Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/386

 344 Collectanea.

gorgeous vestments. He shut his eyes in terror and prayed, and when he ventured to look again he saw only " the clouds flitting over the roofless church and the old ravens croaking and wheeling over their nests on the tower top." ^ At Stamer Park I was told, in 1873, that "a string of monks" used formerly to pass up the garden to the Abbey of Ennis, but, even then, it was only a vague tradition. A ' she-ghost ' haunted the canal bridge of Clonlara, while it was being built in 1769, and was at last exorcised by a slab, still remaining, with her figure cut on it in low relief and the date (Plate XIV.). This figure closely resembles the grotesque (and usually indecent) carvings of prophylactic female figures called " hags of the castle," and now sheelanagigs from a well-known carving in County Cork. Two undoubted examples of these figures remain in Clare, a much- defaced one above the door of Kilnaboy church, and a perfect one, struggling with two dragons, on the ornate, and possibly eleventh-century, sill at Rath-Blathmaic church.^ The Clonlara figure, if older than 1769, may have been brought from one of the ruined towers of Rinroe, Newtown, and Aharinagh, not far away.

The back avenue near the castle of Teermicbrain or Adelphi was haunted, until 1885 at least, by a dark shadowy figure. A " grey man " haunted the lonely storm-beaten shell of Dunhcka Castle, on the cliffs near Kilkee, one of the wildest and most beautiful parts of that glorious coast. He tried to point out hidden treasure, but failed owing to the fears of the man who saw him, and who, when at last venturing back, could not remember the exact hiding-place. The disgusted treasure guardian has made no later attempt.^^ Doonmore, a shore castle farther north, was notorious for the ghastly sounds heard in its vaults, probably caused by waves lapping into rock crannies,

vol. viii. (1841), p. 548. The same person one moonlight night saw a dim figure making signs, and, following it, found his cow with her legs firmly fixed in a hole and in great danger.
 * Told by an old peasant of his grandfather, Dublin University Magazine,

®See Plate XIV. and the figures in Journal of the Royal Society oj Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. xxiv., pp. 27, 33.

^"Frorn two residents at Moveen in 1908.