Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/388

 346 Collectanea.

frequently. I finally located the latter in a dully-jarring sash which resounded in the flooring, the "chain" was a loose pump-handle, and both were actuated by the fairly regular recurrence of a prevailing sea-breeze in the stillest part of the night. A little inland, and not many miles from Lisdoonvarna, two rooms in an old family house are reputed haunted. The ghost of a faithless wife used to be seen getting out of the study window, just before dawn on the anniversary of her elope- ment. Loud noises, shaking the floor, were heard in the room overhead. The ghost of a legendary "Countess of Antrim," whose portrait was preserved there, haunted the hall and passages, and it was told that she had made away with her stepson in order that her own child might succeed. She was not visible, but revealed herself in a rustling of garments and turning of handles. A fragment of a poem on her crime is remem- bered : —

" The blood on the cradle's the worst blood of all, For the young Lord of Antrim lies dead in the hall.""

Corofin has several haunted houses, both new and old, in and about it. One ghost haunted a house in the village for half a year, putting out candles and throwing sods of turf about at night. Near Moyhill, in the same district, a ghost was seen by a Mr. O'Neill coming through a ceiling; it used to put its hands on sleeping people, causing much alarm, but, like the preceding spectre, it lapsed into the Silence after a few months.^^ j^ g, house near Ennis, a soft footstep hurried on some nights through several rooms, in one of which a cupboard used to open after the noise; this was not only seen and heard by the family and accustomed guests (like myself), but by new visitors unacquainted with the story.

It is not clear whether the beings that haunted two farmers' houses between Kilkee and Liscrona were ghosts or elves. The families began to " see things," and notably a little old man who used to sit on a sod of turf This inoffensive haunting was more than the occupants could bear. One of them fitted up a cow- house as his dwelling-place, and the other actually built a new

"So Mrs. Twigge. ^'^So Dr. G. U. MacNamara.