Part 8

Mrs. Hehirs was a difficult case to diagnose, and I could not give it a name. At the end she was flushed and delirious; and when one of the women attending her said, "She looks so well you wouldn't think it was herself that was in it at all," I knew what was in their minds. Afterwards I was told that the day the illness began she had been churning, and a strange woman came in and said, "Give me a hold of the staff and I'll do a bit of the churning for you." But she refused and the woman said, "It's the last time you'll have the chance of refusing anyone that asks you" and went out, and she was not seen again, then or afterwards.

_J. Madden:_

There's one thing should never be done, and that's to say "That's a fine woman," or such a thing and not to say "God bless her." I never believed that till a man that lives in the next holding to my own told me what happened to a springer he had. She was as fine a creature as ever you seen, and one day a friend of his came in to see him, and when he was going away, "That's a grand cow," says he, but he didn't say "God bless it." Well, the owner of the cow went into the house and he sat down by the fire and lit a pipe, and when he had the pipe smoked out he came out again, and there she was lying down and not able to stir. So he remembered what happened and he went after his friend, and found him in a neighbour's house. And he brought him back with him, and made him go into the field and say, "God bless it," and spit on the cow. And with that she got up and walked away as well as before.

_John McManus:_

They can only take a child or a horse or such things through the eye of a sinner. If his eye falls on it, and he speaks to praise it and doesn't say "God bless it," they can bring it away then. But if you say it yourself in your heart, it will do as well.

* * * * *

There was a man lived about a mile beyond Spiddal, and he was one day at a play, and he was the best at the hurling and the throwing and every game. And a woman of the crowd called out to him, "You're the straightest man that's in it." And twice after that a man that was beside him and that heard that said, saw him pass by with his coat on before sunrise. And on the fifth day after that he was dead.

He left four or five sons and some of them went to America and the eldest of them married and was living in the place with his wife. And he was going to Galway for a fair, and his wife was away with her father and mother on the road to Galway and she bid him to come early, that she'd have some commands for him to do. So it was before sunrise when he set out, and he was going over a little side road through the fields, and he came on the biggest fair he ever saw, and the most people in it. And they made a way for him to pass through and a man with a big coat and a tall hat came out from them and said, "Do you know me?" And he said, "Are you my father?" And the man said, "I am, and but for me you'd be sorry for coming here, but I saved you, but don't be coming out so early in the morning again." And he said, "It was a year ago that Jimmy went to America. And that was time enough." And then he said, "And it was you that drove your sister away, and gave her no fortune." And that was true enough.

* * * * *

One time there was two brothers standing in a gap in that field you're looking at. And a woman passed by, I wouldn't like to tell you her name, for we should speak no evil of her and she's dead now,--the Lord have mercy on her. And when she passed they heard her say in Irish, "The devil take you," but whether she knew they were there or not, I don't know. And the elder of the brothers called out, "The devil take yourself as well." But the younger one said nothing. And that night the younger one took sick, and through the night he was calling out and talking as if to people in the room. And the next day the mother went to a woman that gathered herbs, the mother of the woman that does cures by them now, and told her all that happened.

And she took a rag of an old red coat, and went down to the last village, and into the house of the woman that had put it, the evil eye, on him. And she sat there and was talking with her, and watched until she made a spit on the floor, and then she gathered it up on the rag and came to the sick man in the bed and rubbed him with it, and he got well on the minute.

It was hardly ever that woman would say "God bless the work" as she passed, and there were some would leave the work and come out on the road and hold her by the shoulder till she'd say it.

_A Man on the Boat:_

There are many can put on the _drohuil_. I knew a child in our village and a neighbour came in and said, "That's a fine child"; and no sooner was he gone than the child got a fit. So they brought him back and made him spit on the child and it got well after. Those that have that power, I believe it's born with them, and it's said they can do it on their own children as well as on ours.

* * * * *

There was a boy called Faherty, nephew to Faherty that keeps the licensed house, and he was a great one for all games, and at every pattern, and whenever anything was going on. And one time he went over to Kilronan where they had some sports, and it the 24th of June. And they were throwing the weight, and he took it up and he threw it farther than the police or any that were there; and the second time he did the same thing. And when he was going to throw it the third time, his uncle came to him and said "It's best for you to leave it now; you have enough done." But he wouldn't mind him, and threw it the third time, and farther than they all.

And the next year at that time on the 24th of June, he was stretched on his bed, and he died. And some one was talking about the day he did so much at Kilronan, and the father said: "I remember him coming into the house after that, and he put up his arm on the dresser as if there was something ailed him." And the boy spoke from his bed and said, "You ought to have said 'God bless you' then. If my mother had been living then she'd have said it, and I wouldn't be lying here now."

* * * * *

There were two other fine young men died in the same year, and one night after, the three of them appeared to a sick man, Jamsie Power, on the south island, and talked with him. But they didn't stay long because, they said, they had to go on to the coast of Clare.

* * * * *

My own first-born child wasn't spared. He was born in February and all the neighbours said they never saw so fine a child. And one night towards the end of March, I was in the bed, and the child on my arm between me and the wall, sleeping warm and well, and the wife was settling things about the house. And when she got into bed, she wanted to take the child, and I said, "Don't stir him, where he's so warm and so well"; but she took him in her own arm. And in the morning he was dead. And up to the time he was buried, you'd say he wasn't dead at all, so fresh and so full in the face he looked.

There was a neighbour about the same time had a child and it was in the bed with them, but it was sick. And one night he was sure he heard some one say outside the house, "It's time he should be stretched out to me." So he got up and opened the window, and he threw a vessel of dirty water over whatever was outside, and he heard no more, and his child got well and grew up strong.

_An Island Woman:_

And there's some people the fishermen wouldn't pass when they are going to the boats, but would turn back again if they'd meet them. One day two boys of mine, Michael and Danny, were down on the rocks, bream-fishing with lines, and I had a job of washing with the wife of the head coast-guard. But when it came to one o'clock something came over me, and I thought the boys might have got the hunger, and I went to Mrs. Patterson and said I must leave work for that day, and I went and bought a three-halfpenny loaf and brought it down to where they were fishing, and when I got there I saw that Michael the younger one was limping, and I said, "It must be from the hunger you're not able to walk." "Oh, no," he said, "but it's a pain I got in my heel, and I can't put it to the ground." And when we got home he went into his bed, and he didn't leave it for three months. And one day I said to him, "What was it happened you, did you meet any one on the road that day that said anything to you?" And he said, "I did, I met a woman of the village and she said, 'It's good to be you and to have a fine basket of bream,' and she said no more than that, and that very minute the pain came on my heel. But I won't tell you her name, for fear there'd be a row." But I made him tell me, and I promised never to say a word to her and I never did; but he's not the first she did that to.

_An Old Man with a Basket:_

They can put the _drohuil_ here and I suppose in all parts, and you should watch not to let any one meet you unless they would say, "God bless you," and spit.

* * * * *

There was a woman in this island lost her walk for a year and a half, till they went to Galway to a woman that throws the cups, and she bid them go into the next house where there was a black man living, and give him tobacco to be smoking, and take up the spit and rub his leg. And she got well after that.

There was another man in that island besides that neighbour of mine that would give the _drohuil_--the evil eye. Tom Griffith his name was. There was one Flanagan came back from Clare one day with three bonifs he bought there. And Griffith came out as he passed and said, "No better bonifs than those ever came into the island." And when Flanagan came home, there was a little hill in the front of his house and two of them fell down against it on their side. And when Mrs. Flanagan came out to see the bonifs, there was only one of them living before her.

* * * * *

There's a man in this island now puts the evil eye--the _drohuil_. It's about four years since I heard of him doing it last. There was a nice young woman he passed and he said, "You're the best walker in Aran." And that day she got a pain in her leg and she took to her bed, and there she lay for six months, and then she sent for him, and he was made--with respects to you--to throw a spit on her. And after that she got well and got up again. And there was a child died about the same time, and the friends said it was he did it. Ned Buckley is his name. Devil a foot he ever goes to a wedding or such like; they wouldn't ask him, they'd be afraid of him. But he goes to Mass--at least he did in his bloom--but he's an old man now. Does the priest know about him? It's not likely he does. There's no one would like to go and make an attack on him like that. And anyway the priests don't like any one to speak to them of such things, they'd sooner not hear about them.

_Mrs. Folan:_

There was one of my brothers overlooked, no doubt at all about that. He was the best rower of a canoe that ever was, and there was a match at Kinvara today and he won it, and there was a match at Ballyvaughan tomorrow and he was in it, and the foam was as high as mountains, that the hooker could hardly stand, and he won there. And when he was come to the pier and the people all running to carry him in their arms, the way the jockey is carried after a race, he was ruz up his own height off the ground, and no one could see what did it.

He was wrong in the head after that, and he would sit by the hearth without speaking. My mother that would be out binding the wheat would say to me now and again "There he is coming across to us," and she put it on me to think it, but I could see nothing, for it is not everyone can see those things. Then she would ask the father when we went in, did he stir from the fireside, and when he said he never stirred she knew it was his shadow she saw and that he had not long to live, and it was not long till he was gone.

_Mr. Stephens:_

There was a man coming along the road from Gort to Garryland one night, and he had a drop taken, and before him on the road he saw a pig walking. And having a drop in, he gave a shout and made a kick at it and bid it get out of that.

And from the time he got home, his arm had swelled from the shoulder to be as big as a bag, and he couldn't use his hand with the pain in it. And his wife brought him after a few days to a woman that used to do cures at Rahasane.

And on the road all she could do would hardly keep him from lying down to sleep on the grass. And when they got to the woman, she knew all that happened, and says she: "It's well for you that your wife didn't fall asleep on the grass, for if you had done that but for an instant, you'd be a gone man."

_Mrs. Casey:_

There was a woman lived near Ballinasloe and she had two children, and they both died, one after the other. And when the third was born, she consulted an old woman, and she said to watch the cradle all day where it was standing by the side of the fire. And so she did, and she saw a sort of a shadow come into it, and give the child a touch. And she came in, and drove it away. And the second day the same thing happened, and she was afraid that the third time the child would go, the same as the others. So she went to the old woman again, and she bid her take down the hanger from the chimney, and the tongs and the waistcoat of the child's father and to lay them across the cradle, with a few drops of water from a blessed well. So she did all this and laid these three things in the cradle, but she saw the shadow or whatever it was come again, and she ran in and drove it away.

But when she told the old woman she said "You need trouble yourself no more about it being touched or not, for no harm will come to it if you keep those three things on it for twelve days." So she did that, and reared eight children after, and never lost one.

_An Old Woman from Kinvara:_

Did I know any one was taken? My own brother was, and no mistake about it. It was one day he was out following two horses with the plough, and it was about five o'clock, for a gentleman was passing when he got the touch, and one of his tenants asked him the time, and he said five o'clock. And what way it came I don't know, but he fell twice on the stones--God bless the hearers and the place I'm telling it in. And at ten o'clock the next morning he was dead in his bed. Young he was, not twenty year, and nothing ailed him when he went out, but the place he was ploughing in that day was a bad pass. Sure and certain I am it's by _them_ he was taken. I used often to hear crying in the field after, but I never saw him again.

_A Connemara Woman:_

There was a boy going to America, and when he was going he said to the girl next door "Wherever I am, when you are married I'll come back to the wedding"; and not long after he went to America he died. And when the girl was married and all the friends and neighbours in the house, he appeared in the room, but no one saw him but his comrade he used to have here, and the girl's brother saw him too, but no one else. And the comrade followed him and went close to him and said, "Is it you indeed?" And he said, "It is, and from America I came tonight." And he asked, "How long did that journey take?" and he said, "Three-quarters of an hour," and then he went away. And the comrade was never the better of it, or he got the touch or the other called him, very true friends as they were, and he soon died. But the girl is now middle-aged and is living in that house we are just after passing and is married to one Kelly.

Whether all that die go among them I can't say, but it is said they can take no one without the touch of a Christian hand, or the want of a blessing from a Christian that would be noticing them.

_A North Galway Woman:_

There are many young women taken in childbirth. I lost a sister of my own in that way.

There's a place in the river at Newtown where there's stepping-stones in the middle you can get over by, and one day she was crossing, and there in the middle of the river, and she standing on a stone, she felt a blow on the face. And she looked round to see who gave it and there was no one there, so then she knew what had happened, and she came to the mother's house, and she carrying at the time. I was a little slip at that time, with my books in my hand coming from school, and I ran in and said to my mother, "Here's Biddy coming," and she said, "What would bring her at this time of day?" But she came in and sat down on a chair and she opened the whole story, and my mother said to quiet her, "It was only a pain in the ear you got, and you thought it was a blow." And she said, "I never got a blow that hurted me like that." And the next day, and every day after that, the ear would swell a little in the afternoon, and then she began to eat nothing, and five minutes after her baby was born she died. And my mother used to watch for her for three or four years after, thinking she'd come back, but she never did.

* * * * *

There was a forth near our house in Meath, and when I was a baby a woman was carrying me in her arms, and she walked down the four steps that led into it, and there was a nice garden around it, and she slipped and fell, and my cheek struck against one of the steps--you can see the mark yet that I got there. And the woman told my mother and said, "It's a wonder the child wasn't taken altogether then and there."

One day I was out digging in the field for my brothers, and there was a sort of a half-ditch between the oats and the potatoes, and I was digging it down, and of a sudden a sleep came on me and I lay down. And I suppose I had been asleep about twenty minutes when I was waked with a hard clout on the face. And I thought it was one of my brothers and I called out, "You have no right to give me a clout like that." But my brother was away down the field, and came when he heard me calling. And I felt a pain in my side as well, and I went into the house and didn't leave it for two months after with pleurisy, and the pain never left me till after I was married. I suppose I must have been on some way of theirs, or some place that belonged to them and that was known to be an enchanted place, and my father used often to see it lighted up with candles.

_A Man Herding Sheep:_

I'll tell you now what happened to a little one of my own. She was just five years. And the day I'm speaking of she was running to school down the path before me, as strong and as funny as the day she was born, and laughing and looking back at me. And that night she went to bed as well as ever she was. And it was about eleven o'clock in the night she awoke and gave a great cry, and she said there was a great pain in her knee, and it was in no other part of her. And in the morning she had it yet, and her walk had gone, and I lifted her and brought her out into the street, and she couldn't walk one step if you were to give her the three isles of Aran. And she lived for two nights after that.

When the doctor came and I told him, he said it was the strangest case he ever heard of, and the schoolmistress said, "I thought if I'd brought that child to the hill beyond and threw her down into the sea it would do her no harm, she was that strong."

But if such things happen, it happened to her, and touched she was. It was not death, it was being took away.

_An Old Woman in an Aran village:_

I'll tell you what happened a son of my own that was so strong and so handsome and so good a dancer, he was mostly the pride of the island. And he was that educated that when he was twenty-six years, he could write a letter to the Queen. And one day a pain came in the thigh, and a little lump came inside it, and a hole in it that you could hardly put the point of a pin in, and it was always drawing. And he took to his bed and was there for eleven months. And every night when it would be twelve o'clock, he would begin to be singing and laughing and going on. And what the neighbours said was, that it was at that hour there was some other left in his place. I never went to any one or any witchcraft, for my husband wouldn't let me but left it to the will of God; and anyway at the end of the eleven months he died.

And his sister was in America, and the same thing came to her there, a little lump by the side of the face, and she came home to die. But she died quiet and was like any other in the night.

And a daughter-in-law of mine died after the second birth, and even the priest said it was not _dead_ she was, he that was curate then. I was surprised the priest to say that, for they mostly won't give in to it, unless it's one that takes a drop of drink.

_An Old Man in the Kitchen:_

I had a son that it was mostly given in to in Aran to be the best singer to give out a couple of verses, so that he'd hardly go out of the house but some one would want to be bringing him into theirs. And he took sick of a sudden, with a pain in the shoulder. I went to the doctor and he says, "Does your wife take tea?" "She does when she can get it;" says I, and he told me then to put the spout of the kettle to where the pain was. And after that he went to Galway Hospital, but he got no better there and a Sister of Mercy said to him at last, "I'm thinking by the look of you, your family at home is poor." "That's true enough," says he. Then says she: "It's best for you to stop here, and they'll be free from the cost of burying you." But he said he'd sooner go die at home, if he had but two days to live there. So he came back and he didn't last long. It's always the like of him that's taken, that are good for singing or dancing or for any good thing at all. And young women are often taken in that way, both in the middle island and in this.

_Patrick Madden:_

I'll tell you how I lost the first son I had. He was just three years old and as fine and as strong as any child you'd see. And one day my wife said she'd bring the child to her mother's house to stop the evening with her, for I was going out. And there was a neighbour of ours, a man that lived near us, and no one was the better of being spoken to by him. And as they were passing his house he came out, and he said, "That's the finest child that's in the island." And a woman that was passing at the same time stopped and said, "It was the smallest that ever I saw the day it was born, God bless it." And the mother knew what she meant, and she wanted to say "God bless him," but it was like as if a hand took and held her throat, and choked her that she couldn't say the words. And when I came to the mother's house, and began to make fun with the child, I saw a round mark on the side of his head, the size of a crown piece. And I said to the wife, "Why would you beat the child in the head, why don't you get a little rod to beat him if he wants it?" And she said that she had never touched him at all.

And at that time I was very much given to playing cards, and that night I went out to a friend's house to play. And the wife before she went to bed broiled a bit of fish and put it on a plate with potatoes, and put it in a box in the room, for fear it might be touched by a cat or a rat or such like. But I was late coming in and didn't mind to eat it. And the next night I was out again. And when we were playing cards we'd play first with tobacco and we'd go on to tea, and we'd end up with whiskey. And the next morning when the wife opened the box she laughed and she said "You didn't drink your tea when you were out last night, for I see you have your dinner eaten." And I said, "Why should you say that? I never touched it." And she held up the plate and showed me that the potatoes were taken off it; but the fish wasn't touched, for it was a bit of a herring and salty.