me I don't know, but when I'd come back, I'd be cross with the husband
and with all. I believe when I was with them I was cross that they
wouldn't let me go, and that's why they didn't keep me altogether,
they didn't like cross people to be with them. The husband would ask
me where I was, and why I stopped so long away, but I think he knew I
was _taken_ and it fretted him, but he never spoke much about it. But
my mother knew it well, but she'd try to hide it. The neighbours would
come in and ask where was I, and she'd say I was sick in the bed--for
whatever was put there in place of me would have the head in under the
bed-clothes. And when a neighbour would bring me in a drink of milk,
my mother would put it by and say, "Leave her now, maybe she'll drink
it tomorrow." And maybe in a day or two I'd meet someone and he'd say,
"Why wouldn't you speak to me when I went into the house to see you?"
And I was a young fresh woman at that time. Where they brought me to
I don't know, or how I got there, but I'd be in a very big house, and
it round, the walls far away that you'd hardly see them, and a great
many people all round about. I saw there neighbours and friends that
I knew, and they in their own clothing and with their own appearance,
but they wouldn't speak to me nor I to them, and when I'd meet them
again I'd never say to them that I saw them there. But the others had
striped clothes of all colours, and long faces, and they'd be talking
and laughing and moving about. What language had they? Irish of course,
what else would they talk?
And there was one woman of them, very tall and with a long face,
standing in the middle, taller than any one you ever saw in this
world, and a tall stick in her hand; she was the mistress. She had
a high yellow thing on her head, not hair, her hair was turned back
under it, and she had a long yellow cloak down to her feet and
hanging down behind. Had she anything like that in the picture in
her hand? [a crown of gold balls or apples.] It was not on her head,
it was lower down here about the body, and shining, and a thing [a
brooch] like that in the picture, but down hanging low like the
other. And that picture you have there in you hand, I saw no one like
it, but I saw a picture like it hanging on the wall. (_Note_ 16.) It
was a very big place and very grand, and a long table set out, but
I didn't want to stop there and I began crying to go home. And she
touched me here in the breast with her stick, she was vexed to see
me wanting to go away. They never brought me away since. Grand food
they'd offer me and wine, but I never would touch it, and sometimes
I'd have to give the breast to a child.
Himself died, but it was _they_ took him from me. It was in the
night and he lying beside me, and I woke and heard him move, and I
thought I heard some one with him. And I put out my hand and what I
touched was an iron hand, like knitting needles it felt. And I heard
the bones of his neck crack, and he gave a sort of a choked laugh,
and I got out of the bed and struck a light and I saw nothing, but I
thought I saw some one go through the door. And I called to Bridget
and she didn't come, and I called again and she came and she said she
struck a light when she heard the noise and was coming, and someone
came and struck the light from her hand. And when we looked in the
bed, himself was lying dead and not a mark on him.
* * * * *
There was a woman, Mrs. Leary, had something wrong with her, and she
went to Biddy Early. And nothing would do her but to bring my son
along with her, and I was vexed. What call had she to bring him with
her? And when Biddy Early saw him she said, "You'll travel far, but
wherever you go you'll not escape them." The woman he went up with
died about six months after, but he went to America, and he wasn't
long there when what was said came true, and he died. They followed
him as far as he went.
And one day since then I was on the road to Gort, and Madden said to
me, "Your son's on the road before you." And I said, "How could that
be, and he dead?" But still I hurried on. And at Coole gate I met a
little boy and I asked did he see any one and he said, "You know
well who I saw." But I got no sight of him at all myself.
I saw the coach one night near Kiltartan Chapel. Long it was and
black, and I saw no one in it. But I saw who was sitting up driving
it, and I knew it to be one of the Miskells that was taken before
that. (_Note_ 17.)
* * * * *
One day I was following the goat to get a sup of milk from her, and
she turned into the field and up into the castle of Lydican and went
up from step to step up the stairs to the top, and I followed and on
the stairs a woman passed me, and I knew her to be Colum's wife. And
when we got to the room at the top, I looked up, and there standing
on the wall was a woman looking down at me, long-faced and tall and
with grand clothes, and on her head something yellow and slippery,
not hair but like marble. (_Note_ 18.) And I called out to ask her
wasn't she afraid to be up there, and she said she was not. And a
shepherd that used to live below in the castle saw the same woman one
night he went up to the top, and a room and a fire and she sitting by
it, but when he went there again there was no sign of her nor of the
room, nothing but the stones as before.
* * * * *
I never saw them on horses; but when I came to live at Peter Mahony's
he used to bring in those red flowers [ragweed] that grow by the
railway, when their stalks were withered, to make the fire. And one
day I was out in the road, and two men came over to me and one was
wearing a long grey dress. And he said to me, "We have no horses to
ride on and have to go on foot, because you have too much fire." So
then I knew it was their horses we were burning. (_Note_ 19.)
* * * * *
I know the cure for anything they can do to you, but it's few I'd
tell it to. It was a strange woman came in and told it to me, and
I never saw her again. She bid me spit and use the spittle, or to
take a graineen of dust from the navel, and that's what you should
do if any one you care for gets a cold or a shivering, or _they_ put
anything upon him.
* * * * *
One time I went up to a forth beyond Raheen to pick up a few sticks,
and I was beating one of the sticks on the ground to break it, and a
voice said from below, "Is it to break down the house you want?" And a
thing appeared that was like a cat, but bigger than any cat ever was.
And another time in a forth a man said, "Here's gold for you, but don't
look at it till you go home." And I looked and I saw horse-dung and I
said, "Keep it yourself, much good may it do you." They never gave me
anything did me good, but a good deal of torment I had from them. And
they're often walking the road, and if you met them you wouldn't know
them from any other person; but I'd know them well enough, but I'd say
nothing--and that's a grand bush we're passing by--whether it belongs
to them I don't know, but wherever they get shelter, there they might
be--but anyway it's a very fine bush--God bless it.
And when you speak of them you should always say the day of the week.
Maybe you didn't notice that I said, "This is Friday" just when we
were hardly in at the gate.
* * * * *
It's very weak I am, and took to my bed since yesterday. _They've_
changed now out of where they were near the castle, and it's inside
Coole demesne they are. It was an old man told me that, I met him on
the road there below. First I thought he was a young man, and then I
saw he was not, and he grew very nice-looking after, and he had plaid
clothes. "We're moved out of that now," he said, "and it's strangers
will be coming in it. And you ought to know me," he said. And when I
looked at him I thought I did.
And one day I was down in Coole I saw their house, more like a big
dairy, with red tiles and a high chimney and a lot of smoke out of
it, and there was a woman at the door and two or three outside. But
they'll do you no harm, for the man told me so. "They needn't be
afraid," he said, "we're good neighbours, but let them not say too
much if the milk might go from the cows now and again."
I was over beyond Raheen one time, and I saw a woman milking and she
at the wrong side of the cow. And when she saw me she got up, and
she had a bucket that was like a plate, and it full of milk and she
gave it to a man that was waiting there, that I thought first was one
of the O'Heas, and they went away. And the cow was a grand fine one,
but who it belonged to I didn't know--maybe to themselves.
* * * * *
It's about a week ago one night some one came into the room in
the dark, and I saw it was my son that I lost--he that went to
America--James. He didn't die, he was whipped away--I knew he wasn't
dead, for I saw him one day on the road to Gort on a coach, and he
looked down and he said, "That's my poor mother." And when he came in
here, I couldn't see him, but I knew him by his talk. And he said,
"It's asleep she is," and he put his two hands on my face and I never
stirred. And he said, "I'm not far from you now." For he is with the
others inside Coole near where the river goes down the swallow hole.
To see me he came, and I think he'll be apt to come again before
long. And last night there was a light about my head all the night
and no candle in the room at all.
* * * * *
Yes, the Sidhe sing, and they have pipers among them, a bag on each
side and a pipe to the mouth, I think I never told you of one I saw.
I was passing a field near Kiltartan one time when I was a girl,
where there was a little lisheen, and a field of wheat, and when I was
passing I heard a piper beginning to play, and I couldn't but begin to
dance, it was such a good tune; and there was a boy standing there, and
he began to dance too. And then my father came by, and he asked why
were we dancing, and no one playing for us. And I said there was, and
I began to search through the wheat for the piper, but I couldn't find
him, and I heard a voice saying, "You'll see me yet, and it will be
in a town." Well, one Christmas eve I was in Gort and my husband with
me, and that night at Gort I heard the same tune beginning again--the
grandest I ever heard--and I couldn't but begin to dance. And Glynn the
chair-maker heard it too, and he began to dance with me in the street,
and my man thought I had gone mad, and the people gathered round us,
for they could see or hear nothing. But I saw the piper well, and he
had plaid clothes, blue and white, and he said, "Didn't I tell you that
when I saw you again it would be in a town?"
* * * * *
I never saw fire go up in the air, but in the wood beyond the tree at
Raheen I used often to see like a door open at night, and the light
shining through it, just as it might shine through the house door,
with the candle and the fire inside, if it would be left open.
Many of _them_ I have seen--they are like ourselves only wearing
bracket clothes (_Note_ 20.), and their bodies are not so strong or
so thick as ours, and their eyes are more shining than our eyes. I
don't see many of them here, but Coole is alive with them, as plenty
as grass; I often go awhile and sit inside the gate there. I saw them
make up a house one time near the natural bridge, and I saw them
coming over the gap twice near the chapel, a lot of little boys, and
two men and a woman, and they had old talk and young talk. One of
them came in here twice, and I gave him a bit of bread, but he said,
"There's salt in it" and he put it away. (_Note_ 21.)
* * * * *
When Annie Rivers died the other day, there were two funerals in it,
a big funeral with a new coffin and another that was in front of
them, men walking, the handsomest I ever saw, and they with black
clothes about their body. I was out there looking at them, and there
was a cow in the road, and I said, "Take care would you drive away
the cow." And one of them said, "No fear of that, we have plenty of
cows _on the other side of the wall_." But no one could see them but
myself. I often saw them and it was they took the sight of my eyes
from me. And Annie Rivers was not in the grand coffin, she was with
_them_ a good while before the funeral.
* * * * *
That time I saw the two funerals at Rivers's that I was telling you
about, I heard Annie call to those that were with her, "You might as
well let me have Bartley; it would be better for the two castles to
meet." And since then the mother is uneasy about Bartley, and he
fell on the floor one day and I know well he is _gone_ since the day
Annie was buried. And I saw others at the funeral, and some that you
knew well among them. And look now, you should send a coat to some
poor person, and your own friends among the dead will be covered, for
you could see the skin here. [_She made a gesture passing her hand
down each arm, exactly the same gesture as old Mary Glynn of Slieve
Echtge had made yesterday when she said, "Have you a coat you could
send me, for my arms are bare?" and I had promised her one._]
* * * * *
Would I have gone among them if I had died last month? I think not. I
think that I have lived my time out, since my father was taken.
He was a young man at that time, and one time I was out in the field,
and I got a knock on the foot, and a lump rose; there is the mark
of it yet. It was after that I was on the road with my father, near
Kinvara, and a man came and began to beat him. And I thought that he
was going to beat me, and I got in near the wall and my father said,
"Spare the girl!" "I will do that, I will spare her," said the man.
He went away then, and within a week my father was dead.
And my mother told me that before the burying, she saw the corpse on
the bed, sitting on the side of the bed, and his feet hanging down. I
saw my father often since then, but not this good while now. He had
always a young appearance when I saw him.
A big woman came to the window and looked in at me, the time I was on
the bed lately. "Rise up out of that," she said. I saw her another
time on the road, and the wind blew her dress open, and I could see
that she had nothing at all on underneath it.
In May they are as thick everywhere as the grass, but there's no fear
at all for you or for Master Robert. I know that, for _one_ told it
to me.
* * * * *
"Tir-nan-og" that is not far from us. One time I was in the chapel
at Labane, and there was a tall man sitting next me, and he dressed
in grey, and after the Mass I asked him where he came from. "From
Tir-nan-og," says he. "And where is that?" I asked him. "It's not far
from you," he said; "it's near the place where you live." I remember
well the look of him and him telling me that. The priest was looking
at us while we were talking together. (_Note_ 22.)
* * * * *
_She died some years ago and I am told:
"There is a ghost in Mrs. Sheridan's house. They got a priest to say
Mass there, but with all that there is not one in it has leave to lay
a head on the pillow till such time as the cock crows."_
MR. SAGGARTON
_I was told one day by our doctor, a good fowler an physician, now,
alas, passed away, of an old man in Clare who had knowledge of "the
Others," and I took Mr. Yeats to see him._
_We found him in his hayfield, and he took us to his thatched
lime-white house and told us many things. A little later we went
there again to verify what I had put down. I remember him as very
gentle and courteous, and that a cloth was spread and tea made for us
by his daughters, he himself sitting at the head of the table._
_Mr. Yeats at that time wore black clothes and a soft black hat, but
gave them up later, because he was so often saluted as a priest.
But this time another view was taken, and I was told after a while
that the curate of the Clare parish had written to the curate of a
Connacht parish that Lady Gregory had come over the border with "a
Scripture Reader" to try and buy children for proselytizing purposes.
But the Connacht curate had written back to the Clare curate that he
had always thought him a fool, and now he was sure of it._
_The old man I have called Mr. Saggarton said:_
Our family diminished very much till at last there were but three
brothers left, and they separated. One went to Ennis and another came
here and the other to your own place beyond. It was a long time before
they could make one another out again. It was my uncle used to go away
among _them_. When I was a young chap, I'd go out in the field working
with him, and he'd bid me go away on some message, and when I'd come
back it might be in a faint I'd find him. It was he himself was taken;
it was but his shadow or some thing in his likeness was left behind.
He was a very strong man. You might remember Ger Kelly what a strong
man he was, and stout, and six feet two inches in height. Well, he and
my uncle had a dispute one time, and he made as if to strike at him,
and my uncle, without so much as taking off his coat, gave one blow
that stretched him on the floor. And at the barn at Bunahowe he and
my father could throw a hundred weight over the collar beam, what no
other could do. (_Note_ 23.) My father had no notion at all of managing
things. He lived to be eighty years, and all his life he looked as
innocent as that little chap turning the hay. My uncle had the same
innocent look; I think they died quite happy.
One time the wife got a touch, and she got it again, and the third
time she got up in the morning and went out of the house and never
said where she was going. But I had her watched, and I told the boy
to follow her and never to lose sight of her, and I gave him the sign
to make if he'd meet any bad thing. So he followed her, and she kept
before him, and while he was going along the road something was up
on top of the wall with one leap--a red-haired man it was, with no
legs and with a thin face. (_Note_ 24.) But the boy made the sign and
got hold of him and carried him till he got to the bridge. At the
first he could not lift the man, but after he made the sign he was
quite light. And the woman turned home again, and never had a touch
after. It's a good job the boy had been taught the sign. Make that
sign with your thumbs if ever when you're walking out you feel a sort
of a shivering in the skin, for that shows there's some bad thing
near, but if you hold your hands like that, if you went into a forth
itself, it couldn't harm you. And if you should any time feel a sort
of a pain in your little finger, the surest thing is to touch it with
human dung. Don't neglect that, for if they're glad get one of us,
they'd be seven times better pleased to get the like of you.
Youngsters they take mostly to do work for them, and they are death
on handsome people, for they are handsome themselves. To all sorts
of work they put them, and digging potatoes and the like, and they
have wine from foreign parts, and cargoes of gold coming in to them.
Their houses are ten times more beautiful and ten times grander than
any house in this world. And they could build one of them up in that
field in ten minutes. Clothes of all colours they wear, and crowns
like that one in the picture, and of other shapes. (_Note_ 25.) They
have different queens, not always the same. The people they bring
away must die some day; as to themselves, they were living from past
ages, and they can never die till the time when God has His mind made
up to redeem them.
And those they bring away are always glad to be brought back again.
If you were to bring a heifer from those mountains beyond and to put
it into a meadow, it would be glad to get back again to the mountain,
because it is the place it knows.
Coaches they make up when they want to go driving, with wheels and
all, but they want no horses. There might be twenty of them going out
together sometimes, and all full of them.
They are everywhere around us, and may be within a yard of us now in
the grass. But if I ask you, "What day is tomorrow," and you said,
"Thursday," they wouldn't be able to overhear us. They have the power
to go in every place, even on to the book the priest is using.
There was one John Curran lived over there towards Bunahowe, and he
had a cow that died, and they were striving to rear the calf--boiled
hay they were giving it, the juice the hay was boiled in. And you
never saw anything to thrive as it did. And one day some man was
looking at it and he said, "You may be sure the mother comes back
and gives it milk." And John Curran said, "How can that be, and she
dead?" But the man said, "She's not dead, she's in the forth beyond.
And if you go towards it half an hour before sunrise you'll find
her, and you should catch a hold of her and bring her home and milk
her, and when she makes to go away again, take a hold of her tail
and follow her." So he went out next morning, half an hour before
sunrise, up toward the forth, and brought her home and milked her,
and when the milking was done she started to go away and he caught a
hold of the tail and was carried along with her. And she brought him
into the forth, through a door. And behind the door stood a barrel,
and what was in the barrel is what they put their finger in, and
touch their forehead with when they go out, for if they didn't do
that all people would be able to see them. And as soon as he got in,
there were voices from all sides. "Welcome, John Curran, welcome,
John Curran." And he said: "The devil take you, how well you know my
name; it's not a welcome I want, it's my cow to bring home again."
So in the end he got the cow and brought her home. And he saw there
a woman that had died out of the village about ten years before, and
she suckling a child. (_Note_ 26.)
Surely I knew Biddy Early, and my uncle was a friend of hers. It
was from the same power they got the cures. My uncle left me the
power, and I was well able to do them and did many, but my stock
was all dying and what could I do? So I gave a part of the power to
Mrs. Tobin that lives in Gort, and she can cure a good many things.
Biddy Early told me herself that where she got it was when she was a
servant girl in a house, there was a baby lying in the cradle, and he
went on living for a few years. But he was friendly to her and used
to play tunes for her and when he went away he gave her the bottle
and the power. She had but to look in it and she'd see all that had
happened and all that was going to happen. But he made her make a
promise never to take more than a shilling for any cure she did,
and she would not have taken fifty pounds if you offered it to her,
though she might take presents of bread and wine and such things.
The cure for all things in the world? Surely she had it and knew
where it was. And I knew it myself too--but I could not tell you of
it. Seven parts I used to make it with, and one of them is a thing
that's in every house.
* * * * *
There's a lake beyond there, and my uncle one day told us by name of
a man that would be drowned there at twelve o'clock that day. And so
it happened.
* * * * *
One time I was walking on the road to Galway, near the sea, and
another man along with me. And I saw in a field beside the road
a very small woman walking down towards us, and she smiling and
carrying a can of water in her hand, and she was dressed in a blue
spencer. So I asked the other man did he see her, and he said he did
not, and when I came up to the wall she was gone.
* * * * *
One time myself when I went to look for a wife, I went to the house,
and there was a hen and some chickens before the door. Well, after I
went home one of the chickens died. And what do you think they said,
but that it was I overlooked it.
* * * * *
They hate me because I do cures, and they hated Biddy Early too. The
priests do them but not in the same way--they do them by the power of
Almighty God.
* * * * *
My wife got a touch from them, and they have a watch on her ever
since. It was the day after I married and I went to the fair at
Clarenbridge. And when I came back the house was full of smoke, but
there was nothing on the hearth but cinders, and the smoke was more
like the smoke of a forge. And she was within lying on the bed, and
her brother was sitting outside the door crying. So I went to the
mother and asked her to come in, and she was crying too. And she knew
well what had happened, but she didn't tell me, but she sent for the
priest. And when he came he sent me for Geoghegan and that was only
an excuse to get me away, and what he and the mother tried to bring
her to do was to face death, and they knew I wouldn't allow that if
I was there. But the wife was very stout and she wouldn't give in to
them. So the priest read more, and he asked would I be willing to
lose something, and I said, so far as a cow or a calf I wouldn't mind
losing that. Well, she partly recovered, but from that day, no year
went by but I lost ten lambs maybe or other things. And twice they
took my children out of the bed, two of them I have lost. And the
others they gave a touch to. That girl there,--see the way she is,
and can't walk. In one minute it came on her out in the field, with
the fall of a wall. (_Note_ 27.)
It was one among _them_ that wanted the wife. A woman and a boy we
often saw come to the door, and she was the matchmaker. And when we
would go out, they would have vanished.
* * * * *