One
time three men were out at night in a curagh, and they saw a big
ship coming down on them. They were frightened at it, and they tried
to get away, but it came on nearer them, till one of the men turned
round and made the sign of the cross, and then they didn't see it
any more.'
Then he went on in answer to another question:
'We do often see the people who do be away with them. There was a
young man died a year ago, and he used to come to the window of the
house where his brothers slept, and be talking to them in the night.
He was married a while before that, and he used to be saying in the
night he was sorry he had not promised the land to his son, and that
it was to him it should go. Another time he was saying something
about a mare, about her hoofs, or the shoes they should put on her.
A little while ago Patch Ruadh saw him going down the road with
brogaarda (leather boots) on him and a new suit. Then two men saw
him in another place.
'Do you see that straight wall of cliff?' he went on a few minutes
later, pointing to a place below us. 'It is there the fairies do be
playing ball in the night, and you can see the marks of their heels
when you come in the morning, and three stones they have to mark the
line, and another big stone they hop the ball on. It's often the
boys have put away the three stones, and they will always be back
again in the morning, and a while since the man who owns the land
took the big stone itself and rolled it down and threw it over the
cliff, yet in the morning it was back in its place before him.'
I am in the south island again, and I have come upon some old men
with a wonderful variety of stories and songs, the last, fairly
often, both in English and Irish, I went round to the house of one
of them to-day, with a native scholar who can write Irish, and we
took down a certain number, and heard others. Here is one of the
tales the old man told us at first before he had warmed to his
subject. I did not take it down, but it ran in this way: -
There was a man of the name of Charley Lambert, and every horse he
would ride in a race he would come in the first.
The people in the country were angry with him at last, and this law
was made, that he should ride no more at races, and if he rode, any
one who saw him would have the right to shoot him.
