The Spirit Horse : THE history of Morty Sullivan ought to be a warning to all young men to stay at home, and to live decently and soberly if they can, and not to go roving about the world. Morty, when he had just turned of fourteen, ran away from his father and mother, who were a mighty respectable old couple...
The Giant's Stairs : ON the road between Passage and Cork there is an old mansion called Ronayne's Court. It may be easily known from the stack of chimneys and the gable-ends, which are to be seen, look at it which way you will. Here it was that Maurice Ronayne and his wife, Margaret Gould, kept house, as may be...
The Legend Of O'donoghue : IN an age so distant that the precise period is unknown, a chieftain named O'Donoghue ruled over the country which surrounds. the romantic Lough Lean, now called the lake of Killnarney. Wisdom, beneficence, and justice distinguished his reign, and the prosperity and happiness of his subjects were...
The Brewery Of Egg Shells : IT may be considered impertinent were I to explain what is meant by a changeling: both Shakspeare and Spenser have already done so and who is there unacquainted with the Midsummer Night's Dream [Act ii. Sc. 1] and the Fairy Queen [Book I. canto 10]. Now Mrs. Sullivan fancied that her youngest child...
The Field Of Boliauns : TOM FITZPATRICK was the eldest son of a comfortable farmer who lived at Ballincollig. Tom was just turned of nine-and-twenty, when he met the following adventure, and was as clever, clean, tight, good-looking a boy as any in the whole county Cork. One fine day in harvest - it was indeed Lady-day...
The Legend Of Bottle Hill : IT was in the good days, when the little people most impudently called fairies, were more frequently seen than they are in these unbelieving times, that a farmer, named Mick Purcell, rented a few acres of barren ground in the neighbourhood of the once celebrated preceptory of Mourne, situated...
The Lucky Guest : THE kitchen of some country houses in Ireland presents in no ways a bad modern translation of the ancient feudal hall. Traces of clanship still linger round its hearth in the numerous depend-ants on "the master's" bounty. Nurses, foster-brothers, and other hangers on, are there as matter of right...
Diarmid Bawn, The Piper : ONE stormy night Patrick Burke was seated in the chimney corner, smoking his pjpe quite contentedly after his hard day's work; his two little boys were roasting potatoes in the ashes, while his rosy daughter held a splinter [a splinter, or slip of bog-deal, which, being dipped in tallow, is used...
Linn Na Payshtha : TRAVELLERS go to Leinster to see Dublin and the Dargle; to Ulster, to see the Giant's Causeway, and, perhaps, to do penance at Lough Dearg; to Munster, to see Killarney, the beautiful city of Cork, and half a dozen other fine things; but whoever thinks of the fourth province ? - whoever thinks...
Flory Cantillon's Funeral : THE ancient burial-place of the Cantillon family was on an island in Ballyheigh Bay. This island was situated at no great distance from the shore, and at a remote period was overflowed in one of the incroachments which the Atlantic has made on that part of the coast of Kerry. The fishermen declare...
Master And Man : BILLY MAC DANIEL was once as likely a young man as ever shook his brogue at a patron, emptied a quart, or handled a shillelagh: fearing for nothing but the want of drink; caring for nothing but who should pay for it; and thinking of nothing but how to make fun over it: drunk or sober, a word...
The Young Piper : THERE lived not long since, on the borders of the county Tipperary, a decent honest couple, whose names were Mick Flanigan andJudy Muldoon. These poor people were blessed, as the saying is, with four children, all boys: three of them were as fine, stout, healthy, good-looking children as ever...
The Enchanted Lake : IN the west of Ireland there was a lake, and no doubt it is there still, in which many young men had been at various times drowned. What made the circumstance remarkable was, that the bodies of tile drowned persons were never found. People naturally wondered at this: and at length the lake came...
The Haunted Castle : THE Christmas of 1820 I had promised to spend at Island Bawn Horne, in the county Tipperary, and I arrived there from Dublin on the 18th of December: I was so tired with travelling, that for two days after I remained quietly by the fireside, reading Mr. Luttrell's exquisite "jeu d'esprit, "Advice...
Rent Day : OH ullagone, ullagone ! this is a wide world, but what will we do in it, or where will we go ?" muttered Bill Doody, as he sat on a rock by the Lake of Killarney. " What will we do ? tomorrow's rent-day, and Tim the Driver swears if we don't pay up our rent, he'll cant every "ha'perth "we have;...
The Two Gossips : At Minane, near Tracton, there was a young couple whose name was Mac Daniel, and they had such a fine, wholesome-looking child, that the fairies determined on having it in their company, and putting a changeling in its place; but it so happened that Mrs. Mac Daniel had a gossip whose name was Norah...
Next. Legends Of The Banshee : THE Reverend Charles Bunworth was rector of Buttevant, in the county of Cork, about the middle of the last century. He was a man of unaffected piety, and of sound learning; pure in heart, and benevolent in intention. By the rich he was respected, and by the poor beloved; nor did a difference...
Teigue Of The Lee : "I CAN'T stop in the house - I won't stop in it for all the money that is buried in the old. castle of Carrigrohan. if ever there was such a thing in the world ! -. to be abused to my face night and day, and nobody to the fore doing it ! and then, if I'm angry, to be laughed at with a great roaring...
The Wonderful Tune : MAURICE CONNOR was the king, and that's no small word, of all the pipers in Munster. He could play jig and planxty without end, and Ollistrum's March, and the Eagle's Whistle, and the Hen's Concert, and odd tunes of every sort and kind. But he knew one, far more surprising than the rest, which had...
Dreaming Tim Jarvis : TIMOTHY JARVIS was a decent, honest, quiet, hard-working man, as every body knows that knows Balledehob. Now Balledehob is a small place, about forty miles west of Cork. It is situated on the summit of a hill, and yet it is in a deep valley; for on all sides there are lofty mountains that rise one...
Clough Na Cuddy : ABOVE all the islands in the lakes of Killarney give me Inniafallen -- " sweet Innisfallen," as the melodious Moore calls it. It is, in truth, a fairy isle, although I have no fairy story to tell you about it; and if I had, these are such unbelieving times, and people of late have grown so...
The Lord Of Dunkerron : THE lord of Dunkerron - O'Sullivan More, Why seeks he at midnight the sea-beaten shore? His bark lies in haven, his bounds are asleep; No foes are abroad on the land or the deep. Yet nightly the lord of Dunkerron is known On the wild shore to watch and to wander alone; For a beautiful spirit...
Cormac And Mary : SHE is not dead - she has no grave - She lives beneath Lo ugh Corrib's water [Galway]; And in the murmur of each wave Methinks I catch the songs I taught her." Thus many an evening on the shore Sat Cormac raving wild and lowly; Still idly muttering o'er and o'er, She lives, detain'd by spells...
The Death Coach : 'T IS midnight ! - how gloomy and dark ! By Jupiter there 's not a star! - 'T is fearful ! - 't is awful ! - and hark ! What sound is that comes from afar? Still rolling and rumbling, that sound Makes nearer and nearer approach; Do I tremble, or is it the ground? - Lord save us ! - what is it...
The Changeling : A YOUNG woman, whose name was Mary Scannell, lived with her husband not many years ago at Castle Martyr. One day in harvest time she went with several more to help in binding up the wheat, and left her child, which she was nursing, in a corner of the field, quite safe, as she thought, wrapped up...
Ned Sheehy's Excuse : NED SHEEHY was servant-man to Richard Gumbleton, esquire, of Mountbally, Gumbletonmore, in the north of the county of Cork; and a better servant than Ned was not to be found in that honest county, from Cape Clear to the Kilworth Mountains; for nobody - no, not his worst enemy - could say a word...
The Haunted Cellar : THERE are few people who have not heard of the Mac Carthies - one of the real old Irish families, with the true Milesian blood running in their veins, as thick as buttermilk. Many were the clans of this family in the south; as the Mac Carthy-more - and the Mac Carthy-reagh - and the Mac Carthy...
The Little Shoe : " Now tell me, Molly," said Mr. Coote to Molly Cogan, as he met her on the road one day, close to one of the old gateways of Kilmallock, ["Kilmallock seemed to me like the court of the Queen of Silence." - "OKeeffe's Recollections"] did you ever bear of the Cluricaune?" "Is it the CIuricaune? why...
The Legend Of Lough Gur : LARRY COTTER had a farm on one side of Lough Gur [in the county of Limerick] and was thriving in it, for he was an industrious proper sort of man, who would have lived quietly and soberly to the end of his days, but for the misfortune that came upon him, and you shall hear how that was". "He had...
Letter From Sir Walter Scott To The Auth : SIR, -- I have been obliged by the courtesy which sent me your very interesting work on "Irish Superstitions," and no less by the amusement which it has afforded me, both from the interest of the stories and the lively manner in which they are told. You are to consider this, sir, as a high...
Next. The Wonderful Tune : MAURICE CONNOR was the king, and that's no small word, of all the pipers in Munster. He could play jig and planxty without end, and Ollistrum's March, and the Eagle's Whistle, and the Hen's Concert, and odd tunes of every sort and kind. But he knew one, far more surprising than the rest, which had...
The Headless Horseman : "GOD speed you, and a safe journey this night to you, Charley," ejaculated the master of the little sheebeen house at Ballyhooley after his old friend and good customer, Charley Culnane, who at length had turned his face homewards, with the prospect of as dreary a ride and as dark a night as ever...
The Legend Of Knocksheogowna : I In Tipperary is one of the most singularly shaped hills in the world. It has got a peak at the top like a conical nightcap thrown carelessly over your head as you awake in the morning. On the very point is built a sort of lodge, where in the' summer the lady who built it and her friends used...
The Legend Of Cairn Thierna : FROM the town of Fermoy, famous for the excellence of its bottled ale, you may plainly see the mountain of Cairn Chierna. It is crowned with a great heap of stones, which, as the country people remark, never came there without "a crooked thought and a cross job." Strange it is, that any work...
The Crookened Back : XV PEGGY BARRETT was once tall, well-shaped, and comely. She was in her youth remarkable for two qualities, not often found together, of being the most thrifty housewife, and the best dancer in her native village of Ballyhooley. But she is now upwards of sixty years old; and during the last ten...
Dedication To Dowager Lady Chatterton : TO THE DOWAGER LADY CHATTERTON, CASTLE MAHON. THEE, Lady, would I lead through Fairy-land (Whence cold and doubting reasoners are exiled), A land of dreams, with air-built castles piled; The moonlight SHEFROS there, in merry band With arful CLURICAUNE, should ready stand To welcome thee...
The Legend Of Knockgrafton : THERE was once a poor man who lived in the fertile glen of Aherlow, at the foot of the gloomy Galtee mountains, and he had a great hump on his back: he looked just as if his body had been rolled up and placed upon his shoulders; and his head was pressed down with the weight so much, that his ch...
Fairies Or No Fairies : JOHN MULLIGAN was as fine an old fellow as ever threw a Carlow spur into the sides of a horse. He was, besides, as jolly a boon companion over a jug of punch as you would meet from Carnsore Point to Bloody Farland. And a good horse he used to ride; and a stiffer jug of punch than his was not...
The Priest : IT is said by those who ought to understand such things, that the good people, or the fairies, are some of the angels who. were turned out of heaven, and who landed on their feet in this world, while the rest of their companions, who had more sin to sink them, went down further to a worse place. Be...
Legends Of The Banshee : THE family of Mac Carthy have for some generations possessed a small estate in the county of Tipperary. They are the descendants of a race, once numerous and powerful in the south of Ireland; and though it is probable that the property they at present hold is no part of the large possessions...
Daniel O Rourke : PEOPLE may have heard of the renowned adventures of Daniel O'Rourke, but how few are there who know that the cause of all his perils, above and below, was neither more nor less than his having slept under the walls of the Phooka's tower. I knew the man well: he lived at the bottom of Hungry Hill...
The Lady Of Gollerus : ON the shore of Smerwick harbour, one fine summer's morning, just at day-break, stood Dick Fitzgerald "shoghing the dudeen," which may be translated, smoking his pipe. The sun was gradually rising behind the lofty Brandon, the dark sea was getting green in the light, and the mists clearing away out...
Fior Usga : A LITTLE way beyond the Gallows Green of Cork, and just outside the town, there is a great lough of water, where people in the winter go and skate for the sake of diversion; but the sport above the water is nothing to what is under it, for at the very bottom of this lough there are buildings...
Hanlon's Mill : ONE fine summer's evening Michael Noonan went over to Jack Brien's the shoemaker, at Ballyduff, for the pair of brogues which Jack was mending for him. It was a pretty walk the way he took, but very lonesome; all along by the riverside, down under the oak-wood, till he came to Hanlon's mill, th...
Seeing Is Believing : THERE'S a sort of people whom every one must have met with some time or other; people that pretend to disbelieve what, in their hearts, they believe and are afraid of. Now Felix O'Driscoll was one of these. Felix was a rattling, rollicking, harum-scarum, devil may-care sort of fellow, like - but...
The Confessions Of Tom Bourke : TOM BOURKE lives in a low long farm-house, resembling in outward appearance a large barn, placed at the bottom of the hill, just where the new road strikes off from the old one, leading from the town of Kilworth to that of Lismore. He is of a class of persons who are a sort of black swans...
The Legend Of Knockfierna : [Kockfierna: Called by the people of the country 'Knock Dhoinn Firinne,' the mountain of Donn of Truth. This mountain is very high, and may be seen for several miles round; and when people are desirous to know whether or not any. day will rain, they look at the top of Knock Firinn, and if they see...
The Rock Of The Candle : A FEW miles west of Limerick stands the once formidable castle of Carrigogunnel. Its riven tower and broken archway remain in mournful evidence of the sieges sustained by that city. Time, however, the great soother of all things, has destroyed the painful effect which the view of recent violence...
