There was a doubter in Donegal, and he would not hear of ghosts or
sheogues, and there was a house in Donegal that had been haunted as
long as man could remember, and this is the story of how the house got
the better of the man. The man came into the house and lighted a fire
in the room under the haunted one, and took off his boots and set them
On the hearth, and stretched out his feet and warmed him self. For a
time he prospered in his unbelief; but a little while after the night
had fallen, and everything had got very dark, one of his boots began to
move. It got up off the floor and gave a kind of slow jump towards the
door, and then the other boot did the same, and after that the first
boot jumped again. And thereupon it struck the man that an invisible
being had got into his boots, and was now going away in them. When the
boots reached the door they went up-stairs slowly, and then the man
heard them go tramp, tramp round the haunted room over his head. A few
minutes passed, and he could hear them again upon the stairs, and after
that in the passage outside, and then one of them came in at the door,
and the other gave a jump past it and came in too. They jumped along
towards him, and then one got up and hit him, and afterwards the other
hit him, and then again the first hit him, and so on, until they drove
him out of the room, and finally out of the house. In this way he was
kicked out by his own boots, and Donegal was avenged upon its doubter.
It is not recorded whether the invisible being was a ghost or one of
the Sidhe, but the fantastic nature of the vengeance is like the work
of the Sidhe who live in the heart of fantasy.