Irish Folk Tales

by Henry Glassie

  Sullivan was raging when he found that the shinbones he had been dancing with belonged to a third woman, and she not the best, and he gave a sharp slap to the wife that sent her spinning into a corner.

  The woman had relations among the skeletons present, and they were angry when they saw the man strike their friend. “We’ll never let that go with him,” said they. “We must knock satisfaction out of Sullivan!”

  The woman’s friends rose up, and, as there were no clubs or weapons, they pulled off their left arms and began to slash and strike with them in terrible fashion. There was an awful battle in one minute.

  While this was going on Daniel Crowley was standing below at the end of the room, cold and hungry, not knowing but he’d be killed. As Sullivan was trying to dodge the blows sent against him he got as far as Daniel Crowley, and stepped on his toe without knowing it. Crowley got vexed and gave Sullivan a blow with his fist that drove the head from him, and sent it flying to the opposite corner.

  When Sullivan saw his head flying off from the blow he ran, and, catching it, aimed a blow at Daniel Crowley with the head, and aimed so truly that he knocked him under the bench; then, having him at a disadvantage, Sullivan hurried to the bench and began to strangle him. He squeezed his throat and held him so firmly between the bench and the door that the man lost his senses, and couldn’t remember a thing more.

  When Daniel Crowley came to himself in the morning his apprentice found him stretched under the bench with an empty bottle under his arm. He was bruised and pounded. His throat was sore where Sullivan had squeezed it. He didn’t know how the company broke up, nor when his guests went away.

  GHOSTS ALONG THE ARNEY

  HUGH NOLAN FERMANAGH

  HENRY GLASSIE 1972

  In days gone by, ghost stories was very common, only that the tellers of these tales, they’re gone, dead and gone now.

  Well, it used to be very interesting for some. And then there was others and they used to get terribly afraid. There was people and when they’d hear ghost stories told—if it was on a kind of a dark day—they wouldn’t go out, do you know. Oh aye.

  When I was a little fellow, there was an old man, he lived here in this townland and was—oh, he was a powerful man for telling ghost stories. He was a powerful composer.

  He was Maguire, James Maguire.

  The house that he lived in, it’s the other way now. You went up past the milkstand there, and there was a lane brought you up the hill, and his house was at the head of the first hill. Aye, indeed.

  Aw, he was a great star. He had terrible experiences of ghosts, do you know. Oh aye. He let on that he had, but there was nothing about the business.

  Well, I often seen him coming along here of a wet day, you know. A wet day every place is dark. When I’d hear him for about an hour or so, I wouldn’t go into this room here.

  Well, that was the way with a lot of the young people.

  Well then, do you see, there was others then that enjoyed these stories, but they knew rightly that there was nothing at all about them.

  There was one night this man was ceiliing down here where Johnny Boyle lives, down in the Hollow.

  And there was a man after dying in this land and he was coming along here between this house and the head of the brae. He met that man going down in the direction of the Lake.

  Aye indeed.

  Aye, he was coming through the fields one night, he said, and he came to a stile.

  And just as he went across the stile, he seen this man on the far side of the stile. And the man had been buried some time before it.

  So anyway, he got up

  the steps

  to the head of the stile.

  And the man wasn’t seeming to move.

  So he says to him, “Leave me the road till I get across.”

  The man paid no attention.

  He says, “I just riz,” he says, “and I just leapt on top of him. And after that, there wasn’t a sight of him to be seen,” he says.

  “I came on home.”

  It was alarming tales like that, do you know, that you would hear.

  Well then, there was a tale told about a ghost at Arney.

  Well, it’s very hard to know as far as that’s concerned because the man that told that, he wasn’t a teller of ghost tales, do you know.

  Well, I’ll tell you:

  There was a mansion convenient to Arney in days gone by.

  It was known as Nixon Hall.

  The owners of it owned all the townlands around the chapel and around the parochial house. In fact, they owned the whole townland of Mulli-namesker.

  And they were wealthy people. The most of them all had high-up army positions at the time.

  But anyway, there was a whole lot of laborers about this place. There was a lot of horses and there was a lot of cattle. In them days, there was no water mains, nor there wasn’t many places for animals to drink, especially in the summer when ponds would dry up.

  So there was some fellow working at Nixon Hall, and he wasn’t—as the men used to say—he wasn’t a good article. And it was him used to bring the horses to that little brook beside Tommy Gilleece’s public house for them to drink.

  So there was another man in the locality, and they were deadly enemies.

  So this night he had brought the horses to Arney for to drink them, and he was coming back.

  And the way that he used to come: he used to come out there through a gate at the graveyard, next to Arney, below the chapel, between the chapel and Arney. There was a road in them days that led to this mansion over in the fields.

  So anyway, this man and him had it hot some time before it. And didn’t they meet on the road this night.

  And of course, the feud was there and the row started again between them.

  So anyway, this man he had a blade of a scythe, or some edged weapon, and didn’t he take him on the neck.

  And I think he partly cut the head off him anyway.

  Oh, he died. Whether he got home or not, or whether he got as far as the mansion or not before he died—but he died anyway: be the hacks of it.

  So that’s supposed to be his ghost that be’s seen.

  Well, it’s very seldom that it has been seen, but it has been seen a couple of times: a man without a head, between Peter McKevitt’s and the chapel.

  Well, Hugh Pat Owens’ father seen it. And the way he told the story was: that he started for home and that this headless man started along with him, and that he put out his hand to get him by the arm as he thought.

  But there was nothing to be found.

  So then he invoked the Blessed Trinity and the man disappeared.

  Well then, there was another man coming on the same road. And he had some experience like that.

  And whether he seen this man or whether he didn’t, I couldn’t say. But they weren’t the type of this man, Maguire, that I’m telling you about, you know; they wouldn’t tell ghost stories for amusement.

  And that thing, it’s common about Arney, all the time.

  And then, do you see, a person that’s not in the habit of telling these ghost stories, do you see, there’d be something to what you hear from them in the line of seeing things from the other world, but them men like this man that I’m telling you about that could compose, do you see, that’s where the value was: to make others afraid.

  Well then, there’s a lot of people and they imagine that they see ghosts. And if it was investigated it’s just something ordinary that takes their eye, and that they be under the impression there’s a ghost.

  You could see a thing that looks like a ghost, and then if it was investigated, it’s no ghost atall.

  Now I was coming from a house away over there on the Back Road.

  And I was coming through Drumbargy.

  And I was walking along the pad road.

  And I looked to me right.

  And I seen

  what I took to be

  a very stout little man

  stan
ding

  a distance away.

  So I come on for a wee piece and says I, to meself:

  “It’s a pity to go home without finding out is it really a man or who would it be.”

  So I turned back.

  And I went on down to where this figure was.

  And I found out what it was.

  There had been a sally runt—that’s one of these plants in this country that there grows big long wattles out of, do you know. There used to be in days gone by, the old men used to be very anxious for to come across some of them; they were great for making creels, do you know—big, strong wattles.

  Well, there had been some of them growing on this.

  And that day they had been cut, do you know.

  And the wattles was cut off this,

  at the distance,

  and in the darkness,

  it was terrible like the shape of a wee stout man.

  So.

  That’s what I found out when I investigated.

  THE GRAVE OF HIS FATHERS

  PEIG SAYERS KERRY

  ROBIN FLOWER 1945

  I have not seen a ghost, but I have known people who have, and there are many tales of them, and of strange things that happen upside down with the things of this world.

  There was a lad in Ventry parish once and he could not make a living in the place where he was, so he said to himself that he would travel to the North of Ireland, and that maybe he would find something to do there that would bring a bite of food to his mouth.

  And he set out with a friend from the same parish, and they walked Ireland till they came to the North and there they took service with a farmer, and were doing well for a time. But after a time this lad fell sick, and he called his friend to him, and said, “I know that I am going to die.”

  “Don’t say that,” said his friend.

  “I do say that, for, young or old, when the day comes, we must go. But I always thought, when I came to die, to be buried in my own churchyard among my kindred, and now I am dying a long way from home. But promise me this much, that when I am dead you will cut the head off me, and take that and bury it in my own churchyard.” His friend was unwilling at first, but at the last he gave the promise, and the lad died happy, for he knew that some part of him would rest in his own churchyard.

  So, when he died, his friend was true to his word, and he cut the head from him and started throughout Ireland with the head wrapped in a cloth.

  And at last he came to Ventry parish, weary with walking, and he turned into the house of his friend, and put the cloth with the head in it on the table, and told them that it was their son’s head, that he had died in the North, and that he had wished that his head should be buried in his own churchyard, since his body could not rest there.

  And they got in a coffin, and a barrel of porter and some tobacco pipes, and had a wake on the head.

  And the next day they started for Ventry churchyard with the head in the coffin. You know that Ventry churchyard is in a place where two roads meet.

  Now, as they came down their road they saw another funeral coming down the other road.

  Now it is the custom, when two funerals are coming to the same churchyard at the same time, for them to race together so that the one that wins will be the first to bury its dead.

  So they made all speed down their road, and the other funeral hastened down the other road. And they came together in the same moment to the wall of the churchyard, and as they touched the wall, the other funeral, the coffin and the bearers and all, vanished as though the earth had swallowed it. They wondered at this, but they said that they had come to bury the head, and that they would bury the head.

  So they lifted the coffin over the wall, and came to the place where the grave was open, and there they buried the head as the young lad had asked when he was dying.

  So it was for a time. But after some months another man of the family died, and they opened the grave again, and what should they find there but two coffins, and in one coffin was the head and in the other the body, so that in the end the lad had his wish, and rested, head and body and all, in the grave of his fathers.

  THE COFFIN

  JOHN HERBERT LIMERICK

  KEVIN DANAHER 1967

  A long time ago, when I was a young lad, I was in a farmer’s house below near Monagea one evening and I saw a very strange thing there. It was what looked like a coffin without any cover on it, standing up against the wall, and it had shelves across it like a small cupboard, and there were tins and things in it, the same as you would find on the shelves of a dresser. Well, the old man of the house noticed how curious I was, and he told me about it.

  It seems that one night, when he was a young married man, they were sitting around the fire in the kitchen, himself and the wife, and the old people and a few of the neighboring boys, when the door opened and four men came in with a coffin between them, and they laid it down in the middle of the floor without saying a single word, and then they turned and walked out again. They were strangers to the people in the house.

  Well, what was in the house of them had not a word to say with the fright; they were staring at the coffin, and they petrified.

  Well, after a while, the young man of the house plucked up his courage. “Here, in the name of God,” says he, “it would be better to see what is inside in it, and to be ready to send for the priest or for the peelers, according to what is there.”

  The cover was loose on top of it, and he lifted it up, and the rest of them came around and looked at what was inside in it. It was a young girl, and she lying back the same as if she was asleep. “She is not dead, with that color on her,” says the old woman, the young man’s mother, “and let ye lift her out of it, and put her down in the bed in the room below.” They did it, and she was breathing away, just the same as if she was asleep. They all stood around the bed, watching her, and in about a half an hour she woke up, the same as anyone would wake up out of their sleep. And she was greatly puzzled and very much in dread of them, for she did not know where she was or who all the strangers might be.

  Well, the old woman and the young woman hunted the men up into the kitchen, and they started to comfort the poor girl and to tell her that they were respectable people, and that she need not be in dread, that nothing would happen her. And they gave her a drink of hot milk and the like of that to bring back her courage, until finally she told them that she was from near Newtown in County Kerry, and that she was after going to bed, the same as always, at home, and that the next thing she knew was to wake up in this house.

  The next day she was a lot better, and they tackled the side-car and started off for Newtown; it was a journey of about fifteen miles to her own place.

  And when they arrived at her people’s place, they found that the whole place was very upset, for when the people of the house were after getting up in the morning three or four days before, they found their daughter, or what they thought was their daughter, dead in her sleep, and they were after waking and burying her.

  And when she had them persuaded that she was their real daughter, didn’t they send a few men to the churchyard to open the grave, and, God between us and all harm, wasn’t the coffin in the grave empty.

  THE CAPTURE OF BRIDGET PURCELL

  KATE PURCELL LIMERICK

  T. CROFTON CROKER 1825

  Biddy Purcell was as clean and as clever a girl as you would see in any of the seven parishes. She was just eighteen when she was whipped away from us, as some say. And I’ll tell you how it was.

  Biddy Purcell and myself, that’s her sister, and more girls with us, went one day, ’twas Sunday too, after hearing Mass, to pick rushes in the bog that’s under the old castle.

  Well, just as we were coming through Carrig gate, a small child, just like one of them little creatures you see out there, came behind her, and gave her a little bit of a tip with a kippen between the two shoulders. Just then she got a pain in the small of her back, and out through her heart, as if she
was struck. We only made game of her, and began to laugh; for sure that much wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a Christian.

  Well, when we got to the bog, some went here, and more there, everywhere, up and down, for ’twas a good big place, and Biddy was in one corner, with not one along with her, or near her—only just herself. She had picked a good bundle of rushes, and while she was tying them in her apron, up came an old woman to her, and a very curious old woman she was. Not one of the neighbors could tell who she was from poor Biddy’s account, nor ever saw or heard tell of the likes of her before or since.

  So she looks at the rushes, and, “Biddy Purcell,” says she, “give me some of them rushes.”

  Biddy was afeared of her life. But for all that she told her the bog was big enough, and there was plenty more rushes, and to go pick for herself, and not be bothering other people. The word wasn’t out of her mouth, when the old woman got as mad as fire, and gave her such a slash across the knees and feet with a little whip that was in her hand, that Biddy was almost killed with the pain.

  That night Biddy took sick, and what with pains in her heart and out through her knees, she wasn’t able to sit nor lie, and had to be kept up standing on the floor, and you’d hear the screeching and bawling of her as far, aye, and farther than Mungret.

  Well, our heart was broke with her, and we didn’t know what in the wide world to do, for she was always telling us, that if we had all the money belonging to the master, and to lose it by her, ’twould not do—she knew all along what ailed her. But she wasn’t let tell till a couple of hours before she died, and then she told us she saw a whole heap of fairies, and they riding upon horses under Carrig, and every one of them had girls behind them all to one, and he told her he was waiting for her, and would come for her at such a day, and such an hour, and sure enough ’twas at that day and hour she died. She was just five days sick, and, as I said before, our heart was fairly broke to see the poor creature, she was so bad.