'And the man with the rope threw it out on the water, and the curagh
half-filled already, and I think only one oar in her. A wave came
into her then, and she went down before them, and the young man
began swimming about; then they let fall the sails in the hooker the
way they could pick him up. And when they had them down they were
too far off, and they pulled the sails up again the way they could
tack back to him. He was there in the water swimming round, and
swimming round, and before they got up with him again he sank the
third time, and they didn't see any more of him.'
I asked if anyone had seen him on the island since he was dead.
'They have not,' he said, 'but there were queer things in it. Before
he went out on the sea that day his dog came up and sat beside him
on the rocks, and began crying. When the horses were coming down to
the slip an old woman saw her son, that was drowned a while ago,
riding on one of them, She didn't say what she was after seeing, and
this man caught the horse, he caught his own horse first, and then
he caught this one, and after that he went out and was drowned. Two
days after I dreamed they found him on the Ceann gaine (the Sandy
Head) and carried him up to the house on the plain, and took his
pampooties off him and hung them up on a nail to dry. It was there
they found him afterwards as you'll have heard them say.'
'Are you always afraid when you hear a dog crying?' I said.
'We don't like it,' he answered; 'you will often see them on the top
of the rocks looking up into the heavens, and they crying. We don't
like it at all, and we don't like a cock or hen to break anything in
the house, for we know then some one will be going away. A while
before the man who used to live in that cottage below died in the
winter, the cock belonging to his wife began to fight with another
cock. The two of them flew up on the dresser and knocked the glass
of the lamp off it, and it fell on the floor and was broken. The
woman caught her cock after that and killed it, but she could not
kill the other cock, for it was belonging to the man who lived in
the next house. Then himself got a sickness and died after that.'
I asked him if he ever heard the fairy music on the island.
'I heard some of the boys talking in the school a while ago,' he
said, 'and they were saying that their brothers and another man went
out fishing a morning, two weeks ago, before the cock crew.
