Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/385

 Collectanea.

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Malbay. She was white-skinned and had well-shaped white hands. The party tried to make friends with her, giving her bread, which she ate. Then a Quilty fisherman got frightened, said she was "something bad," and threw a pebble at her, on which she plunged into the sea and disappeared. Soon after- wards King Edward died. An old man at Spanish Point said the last mermaid was seen the year of the Great Famine (1846), and that such an appearance foretells a public disaster.

VIII. Ghosts and Haunted Houses.

Here, "where'er we tread is haunted," and libellous, ground, so that in the majority of cases the names and definite addresses must be withheld, although in every case I am acquainted with them.

Taking first the ancient buildings, I am unable to state the nature of the haunter of Lisananima (ghost fort) in Kilcorney, or of the other places of like name, although, as regards the former. Dr. George MacNamara and I did our best, about 1897, to find out, for the ghost was said to have been seen recently ; so also at Toberatasha (spectre well). At Lisfuadnaheirka, near Kilkee, we were told in 1896 of a "horned ghost," but " Fuadnaheirka " was a local "terror by night" who slew people, as Eugene O'Curry says his bare legs knew when, (as a boy in 181 6), he lived close to Dunaheirka (or Liscroneen), a large fort, which was the chief seat of this being, and was evidently a place to be run past on dark winter evenings.^ It is not wonderful that stories should be so vague. A form " that shape has none" terrifies some nervous or drunken person, who afterwards speaks often of the ghost, but can give no details. The subject is usually regarded too seriously for verbal embroidery.

A fisherman, being detained on Scattery Island by a storm early last century, and hence unable to attend mass at Kilrush, went up into the " cathedral " "' to pray. After a time he looked up and saw a crowd of monks and laity with priests at the altar in

" Ordnance Survey Letters, (Co. Clare), vol i., pp. 370 et seq. ' This is the Church of St. Mary near the Round Tower.