he came back with a pain in his back and in his shoulders, and took
to the bed. And a few nights after that I was asleep, and the little
girl came and woke me and said, "There's none of us can sleep, with
all the cars and carriages rattling round the house." But though I
woke and heard her say that, I fell into a sound sleep again and
never woke till morning. And one night there came two taps at the
window, one after another, and we all heard it and no one there. And
at last I sent the eldest boy to Biddy Early and he found her in the
house. She was then married to her fourth man. And she said he came
a day too soon and would do nothing for him. And he had to walk away
in the rain. And the next day he went back and she said, "Three days
later and you'd have been too late." And she gave him two bottles,
the one he was to bring to a boundary water and to fill it up, and
that was to be rubbed to the back, and the other was to drink. And
the minute he got them he began to get well, and he left the bed and
could walk, but he was always delicate. When we rubbed his back we
saw a black mark, like the bite of a dog, and as to his face, it was
as white as a sheet.
I have the bottle here yet, though it's thirty year ago I got it. She
bid the boy to bring whatever was left of it to a river, and to pour
it away with the running water. But when he got well I did nothing
with it, and said nothing about it--and here it is now for you to
see. I never let on to Father Folan that I went to her, but one time
the Bishop came, MacInerny. I knew he was a rough man, and I went to
him and made my confession, and I said, "Do what you like with me,
but I'd walk the world for my son when he was sick." And all he said
was, "It would have been no wonder if the two feet had been cut off
from the messenger." And he said no more and put nothing on me.
* * * * *
There was a boy I saw went to Biddy Early, and she gave him a bottle
and told him to mind he did not lose it in the crossing of some road.
And when he came to the place it was broke.
* * * * *
Often I heard of Biddy Early, and I knew of a little girl was sick
and the brother went to Biddy Early to ask would she get well. And
she said, "They have a place ready for her, room for her they have."
So he knew she would die, and so she did.
The priests can do things too, the same way as she could, for there
was one Mr. Lyne was dying, a Protestant, and the priest went in and
baptized him a Catholic before he died, and he said to the people
after, "He's all right now, in another world." And it was more than
the baptizing made him sure of that.
* * * * *
Mrs. Brennan, in the house beyond, went one time to Biddy Early,
where the old man was losing his health. And all she told him was to
bid him give over drinking so much whiskey. So after she said that,
he used only to be drinking gin.
* * * * *
There was a boy went to Biddy Early for his father, and she said, "It's
not any of my business that's on him, but it's good for yourself that
you came to me. Weren't you sowing potatoes in such a field one day
and didn't you find a bottle of whiskey, and bring it away and drink
what was in it?" And that was true and it must have been a bottle
_they_ brought out of some cellar and dropped there, for they can bring
everything away, and put in its place what will look like it.
* * * * *
There was a boy near Feakle got the touch in three places, and he
got a great desire to go out night-walking, and he got sick. And they
asked Biddy Early and she said, "Watch the hens when they come in to
roost at night, and catch a hold of the last one that comes." So the
mother caught it, and then she thought she'd like to see what would
Biddy Early do with it. So she brought it up to her house and laid it
on the floor, and it began to rustle its wings, and it lay over and
died. It was from her brother Biddy Early got the cure. He was sick a
long time, and there was a whitethorn tree out in the field, and he'd
go and lie under it for shade from the sun. And after he died, every
day for a year she'd go to the whitethorn tree, and it is there she'd
cry her fill. And then he brought her under and gave her the cure. It
was after that she was in service beyond Kinvara. She did her first
cure on a boy, after the doctors giving him up.
_An Old Man from Kinvara:_
My wife is paralysed these thirty-six years, and the neighbours
said she'd get well if the child died, for she got it after her
confinement, all in a minute. But the child died in a year and eleven
months, and she got no better. And then they said she'd get taken
after twenty-one years, but that passed, and she's just the same way.
And she's as good a Christian as any all the time.
I went to Biddy Early one time about her. She was a very old woman,
all shaky, and the crankiest woman I ever saw. And the husband was
a fine young man, and he lying in the bed. It was a man from Kinvara
half-paralysed I brought with me, and she would do nothing for him at
first, and then the husband bid her do what she could. So she took
the bottle and shook it and looked in it, and she said what was in
him was none of her business. And I had work to get him a lodging
that night in Feakle, for the priests had all the people warned
against letting any one in that had been to her. She wouldn't take
the whiskey I brought, but the husband and myself, we opened it and
drank it between us.
She gave me a bottle for my wife, but when I got to the workhouse,
where I had to put her in the hospital, they wouldn't let me through
the gate for they heard where I had been. So I had to hide the bottle
for a night by a wall, on the grass, and I sent my brother's wife to
find it, and to bring it to her in the morning into the workhouse.
But it did her no good, and Biddy Early told her after it was because
I didn't bring it straight to her, but had left it on the ground for
the night.
* * * * *
Biddy Early beat all women. No one could touch her. I knew a girl,
a friend of my own, at Burren and she was sick a long while and the
doctors could do nothing for her, and the priests read over her but
they could do nothing. And at last the husband went to Biddy Early and
she said, "I can't cure her, and the woman that can cure her lives in
the village with her." So he went home and told this and the women of
the village came into the house and said, "God bless her," all except
one, and nothing would make her come into the house. But they watched
her, and one night when a lot of them were sitting round the fire
smoking, she let a spit fall on the floor. So they gathered that up
(with respects to you), and brought it in to the sick woman and rubbed
it to her, and she got well. It might have done as well if they brought
a bit of her petticoat and burned it and rubbed the ashes on her. But
there's something strange about spits, and if you spit on a child or a
beast it's as good as if you'd say, "God bless it."
_John Curtin:_
I was with Biddy Early one time for my brother. She was out away in
Ennis when we got to the house, and her husband that she called Tommy.
And the kitchen was full of people waiting for her to come in. So then
she came, and the day was rainy, and she was wet, and she went over
to the fire, and began to take off her clothes, and to dry them, and
then she said to her husband: "Tommy, get the bottle and give them
all a drop." So he got the bottle and gave a drink to everyone. But
my brother was in behind the door, and he missed him and when he came
back to the fire she said: "You have missed out the man that has the
best heart of them all, and there he is behind the door." And when my
brother came out she said, "Give us a verse of a song," and he said,
"I'm no songster," but she said, "I know well that you are, and a good
dancer as well." She cured him and his wife after.
There was a neighbour of mine went to her too, and she said: "The
first time you got the touch was the day you had brought a cart of
turf from that bog at Ballinabucky to Scahanagh. And when you were
in the road you got it, and you had to lie down on the creel of turf
till you got to the public road." And she told him that he had a pane
of glass broke in his window and that was true enough. She must have
been away walking with the faeries every night or how did she know
that, or where the village of Scahanagh was?
* * * * *
Mrs. Kenny has been twice to Biddy Early. Once for her brother who
was ill, and light-headed and sent to Galway. And Biddy Early shook
the bottle twice, and she said, "It is none of my business, and it's
a heavy cold that settled in his head." And she would not take the
shilling. A red, red woman she was.
_Mary Glyn:_
I am a Clare woman, but the last fifty years I spent in Connacht.
Near Feakle I lived, but I only saw Biddy Early once, the time she
was brought to the committee and to the courthouse. She lived in a
little house near Feakle that time, and her landlord was Dr. Murphy
in Limerick, and he sent men to evict her and to pull the house
down, and she held them in the door and said: "Whoever will be the
first to put a bar to the house, he'll remember it." And then a man
put his bar in between two stones, and if he did, he turned and got
a fall someway and he broke the thigh. After that Dr. Murphy brought
her to the court, "Faeries and all," he said, for he brought the
bottle along with her. So she was put out, but Murphy had cause to
remember it, for he was living in a house by himself, and one night
it caught fire and was burned down, and all that was left of him
was one foot that was found in a corner of the walls. She had four
husbands, and the priest wouldn't marry her to the last one, and
it was by the teacher that she was married. She was a good-looking
woman, but like another, the day I saw her. My husband went to her
the time Johnny, my little boy, was dying. He had a great pain in his
temple, and she said: "He has enough in him to kill a hundred; but if
he lives till Monday, come and tell me." But he was dead before that.
And she said, "If you came to me before this, I'd not have let you
stop in that house you're in." But Johnny died; and there was a blush
over his face when he was going, and after that I couldn't look at
him, but those that saw him said that _he_ wasn't in it. I never saw
him since, but often and often the father would go out thinking he
might see him. But I know well he wouldn't like to come back and to
see me fretting for him.
We left the house after that and came here. A travelling woman that
came in to see me one time in that house said, "This is a fine airy
house," and she said that three times, and then she said, "But in that
corner of it you'll lose your son," and it happened, and I wish now
that I had minded what she said. A man and his family went into that
house after, and the first summer they were in it, he and his sons
were putting up a stack of hay in the field with pitchforks, and the
pitchfork in his hand turned some way into his stomach and he died.
* * * * *
It is Biddy Early had the great name, but priests were against her.
There went a priest one time to stop her, and when he came near the
door the horse fell that was in his car. Biddy Early came out then
and bid him to give three spits on the horse, and he did that, and it
rose up then and there. It was himself had put the evil eye on it.
"It was yourself did it, you bodach," she said to the priest. And he
said, "You may do what you like from this out, and I will not meddle
with you again."
_Mrs. Crone:_
I was myself digging potatoes out in that field beyond, and a woman
passed by the road, but I heard her say nothing, but a pain came on
my head and I fell down, and I had to go to my bed for three weeks.
My mother went then to Biddy Early. Did you ever hear of her? And
she looked in the blue bottle she had, and she said my name. And she
saw me standing before her, and knew all about me and said, "Your
daughter was digging potatoes with her husband in the field, and a
woman passed by and she said, 'It is as good herself is with a spade
as the man,'" for I was a young woman at the time. She gave my mother
a bottle for me, and I took three drinks of it in the bed, and then I
got up as well as I was before.
_Peter Feeney:_
Biddy Early said to a man that I met in America and that went to her
one time, that this place between Finevara and Aughanish is the most
haunted place in all Ireland.
Surely Biddy Early was _away_ herself. That's what I always heard.
And I hear that at a hurling near Feakle the other day there was a
small little man, and they say he was a friend of hers and has got
her gift.
MRS. SHERIDAN
_Mrs. Sheridan, as I call her, was wrinkled and half blind, and had
gone barefoot through her lifetime. She was old, for she had once met
Raftery, the Gaelic poet, at a dance, and he died before the famine
of '47. She must have been comely then, for he had said to her: "Well
planed you are; the carpenter that planed you knew his trade"; and she
was ready of reply and answered him back, "Better than you know yours,"
for his fiddle had two or three broken strings. And then he had spoken
of a neighbour in some way that vexed her father, and he would let him
speak no more with her. And she had carried a regret for this through
her long life, for she said: "If it wasn't for him speaking as he did,
and my father getting vexed, he might have made words about me like he
did for Mary Hynes and for Mary Brown." She had never been to school
she told me, because her father could not pay the penny a week it would
have cost. She had never travelled many miles from the parish of her
birth, and I am sure had never seen pictures except the sacred ones on
chapel walls; and yet she could tell of a Cromwellian castle built up
and of a drawbridge and of long-faced, fair-haired women, and of the
yet earlier round house and saffron dress of the heroic times, I do not
know whether by direct vision, or whether as Myers wrote: "It may even
be that a World-soul is personally conscious of all its past, and that
individual souls, as they enter into deeper consciousness enter into
something which is at once reminiscence and actuality.... Past facts
were known to men on earth, not from memory only but by written record;
and these may be records, of what kind we know not, which persist in
the spiritual world. Our retrocognitions seem often a recovery of
isolated fragments of thought and feeling, pebbles still hard and
rounded amid the indecipherable sands over which the mighty waters are
'rolling evermore.'"_
_She had never heard of the great mystic Jacob Behmen, and yet when
an unearthly visitor told her the country of youth is not far from
the place where we live, she had come near to his root idea that "the
world standeth in Heaven and Heaven in the World, and are in one
another as day and night."_
_I was told by Mrs. Sheridan:_
There was a woman, Mrs. Keevan, killed near the big tree at Raheen, and
her husband was after that with Biddy Early, and she said it was not
the woman that had died at all, but a cow that died and was put in her
place. All my life I've seen _them_ and enough of them. One day I was
with Tom Mannion by the big hole near his house, and we saw a man and
a woman come from it, and a great troop of children, little boys they
seemed to be, and they went through the gate into Coole, and there we
could see them running and running along the wall. And I said to Tom
Mannion, "It may be a call for one of us." And he said, "Maybe it's for
some other one it is." But on that day week he was dead.
One time I saw the old Colonel standing near the road, I know well
it was him. But while I was looking at him, he was changed into the
likeness of an ass.
I was led astray myself one day in Coole when I went to gather sticks
for the fire. I was making a bundle of them, and I saw a boy beside
me, and a little grey dogeen with him, and at first I thought it was
William Hanlon, and then I saw it was not. And he walked along with me,
and I asked him did he want any of the sticks and he said he did not,
and he seemed as we were walking to grow bigger and bigger. And when
he came to where the caves go underground he stopped, and I asked him
his name, and he said, "You should know me, for you've seen me often
enough." And then he was gone, and I know that he was no living thing.
There was a child I had, and he a year and a half old, and he got
a quinsy and a choking in the throat and I was holding him in my
arms beside the fire, and all in a minute he died. And the men
were working down by the river, washing sheep, and they heard the
crying of a child from over there in the air, and they said, "That's
Sheridan's child." So I knew sure enough that he was _taken_.
Come here close and I'll tell you what I saw at the old castle there
below (Ballinamantane). I was passing there in the evening and I
saw a great house and a grand one with screens (clumps of trees) at
the ends of it, and the windows open--Coole house is nothing like
what it was for size or grandeur. And there were people inside and
ladies walking about, and a bridge across the river. For they can
build up such things all in a minute. And two coaches came driving
up and across the bridge to the castle, and in one of them I saw
two gentlemen, and I knew them well and both of them had died long
before. As to the coaches and the horses I didn't take much notice of
them for I was too much taken up with looking at the two gentlemen.
And a man came and called out and asked me would I come across the
bridge, and I said I would not. And he said, "It would be better for
you if you did, you'd go back heavier than you came." I suppose they
would have given me some good thing. And then two men took up the
bridge and laid it against the wall. Twice I've seen that same thing,
the house and the coaches and the bridge, and I know well I'll see it
a third time before I die. (_Note_ 12.)
One time when I was living at Ballymacduff there was two little boys
drowned in the river there, one was eight years old and the other
eleven years. And I was out in the fields, and the people looking
in the river for their bodies, and I saw a man coming away from it,
and the two boys with him, he holding a hand of each and leading
them away. And he saw me stop and look at them and he said, "Take
care would you bring them from me, for you have only one in your own
house, and if you take these from me, she'll never come home to you
again." And one of the little chaps broke from his hand and ran to
me, and the other cried out to him, "Oh, Pat, would you leave me!" So
then he went back and the man led them away. And then I saw another
man, very tall he was, and crooked, and watching me like this with
his head down and he was leading two dogs the other way, and I knew
well where he was going and what he was going to do with them.
And when I heard the bodies were laid out, I went to the house to
have a look at them, and those were never the two boys that were
lying there, but the two dogs that were put in their places. I knew
this by a sort of stripes on the bodies such as you'd see in the
covering of a mattress; and I knew the boys couldn't be in it, after
me seeing them led away.
And it was at that time I lost my eye, something came on it, and I
never got the sight again. All my life I've seen _them_ and enough of
them. One time I saw one of the fields below full of them, some were
picking up stones and some were ploughing it up. But the next time I
went by there was no sign of it being ploughed at all. They can do
nothing without some live person is looking at them, that's why they
were always so much after me. Even when I was a child I could see
them, and once they took my walk from me, and gave me a bad foot, and
my father cured me, and if he did, in five days after he died.
But there's no harm at all in them, not much harm.
* * * * *
There was a woman lived near me at Ballymacduff, and she used to go
about to attend women; Sarah Redington was her name. And she was
brought _away_ one time by a man that came for her into a hill,
through a door, but she didn't know where the hill was. And there
were people in it, and cradles and a woman in labour, and she helped
her and the baby was born, and the woman told her it was only that
night she was brought away. And the man led her out again and put
her in the road near her home and he gave her something rolled in a
bag, and he bid her not to look at it till she'd get home, and to
throw the first handful of it away from her. But she wouldn't wait to
get home to look at it, and she took it off her back and opened it,
and there was nothing in it but cow-dung. And the man came to her and
said, "You have us near destroyed looking in that, and we'll never
bring you in again among us."
There was a man I know well was away with them, often and often, and
he was passing one day by the big tree and they came about him and he
had a new pair of breeches on, and one of them came and made a slit
in them, and another tore a little bit out, and then they all came
running and tearing little bits till he hadn't a rag left. Just to be
humbugging him they did that. And they gave him good help, for he had
but an acre of land, and he had as much on it as another would have on
a big farm. But his wife didn't like him to be going and some one told
her of a cure for him, and she said she'd try it and if she did, within
two hours after she was dead; killed they had her before she'd try it.
He used to say that where he was brought was into a round very big
house, and Cairns that went with them told me the same. (_Note_ 13.)
Three times when I went for water to the well, the water spilled
over me, and I told Bridget after that they must bring the water
themselves, I'd go for it no more. And the third time it was done
there was a boy, one of the Heniffs, was near, and when he heard what
happened me he said, "It must have been the woman that was at the
well along with you that did that." And I said there was no woman at
the well along with me. "There was," said he; "I saw her there beside
you, and the two little tins in her hand."
One day after I came to live here at Coole, a strange woman came into
the house, and I asked what was her name and she said, "I was in it
before ever you were in it," and she went into the room inside and I
saw her no more.
But Bridget and Peter saw her coming in, and they asked me who she
was, for they never saw her before. And in the night when I was
sleeping at the foot of the bed, she came and threw me out on the
floor, that the joint of my arm has a mark in it yet. And every night
she came, and she'd spite me or annoy me in some way. And at last
we got Father Nolan to come and to drive her out. And as soon as he
began to read, there went out of the house a great blast, and there
was a sound as loud as thunder. And Father Nolan said, "It's well for
you she didn't have you killed before she went."
* * * * *
There's something that's not right about an old cat and it's well not
to annoy them. I was in the house one night, and one came in, and he
tried to bring away the candle that was lighted in the candlestick,
and it standing on the table. And I had a little rod beside me, and I
made a hit at him with it, and with that he dropped the candle and
made at me as if to tear me. And I went on my knees and asked his
pardon three times, and when I asked it the third time he got quiet
all of a minute, and went out at the door.
And as to hares--bid Master Robert never to shoot a hare, for you
wouldn't know what might be in it. There were two women I knew,
mother and daughter, and they died. And one day I was out by the
wood, and I saw two hares sitting by the wall, and the minute I saw
them I knew well who they were. And the mother made as though she'd
kill me, but the daughter stopped her. Bad they must have been to
have been put into that shape, and indeed I know that they weren't
too good. I saw the mother another time come up near the door as if
to see me, and when she got near, she turned herself into a red hare.
The priests can do cures out of their book, and the time the cure is
done is when they turn the second leaf. There was a boy near Kinvara
got a hurt and he was brought into a house and Father Grogan was got
to do a cure on him. And he did it, and within two days the priest's
brother was made a fool of, and is locked up in a madhouse ever
since, and it near seven years ago. (_Note_ 14.)
There was a boy of the Nally's died near a year ago; and when I heard
he was dead I went down to the house, and there I saw him outside and
two men bringing him away, and one of them said to me, "We couldn't
do this but for you being there watching us." That's the last time I
saw any of them.
* * * * *
There was a boy got a fall from a cart near the house beyond, and he
was brought in to Mrs. Raynor's and laid in the bed and I went in to
see him. And he said what he saw was a little boy run across the road
before the cart, and the horse took fright and ran away and threw
him from it. And he asked to be brought to my house, for he wouldn't
stop where he was; "for" says he, "the woman of this house gave me no
drink and showed me no kindness, and she'll be repaid for that." And
sure enough within the year she got the dropsy and died. And he was
carried out of the door backwards, but the mother brought him to her
own house and wouldn't let him come to mine, and 'twas as well, for I
wouldn't refuse him, but I don't want to be annoyed with _them_ any
more than I am.
Did you know Mrs. Byrne that lived in Doolin? Swept she was after
her child was born. And near a year after I saw her coming down the
road near the old castle. "Is that you, Mary?" I said to her, "and
is it to see me you are coming?" But she went on. It was in May when
_they_ are all changing. (_Note_ 15.) There was a priest, Father
Waters, told me one time that he was after burying a boy, one Fahy,
in Kilbecanty churchyard. And he was passing by the place again in
the evening, and there he saw a great fire burning, but whether it
was of turf or of sticks he couldn't tell, and there was the boy he
had buried sitting in the middle of it.