was any
common dog the size of him, and it's many a one saw him, and it was
Father Boyle that banished him out of it at last.
* * * * *
Except that thing at Inchy Weir, I never saw anything myself. But one
evening I parted from Larry Cuniffe in the yard, and he went away
through the path in Shanwalla and bid me goodnight. But two hours
after, there he was back again in the yard, and bid me light a candle
was in the stable. And he told me that when he got into Shanwalla a
little chap about as high as his knee, but having a head as big as
a man's body, came beside him and led him out of the path and round
about, and at last it brought him to the limekiln, and there left him.
* * * * *
There is a dog now at Lismara, black and bigger than a natural dog,
is about the roads at night. He wouldn't be there so long if any one
had the courage to question him.
* * * * *
Stephen O'Donnell in Connemara told me that one time he shot a hare,
and it turned into a woman, a neighbour of his own. And she had his
butter taken for the last two years, but she begged and prayed for
life on her knees, so he spared her, and she gave him back his butter
after that, a double yield.
* * * * *
There was a woman at Glenlough when I was young could change herself
into an eel. It was in Galway Workhouse Hospital she got the
knowledge. A woman that had the knowledge of doing it by witchcraft
asked her would she like to learn, and she said that she would, for
she didn't know what it would bring on her. For every time she did
it, she'd be in bed a fortnight after with all she'd go through.
Sir Martin O'Neill when he was a young lad heard of it, and he got
her into a room, and made her do it for him, and when he saw her
change to an eel he got frightened and tried to get away, but she got
between him and the door, and showed her teeth at him and growled.
She wasn't the better of that for a fortnight after.
* * * * *
Indeed the porter did me great good, a good that I'd hardly like to
tell you, not to make a scandal. Did I drink too much of it? Not at
all, I have no fancy for it, but the nights seemed to be long. But
this long time I am feeling a worm in my side that is as big as an
eel, and there's more of them in it than that, and I was told to put
sea-grass to it, and I put it to the side the other day, and whether
it was that or the porter I don't know, but there's some of them gone
out of it, and I think it's the porter.
* * * * *
I knew a woman near Clough was out milking her cow, and when she
got up to go away she saw one of those worms coming after her, and
it eight feet long, and it made a jump about eight yards after her.
And I heard of a man went asleep by a wall one time, and one of them
went down his throat and he never could get rid of it till a woman
from the North came. And what she bade him do was to get a bit of old
crock butter and to make a big fire on the hearth, and to put the
butter in a half round on the hearth, and to get two men to hold him
over it. And when the worms got the smell of the butter they jumped
out of his mouth, seven or eight one after another, and it was in the
fire they fell and they were burned, and that was an end of them.
* * * * *
As to hares, there's something queer about them, and there's some
that it's dangerous to meddle with, and that can go into any form
where they like. Sure, Mrs. Madden is after having a young son, and
it has a harelip. But she says that she doesn't remember that ever
she met a hare or looked at one. But if she did, she had a right to
rip a small bit of the seam of her dress or her petticoat, and then
it would have no power to hurt her at all.
* * * * *
Doran the herd says, he wouldn't himself eat the flesh of a hare.
There's something unnatural about it. But as to them being unlucky,
that may be all talk. But there's no doubt at all that a cow is found
sometimes to be run dry, and the hare to be seen coming away from her.
* * * * *
One time when we lived just behind Gort my father was going to a fair.
And it was the custom in those days to set out a great deal earlier
than what it is now. So it was not much past midnight when he got up
and went out the door, and the moon shining bright. And then he saw a
hare walk in from the street and turn down by the garden, and another
after it, and another and another till he counted twelve. And they all
went straight one after another and vanished. And my father came in and
shut the door, and never went out again till it was broad daylight.
* * * * *
There was a man watching the fire where two hares were cooking and
he heard them whistling in the pot. And when the people of the house
came home they were afraid to touch them, but the man that heard the
whistling ate a good meal of them and was none the worse.
* * * * *
There was an uncle of my own lived over near Garryland. And one day
himself and another man were going through the field, and they saw a
hare, and the hound that was with them gave chase, and they followed.
And the hound was gaining on the hare and it made for a house, where
the half-door was open. And the hound made a snap at it and touched
it as it leaped the half-door. And when my uncle and the others came
up, they could find no hare, but only an old woman in the house--and
she bleeding. So there's no doubt at all but it was she took the form
of a hare. My uncle spent too much money after, and gave up his land
and went to America.
* * * * *
As to hares, there was a man out with his greyhound and it gave chase
to a hare. And it made for a house, and went in at the window, and
the hound just touched the leg. And when the man came up, he found an
old woman in the house, and he asked leave to search the house and so
he did in every place, but there was no hare to be seen. But when he
came in she was putting a pot on the fire, so he said that he must
look in the pot, and he took the cover off, and it was full of blood.
And before the hound gave chase, he had seen the hare sucking the
milk from a cow.
* * * * *
As to hares, there's no doubt at all there's some that's not natural.
One night I was making pot-whiskey up in that hill beyond. Yes
indeed, for three year, I did little but run to and fro to the still,
and one December, I was making it for the Christmas and I was taken
and got nine weeks in gaol for it--and £16 worth of whiskey spilled
that night. But there's mean people in the world; and he did it
for half a sovereign, and had to leave the country after and go to
England. Well, one night, I was watching by the fire where it was too
fierce, and it would have burned the oats. And over the hill and down
the path came two hares and walked on and into the wood. And two more
after that, and then by fours they came, and by sixes, and I'd want
a slate and a pencil to count all I saw, and it just at sunrise. And
some of them were as thin as thin. And there's no doubt at all that
those were not _hares_ I saw that night.
* * * * *
As to hares, they're the biggest fairies of all. Last year the boys
had one caught, and I put it in the pot to wash it and it after being
skinned, and I heard a noise come from the pot--grr-grr--and nothing
but cold water in it. And I ran to save my life, and I told the boys to
have nothing to do with it, but they wouldn't mind me. And when they
tried to eat it, and it boiled, they couldn't get their teeth into the
flesh of it, and as for the soup, it was no different from potato-water.
* * * * *
The village of Lissavohalane has a great name for such things.
And it's certain that once one night every year, in the month of
November, all the cats of the whole country round gather together
there and fight. My own two cats were nearly dead for days after it
last year, and the neighbours told me the same of theirs.
* * * * *
There was a woman had a cat and she would feed it at the table before
any other one; and if it did not get the first meat that was cooked,
the hair would rise up as high as that. Well, there were priests came
to dinner one day, and when they were helped the first, the hair
rose up on the cat's back. And one of them said to the woman it was
a queer thing to give in to a cat the way she did, and that it was a
foolish thing to be giving it the first of the food. So when it heard
that, it walked out of the house, and never came into it again.
* * * * *
There's something not right about cats. Steve Smith says he knew a
keeper that shot one, and it went into a sort of a heap, and when he
came near, it spoke, and he found it was some person, and it said
it had to walk its seven acres. And there's some have heard them
together at night talking Irish.
* * * * *
There was a hole over the door of the house that I used to live in,
where Murphy's house is now, to let the smoke out, for there was no
chimney. And one day a black cat jumped in at the hole, and stopped in
the house and never left us for a year. But on the day year he came he
jumped out again at the same hole and didn't go out of the door that
was standing open. There was no mistake about it, it was the day year.
* * * * *
As to cats, they're a class in themselves. They're good to catch
mice and rats, but just let them come in and out of the house for
that; they're about their own business all the time. And in the old
times they could talk. And it's said that the cats gave a shilling
for what they have; fourpence that the housekeeper might be careless
and leave the milk about that they'd get at it; and fourpence that
they'd tread so light that no one would hear them, and fourpence that
they'd be able to see in the dark. And I might as well throw out
that drop of tea I left on the dresser to cool, for the cat is after
tasting it and I wouldn't touch it after that. There might be a hair
in it, and the hair of a cat is poison.
* * * * *