Irish Folk Tales (41 page)

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.

T
HE CAPTURE OF BRIDGET PURCELL

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.

Well, we hear tell of a man that was good to bring back people (so they said), and we went to him. He gave us a bottle full of green herbs, and desired us to boil them on the fire, and if they kept green she was our own, but if they turned yellow, she was gone—the Good People had her from us. He bid us to give her the water they were boiled in to drink. When we came home we boiled the herbs, and they turned as yellow as gold in the pot before our eyes. We gave her the water to drink, and five minutes after she
took it she died, or whatsomever thing we had in her place died. Anyhow ’twas just like herself, and talked to us just the same as if ’twas our own sister we had there before us.

People says she’s down along with them in the old fort. Some says she’ll come back, and more says she won’t, and indeed, faix, there’s no knowing for certain which to believe, or which way it is.

T
AKEN

It is not so long ago that a woman of my mother’s kin, the O’Sheas, was taken, and when I was young I knew people who had seen her. She was a beautiful girl, and she hadn’t been married a year when she fell sick, and she said that she was going to die, and that if she must die she would rather be in the home in which she had spent her life than in a strange house where she had been less than a year. So she went back to her mother’s house, and very soon she died and was buried. She hadn’t been buried more than a year when her husband married again, and he had two children by his second wife. But one day there came a letter to her people, a letter with a seal on it.

It was from a farmer who lived in the neighborhood of Fermoy. He said that now for some months, when the family would go to bed at night in his farm, if any food were left out they would find it gone in the morning. And at last he said to himself that he would find out what it was that came at night and took the food.

So he sat up in a corner of the kitchen one night, and in the middle of the night the door opened and a woman came in, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen with his eyes, and she came up the kitchen and lifted the bowl of milk they had left out, and drank of it. He came between her and the door, and she turned to him and said that this was what she had wanted.

So he asked her who she was, and she said that she came from the liss at the corner of his farm, where the fairies kept her prisoner. They had carried her off from a place in Ventry parish, and left a changeling in her place, and the changeling had died and been buried in her stead.

She said that the farmer must write to her people and say that she was in the liss with the fairies, and that she had eaten none of the food of the fairies, for if once she ate of their food she must remain with them forever till she died; and when she came near to death they would carry her through
the air and put her in the place of another young woman, and carry the young woman back to be in the liss with them, in her stead. And when he wrote to her people, he must ask her mother if she remembered one night when her daughter lay sick, and the mother was sitting by the fire, and, thinking so, she had forgotten everything else, and the edge of her skirt had caught fire and was burning for some time before she noticed it. If she remembered that night it would be a token for her, for on that night her daughter had been carried off, and the fire in her mother’s skirt was the last thing she remembered of her life on earth. And when she had said this she went out through the door, and the farmer saw her no more.

So the next day he wrote the letter as she had told him. But her people did nothing, for they feared that if they brought her back there would be trouble because of the new wife and her two children.

And she came again and again to the farmer, and he wrote seven letters with seals, and the neighbors all said it was a shame to them to leave her with the fairies in the liss. And the husband said it was a great wrong to leave his wife in the liss, and, whatever trouble it would bring, they should go and fetch her out of the liss.

So they set out, her own people and her husband, and when they had gone as far as Dingle, they said they would go and ask the advice of the priest.

So they went to the priest that was there that time, and they told him the story from the beginning to the end. And when he had heard the story, he said that it was a hard case, and against the law of the church. And the husband said that, when they had brought the woman out of the liss, he would not bring her back with him to make scandal in the countryside, but would send her to America, and would live with his second wife and her children. But the priest said that even if a man’s wife were in America, she was still his wife, and it was against the law of the Pope that a man should have two wives; and, though it was a hard thing, they must leave her in the liss with the fairies, for it was a less evil that she should eat the fairy bread and be always with the fairies in the liss than that God’s law should be broken and a man have two wives living in this world.

They found nothing to say against the priest, and they went back home sorrowing. And when the woman heard this from the farmer she went back with the fairies to the liss, and ate their bread and remained with them.