Page 162. Long teeth are a favourite adjunct to horrible personalities
in folk-fancy. There is in my “Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta,” another story
of a hag of the long tooth; and in a story I got in Connacht, called the
“Speckled Bull,” there is a giant whose teeth are long enough to make a
walking-staff for him, and who invites the hero to come to him “until I
draw you under my long, cold teeth.”
Loughlinn is a little village a few miles to the north-west of Castlerea,
in the county Roscommon, not far from Mayo; and Drimnagh wood is a thick
plantation close by. Ballyglas is the adjoining townland. There are two
of the same name, upper and lower, and I do not know to which the story
refers.
[In this very curious tale a family tradition seems to have got mixed up
with the common belief about haunted raths and houses. It is not quite
clear why the daughters should be bespelled for their father’s sin. This
conception could not easily be paralleled, I believe, from folk-belief in
other parts of Ireland. I rather take it that in the original form of the
story the sisters helped, or, at all events, countenanced their father,
or, perhaps, were punished because they countenanced the brother’s
parricide. The discomfiture of the priest is curious.—A.N.]