Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/150

122 11. When the mother of a man named McKeown, living near Kilcurry, was dying, a pigeon flew into the house and out again, while at the same time there was a tap on the window. This was a death warning.—[T. Curtis.]

Mr. Clodd having shown the above notes to Mr. W. B. Yeats, the latter gentleman kindly forwarded the following memoranda upon them:—

I have stories about most of the things in the slip of folklore you send. I will be dealing with a good many of the subjects in a month or two.

(1.) The coach is very common; Mr. Jones is perhaps wrong in calling it "the Dead Coach." The people of co. Galway usually call it "the Deaf Coach," because it makes a "deaf" sound. They describe "deaf" as muffled or rumbling. I never heard before of its being soundless. Has he mistaken "deaf" for "dead"?

(2.) I am always hearing of forts and of certain rooms in houses being seen as if on fire. It is the commonest phenomenon in connection with forts, in all parts of Ireland I know.

(3.) I am collecting material about fairy battles, and am trying to find out when they coincide with May Day, or November Day, or thereabouts, or else with a death.

(4.) A Newfoundland dog, according to my uncle's old servant, is "a very quiet form to do your penance in." She is a Mayo woman and very much of a saint.

(6.) It is always dangerous to go out late at night. I have a number of Galway and Sligo stories of people being carried to a distance, including one in which I myself am supposed to have been carried four miles in County Sligo. Compare the spiritualistic medium, Mrs. Guppy, being carried across London with a saucepan in one hand and an egg in the other. She weighed about nineteen stone. I have met about four peasants who believe in