and they both died, one after the other. And when the third was born,
she consulted an old woman, and she said to watch the cradle all day
where it was standing by the side of the fire. And so she did, and
she saw a sort of a shadow come into it, and give the child a touch.
And she came in, and drove it away. And the second day the same thing
happened, and she was afraid that the third time the child would go,
the same as the others. So she went to the old woman again, and she
bid her take down the hanger from the chimney, and the tongs and the
waistcoat of the child's father and to lay them across the cradle,
with a few drops of water from a blessed well. So she did all this
and laid these three things in the cradle, but she saw the shadow or
whatever it was come again, and she ran in and drove it away.
But when she told the old woman she said "You need trouble yourself
no more about it being touched or not, for no harm will come to it if
you keep those three things on it for twelve days." So she did that,
and reared eight children after, and never lost one.
_An Old Woman from Kinvara:_
Did I know any one was taken? My own brother was, and no mistake
about it. It was one day he was out following two horses with the
plough, and it was about five o'clock, for a gentleman was passing
when he got the touch, and one of his tenants asked him the time, and
he said five o'clock. And what way it came I don't know, but he fell
twice on the stones--God bless the hearers and the place I'm telling
it in. And at ten o'clock the next morning he was dead in his bed.
Young he was, not twenty year, and nothing ailed him when he went
out, but the place he was ploughing in that day was a bad pass. Sure
and certain I am it's by _them_ he was taken. I used often to hear
crying in the field after, but I never saw him again.
_A Connemara Woman:_
There was a boy going to America, and when he was going he said to
the girl next door "Wherever I am, when you are married I'll come
back to the wedding"; and not long after he went to America he died.
And when the girl was married and all the friends and neighbours
in the house, he appeared in the room, but no one saw him but his
comrade he used to have here, and the girl's brother saw him too,
but no one else. And the comrade followed him and went close to him
and said, "Is it you indeed?" And he said, "It is, and from America
I came tonight." And he asked, "How long did that journey take?" and
he said, "Three-quarters of an hour," and then he went away. And the
comrade was never the better of it, or he got the touch or the other
called him, very true friends as they were, and he soon died. But the
girl is now middle-aged and is living in that house we are just after
passing and is married to one Kelly.
Whether all that die go among them I can't say, but it is said they
can take no one without the touch of a Christian hand, or the want of
a blessing from a Christian that would be noticing them.
_A North Galway Woman:_
There are many young women taken in childbirth. I lost a sister of my
own in that way.
There's a place in the river at Newtown where there's stepping-stones
in the middle you can get over by, and one day she was crossing,
and there in the middle of the river, and she standing on a stone,
she felt a blow on the face. And she looked round to see who gave
it and there was no one there, so then she knew what had happened,
and she came to the mother's house, and she carrying at the time. I
was a little slip at that time, with my books in my hand coming from
school, and I ran in and said to my mother, "Here's Biddy coming,"
and she said, "What would bring her at this time of day?" But she
came in and sat down on a chair and she opened the whole story, and
my mother said to quiet her, "It was only a pain in the ear you got,
and you thought it was a blow." And she said, "I never got a blow
that hurted me like that." And the next day, and every day after
that, the ear would swell a little in the afternoon, and then she
began to eat nothing, and five minutes after her baby was born she
died. And my mother used to watch for her for three or four years
after, thinking she'd come back, but she never did.
* * * * *
There was a forth near our house in Meath, and when I was a baby a
woman was carrying me in her arms, and she walked down the four steps
that led into it, and there was a nice garden around it, and she
slipped and fell, and my cheek struck against one of the steps--you can
see the mark yet that I got there. And the woman told my mother and
said, "It's a wonder the child wasn't taken altogether then and there."
One day I was out digging in the field for my brothers, and there
was a sort of a half-ditch between the oats and the potatoes, and I
was digging it down, and of a sudden a sleep came on me and I lay
down. And I suppose I had been asleep about twenty minutes when I was
waked with a hard clout on the face. And I thought it was one of my
brothers and I called out, "You have no right to give me a clout like
that." But my brother was away down the field, and came when he heard
me calling. And I felt a pain in my side as well, and I went into the
house and didn't leave it for two months after with pleurisy, and the
pain never left me till after I was married. I suppose I must have
been on some way of theirs, or some place that belonged to them and
that was known to be an enchanted place, and my father used often to
see it lighted up with candles.
_A Man Herding Sheep:_
I'll tell you now what happened to a little one of my own. She was
just five years. And the day I'm speaking of she was running to
school down the path before me, as strong and as funny as the day she
was born, and laughing and looking back at me. And that night she
went to bed as well as ever she was. And it was about eleven o'clock
in the night she awoke and gave a great cry, and she said there was
a great pain in her knee, and it was in no other part of her. And in
the morning she had it yet, and her walk had gone, and I lifted her
and brought her out into the street, and she couldn't walk one step
if you were to give her the three isles of Aran. And she lived for
two nights after that.
When the doctor came and I told him, he said it was the strangest
case he ever heard of, and the schoolmistress said, "I thought if I'd
brought that child to the hill beyond and threw her down into the sea
it would do her no harm, she was that strong."
But if such things happen, it happened to her, and touched she was.
It was not death, it was being took away.
_An Old Woman in an Aran village:_
I'll tell you what happened a son of my own that was so strong and so
handsome and so good a dancer, he was mostly the pride of the island.
And he was that educated that when he was twenty-six years, he could
write a letter to the Queen. And one day a pain came in the thigh,
and a little lump came inside it, and a hole in it that you could
hardly put the point of a pin in, and it was always drawing. And he
took to his bed and was there for eleven months. And every night when
it would be twelve o'clock, he would begin to be singing and laughing
and going on. And what the neighbours said was, that it was at that
hour there was some other left in his place. I never went to any one
or any witchcraft, for my husband wouldn't let me but left it to the
will of God; and anyway at the end of the eleven months he died.
And his sister was in America, and the same thing came to her there,
a little lump by the side of the face, and she came home to die. But
she died quiet and was like any other in the night.
And a daughter-in-law of mine died after the second birth, and even
the priest said it was not _dead_ she was, he that was curate then. I
was surprised the priest to say that, for they mostly won't give in
to it, unless it's one that takes a drop of drink.
_An Old Man in the Kitchen:_
I had a son that it was mostly given in to in Aran to be the best
singer to give out a couple of verses, so that he'd hardly go out of
the house but some one would want to be bringing him into theirs. And
he took sick of a sudden, with a pain in the shoulder. I went to the
doctor and he says, "Does your wife take tea?" "She does when she can
get it;" says I, and he told me then to put the spout of the kettle
to where the pain was. And after that he went to Galway Hospital, but
he got no better there and a Sister of Mercy said to him at last,
"I'm thinking by the look of you, your family at home is poor."
"That's true enough," says he. Then says she: "It's best for you to
stop here, and they'll be free from the cost of burying you." But
he said he'd sooner go die at home, if he had but two days to live
there. So he came back and he didn't last long. It's always the like
of him that's taken, that are good for singing or dancing or for any
good thing at all. And young women are often taken in that way, both
in the middle island and in this.
_Patrick Madden:_
I'll tell you how I lost the first son I had. He was just three years
old and as fine and as strong as any child you'd see. And one day my
wife said she'd bring the child to her mother's house to stop the
evening with her, for I was going out. And there was a neighbour of
ours, a man that lived near us, and no one was the better of being
spoken to by him. And as they were passing his house he came out,
and he said, "That's the finest child that's in the island." And a
woman that was passing at the same time stopped and said, "It was the
smallest that ever I saw the day it was born, God bless it." And the
mother knew what she meant, and she wanted to say "God bless him,"
but it was like as if a hand took and held her throat, and choked
her that she couldn't say the words. And when I came to the mother's
house, and began to make fun with the child, I saw a round mark on
the side of his head, the size of a crown piece. And I said to the
wife, "Why would you beat the child in the head, why don't you get
a little rod to beat him if he wants it?" And she said that she had
never touched him at all.
And at that time I was very much given to playing cards, and that
night I went out to a friend's house to play. And the wife before
she went to bed broiled a bit of fish and put it on a plate with
potatoes, and put it in a box in the room, for fear it might be
touched by a cat or a rat or such like. But I was late coming in and
didn't mind to eat it. And the next night I was out again. And when
we were playing cards we'd play first with tobacco and we'd go on to
tea, and we'd end up with whiskey. And the next morning when the wife
opened the box she laughed and she said "You didn't drink your tea
when you were out last night, for I see you have your dinner eaten."
And I said, "Why should you say that? I never touched it." And she
held up the plate and showed me that the potatoes were taken off it;
but the fish wasn't touched, for it was a bit of a herring and salty.
Well, the child was getting sick all the day, and I didn't go out
that evening. And in the night we could hear the noise as if of
scores of rats, going about the room. And every now and again I
struck a light, but so soon as the light was in it we'd hear nothing.
But the noise would begin again as soon as it was dark, and sometimes
it would seem as if they came up on the bed, and I could feel the
weight of them on my chest as if they would smother me.
And in the morning I chanced to open the box where the dinner used to
be put, and it as big a box as any in Aran, and when I opened it I
saw it was all full of blood, up the sides and to the top, that you
couldn't put your hand in without it getting bloody. I said nothing
but shut the lid down again. But after, when I came into the house,
I saw the wife rubbing at it with a thing they call flannel they got
at Killinny, and I asked her what was she doing, and she said, "I'm
cleaning the box, where it's full of blood." And after that I gave up
the child and I had no more hope for its life. But if they had told
me that about the neighbour speaking to him, I'd have gone over, and
I'd have killed him with my stick, but I'd have made him come and
spit on him. After that we didn't hear the noise the same again, but
we heard like the sound of a clock all through the night and every
night. And the child got a swelling under the feet, and he couldn't
put a foot to the ground. But that made little difference to him, for
he didn't hold out a week.
* * * * *
I lost another son after--but he died natural, there was nothing of
that sort. And I have one son remaining now, and one day he went to
sleep out in a field and that's a bad thing to do. And the sister
found him there, and when she woke him he couldn't get up hardly, or
move his hand, and she had to help him to the house.
_Pat Doherty:_
I know a gentleman too got the touch, one of the Butlers. It was on
a day he made a great leap he got it. And he went to the bed and for
three or four days he couldn't stir, and red marks came out over him
shaped like a bow. And then I went for the priest and brought him to
see him, and when he heard of the marks, "I'm as bad as that myself,"
he said, making fun; "for I'm after making a journey in a curragh."
But when the clothes were stripped back and he saw his skin, "Oh,
murder!" he said, and he put on his stole and got out a book. And he
said, "Did you hear what I did to the man at Iona? He went to the
well with a tin can for water, and when he got to the well, a few
yards away from it, it was spilled. And he went back and filled it
again, and the second time at the well it was spilled, and he fell
along with it, and he got a little cut in the fall, and he began to
bleed, and all the people said as much blood as would be in three men
came away from him. And they sent for me, and the minute I came the
bleeding stopped, and he was all right again and the cut closed up."
And then he put his head down and what he read I don't know, but he
hardly got to the turn of the road outside the house, when the boy
stood up from the bed and asked for something to eat.
* * * * *
Another time I was drawing turf that came in the boats from Connemara
to Kilronan pier. And of a sudden there came a swelling in my arm,
and it was next day the size of an egg, and it turned black. And I
couldn't lift the arm, and Healy the coast-guard said to me to go to
Doctor Lydon. And I said I would, but in the way I met with Father
Jordan and I showed it to him. And he said; "What do you want with
your Healy and your Lydons? Let me see it." And he pressed his hand
on it two or three times like that, and the swelling began to go, and
when I got home they were clearing weed on the shore, and I was able
to go down and to give them a hand with it.
_A Piper:_
There was a cousin of my own used to feel some heavy thing coming on
him in the bed in the night time. And he went to the friars at Esker
to take it off of him, and they took it off. But Father Williams
said, "If this is gone from you some other thing will be put on you."
And sure enough it wasn't a twelvemonth after, he was carting planks
and the horse fell, and the planks fell on his foot and broke it in
two pieces. And after that again he got a fall, over some stones, and
he died with throwing off blood.
I had a fall myself in Galway the other day that I couldn't move
my arm to play the pipes if you gave me Ireland. And a man said to
me--and they are very smart people in Galway--that two or three got a
fall and a hurt in that same place. "There is places in the sea where
there is drowning," he said, "and places on the land as well where
there do be accidents, and no man can save himself from them, for it
is the Will of God."
_Mrs. Scanlon:_
Some people call Mrs. Tobin "Biddy Early." She has done a good many
cures. Her brother was _away_ for a while and it was from him she
got the knowledge. I believe that it's before sunrise that she
gathers the herbs, anyway no one ever saw her gathering them. (_Note_
38.) She has saved many a woman from being brought away when their
child was born, by whatever she does. She told me herself that one
night when she was going to the lodge gate to attend the woman there,
three magpies came before her and began roaring into her mouth, to
try to drive her back. Father Folan must know about her, but he is a
dark man and says nothing, and anyway the priests know as much, and
are as much in dread as any one else.
I wish I had sent for her for my own little boy. It's often he asked
me to bring him to the friars at Loughrea. But he never would tell
how or where he got the touch. It came like a lump in the back, and
he got weaker and smaller till you could put him into a tin can, and
he twenty years. Often I asked him about it, but he'd say nothing. I
believe that they are afraid to tell or they would be worse treated.
I asked him was it at the jumping, for they used to be jumping over a
pole, and he said it was not, and that he never took a jump that was
too much for him.
But some that saw his back said he had been beat. And when the Doctor
came in to see him, he was lying on the bed, and he turned him over
and looked at him and said, "If he had all Lady Gregory's estate he
couldn't live a week." And sure enough within five days he died. And
many of the neighbours said they never heard such a storm of wind as
rose about the house that night. I never saw him since, and I went
late and early, in the mill and down by the river. But it's maybe a
hundred or two hundred miles he was brought away.
_Tom Flatley:_
There is a priest now, a curate down in Cloughmore, is doing great
cures. There is often silence between him and the parish priest, Father
Rock, for he wouldn't like him to be doing them. There was a little
chap went to bed one night as well as yourself, and in the morning he
rose up with one of his ears as deaf as that he wouldn't hear you if
he died. And the mother brought him to Father Dolan and he came out as
well as ever he was. It was but a fortnight ago that happened, and I
didn't hear did the misfortune fall on any of the stock.
But wherever there is a cure something will go, and what would a
sheep or a heifer be beside a misfortune on a child?
There was a priest near Ennis, a woman I knew went to for a cure,
and he wouldn't do it. "_Tha me bocht_," he said, "I am poor, but I
will not do it." "I will pay you well," said the woman. "I will not
do it," said he, "for my heart was killed two years ago with one I
did. And it isn't money I'd ask of you if I did it," he said, "but to
offer you my blessing and the blessing of God."
_Mrs. Casey:_
There was a woman down by the sea that had a very severe time when her
baby was born, and they did not think she or the baby would live after.
So the husband went and brought Father Rivers and he said, "Which would
you sooner lose--the wife or the child--for one must go?" And the
husband said, "If the wife is taken I might as well close the door."
And then Father Rivers said, "She's going up and down like the swinging
of a clock, but for all that I'll strive to keep her for you, but maybe
you must lose two or more." So he read some prayers over her, and the
next day the baby died, and a fine cow out in the field, but the woman
recovered and is living still. But Father Rivers died within two years.
They never live long when they do these cures, because that they say
prayers that they ought not to say.
* * * * *
There's Father Heseltine of Killinan has lost his health and no
person knows where he is. They say he's gone abroad because he did a
cure on one of his sisters.
_Mrs. Cassilis:_
A young mare I lost. It was on the 15th August, something came on it
in the field, and it did no good, and the son was tending it. And on
S. Colman's Day he was taken with a weakness in the chapel that they
had to bring him home, and he did not go fasting to the chapel. He
got well, but the mare died. I didn't mind that, I knew something
must go, and it was better the mare to go than the son.
There were many said, the mare not to have died there would be no
chance for him. So I am well content, for whatever way we'll struggle
we might get another mare. But a person to go, there is no one for
you to get in his place.
_A County Galway Magistrate:_
That time I was laid up at Luke Manning's they sent for Father
Heseltine to "read a gospel" over me. He said when he came in, "You'll
lose something tonight." I heard him say this, but what he read over me
I don't know, it seemed a sort of muttering. At all events I got well
after it, and the next morning, a sheep was found dead.
_Pat Hayden:_
My father was gardener here at Coole in the time of Mr. Robert's
grandfather. He was sick one time, and he thought to go to the
friars at Esker for a cure, and he asked Mr. Gregory for the loan
of a horse, and he bade him to take it. So he saddled and bridled
the horse, and he set out one morning and went to the friars, and
whatever they did they cured him, and he came back again. But in the
morning the horse was found dead in the stable. I suppose whatever
they took off him they put upon the horse. And when Mr. Gregory came
out in the morning, "How is Pat?" he says to one of the men. "Pat
is well," says he, "but the horse he brought with him is dead in the
stable." "So long as Pat is well," said Mr. Gregory, "I wouldn't mind
if five horses in the stable were dead."
_Mrs. Manning:_
There was a friar in Esker could do cures. Many I've seen brought to
him tied in a cart, and able to walk home after. Father Callaghan he
was. There was one man brought to him, wrong in his head he was, and
he cured him and he gave him some sort of a Gospel rolled up, and bid
him to put it about his neck, and never to take it off. Well, he went
to America after that and was as well as another and got work, and sent
home £10 one time to Father Callaghan he was that grateful to him.
But one day in America he was shaving, and whether he cut the string
or that he took it off I don't know, but he laid the charm down on a
table. And when he looked for it again, if he was to burn the house
down he couldn't find it. And it all came back on him again, and he
was as bad as he was before.
So the wife wrote home to Father Callaghan, and he sent out another
thing of the same sort; and bid him wear it, and from the time he put
it on, he got well again. A priest has the power to do cures, but if
he does he can keep nothing, one thing will die after another.
Biddy Early could do the same thing, she had to cast the sickness on
some other thing--it might be a dog or a goat or a bird.
* * * * *
Priests can do cures if they will, but they are afraid to do them
because their stock will die, and because they are afraid of loss
in the other world as well as in this. There's a neighbour of your
own lost his milch cow the other day for a small one he did,--Father
Mulhall that is.
* * * * *
There was Father Rivers was called in to a woman that was bad,
between Roxborough and Dunsandle. And he said to the father, "Which
would you sooner keep, the wife or the child?" And he said, "Sure
I'd sooner have the wife than all the children of the world." So
Father Rivers went in and cured her so that she got well, but he put
whatever she had on the son, so that he grew up an idiot. Harmless he
used to be, not doing much. Well, when he came to twenty years, the
mother said, "Come outside into the field, and cut the eyes of a few
stone of potatoes for me." But he took up the graip that was at the
door and made at her to kill her. And she ran in and shut the door,
and then he made for the window and broke it. And at that time Mr.
Singleton from Ceramina was passing by, and he stopped and called
some men and they took him and took the graip from him, and he was
brought away to Ballinasloe Asylum, but he didn't live more than six
months after. Waiting all that time he was to do his revenge, but
hadn't the power to do it till the twenty years were up.
* * * * *
There is a man that is living strong and well in the village of Lochlan
and that has sixteen or seventeen children, and one time something came
on him and he wore away till there was no more strength in him than
in that thraneen. And there was an old woman used to be doing cures
with herbs, and he sent for her, and she went out into the field and
she picked two or three leaves of a plant she knew of. And as she was
carrying it through the fields to the house she fell dead.
And his strength came back to him when the death fell on her and he
was as well and as strong as ever he was. I will bring you three of
those leaves if I have to walk two miles--three-cornered leaves they
are (penny royal). No harm will come upon me, for I am nothing but an
old hag. Before sunrise they must be picked, and the best day to do
it is a Friday.
_An Old Army Man:_
I knew a man had charms for headache and for toothache and other
things, and he did a great many cures, but all his own children began
to die. So then he put away the charms, and made a promise not to do
cures for others again; and after that he lost no more children.
* * * * *