Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/514

 COLLECTANEA.

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[The following story was told to me by Joe Moore, who lives in the parish of Patrick, some mile from Close-ny-Lheiy. I wrote the story down from notes made at the time,—the dialogue being taken down, word for word, as it fell from his lips. He told me that his father got the story from old Hom Bridson himself, ninety years ago and more; he never repeated the story while any of the Colloo family lived, but the last descendant died many years ago, and the old farmhouse is in ruins. It was a curious coincidence that, in the week following that in which I had the story from Joe Moore, I received it also from Logan, Utah, from Miss Quirk, who had it from an old Manxman who had lived there for fifty years and had emigrated from Glen Meay.]

There was one time a woman named Colloo in Close-ny-Lheiy, near Glen Meay, and she had a child that had fallen sick in a strange way. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet crosser and crosser he grew, nying-nyanging night and day. The woman was in great distress. Charms had failed, and she didn't know rightly what to do.

It seems that, about a fortnight after birth, the child, as fine a child for his age as you would see in a day's walk, was left asleep while the mother went to the well for water. Now Herself forgot to put the tongs on the cradle, and, when she came back, the child was crying pitiful, and no quatin' for him. And from that very hour the flesh seemed to melt off his bones, till he became as ugly and as wizened a child as you would see between the Point of