There was a young man of Innismore, named James Lynan, noted through
all the island for his beauty and strength. Never a one could beat him
at hunting or wrestling, and he was, besides, the best dancer in the
whole townland. But he was bold and reckless, and ever foremost in all
the wild wicked doings of the young fellows of the place.
One day he happened to be in chapel after one of these mad freaks, and
the priest denounced him by name from the altar.
“James Lynan,” he said, “remember my words; you will come to an ill
end. The vengeance of God will fall on you for your wicked life; and by
the power that is in me I denounce you as an evil liver and a limb of
Satan, and accursed of all good men.”
The young man turned pale, and fell on his knees before all the people,
crying out bitterly, “Have mercy, have mercy; I repent, I repent,” and
he wept like a woman.
“Go now in peace,” said the priest, “and strive to lead a new life, and
I’ll pray to God to save your soul.”
From that day forth James Lynan changed his ways. He gave up drinking,
and never a drop of spirits crossed his lips. And he began to attend to
his farm and his business, in place of being at all the mad revels and
dances and fairs and wakes in the island. Soon after he married a nice
girl, a rich farmer’s daughter, from the mainland, and they had four
fine children, and all things prospered with him.
But the priest’s words never left his mind, and he would suddenly turn
pale and a shivering would come over him when the memory of the curse
came upon him. Still he prospered, and his life was a model of sobriety
and order.
One day he and his wife and their children were asked to the wedding
of a friend about four miles off; and James Lynan rode to the place,
the family going on their own car. At the wedding he was the life of
the party as he always was; but never a drop of drink touched his lips.
When evening came on, the family set out for the return home just
as they had set out; the wife and children on the car, James Lynan
riding his own horse. But when the wife arrived at home, she found her
husband’s horse standing at the gate riderless and quite still. They
thought he might have fallen in a faint, and went back to search; when
he was found down in a hollow not five perches from his own gate, lying
quite insensible and his features distorted frightfully, as if seized
while looking on some horrible vision.
They carried him in, but he never spoke. A doctor was sent for, who
opened a vein, but no blood came. There he lay like a log, speechless
as one dead. Amongst the crowd that gathered round was an old woman
accounted very wise by the people.
“Send for the fairy doctor,” she said; “he is struck.”
So they sent off a boy on the fastest horse for the fairy man. He could
not come himself, but he filled a bottle with a potion. Then he said—
“Ride for your life; give him some of this to drink and sprinkle his
face and hands also with it. But take care as you pass the lone bush
on the round hill near the hollow, for the fairies are there and will
hinder you if they can, and strive to break the bottle.”
Then the fairy man blew into the mouth and the eyes and the nostrils of
the horse, and turned him round three times on the road and rubbed the
dust off his hoofs.
“Now go,” he said to the boy; “go and never look behind you, no matter
what you hear.”
So the boy went like the wind, having placed the bottle safely in his
pocket; and when he came to the lone bush the horse started and gave
such a jump that the bottle nearly fell, but the boy caught it in time
and held it safe and rode on. Then he heard a cluttering of feet behind
him, as of men in pursuit; but he never turned or looked, for he knew
it was the fairies who were after him. And shrill voices cried to him,
“Ride fast, ride fast, for the spell is cast!” Still he never turned
round, but rode on, and never let go his hold of the fairy draught
till he stopped at his master’s door, and handed the potion to the
poor sorrowing wife. And she gave of it to the sick man to drink, and
sprinkled his face and hands, after which he fell into a deep sleep.
But when he woke up, though he knew every one around him, the power
of speech was gone from him; and from that time to his death, which
happened soon after, he never uttered word more.
So the doom of the priest was fulfilled—evil was his youth and evil
was his fate, and sorrow and death found him at last, for the doom of
the priest is as the word of God.