Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/524

 482 Collectanea.

hounds in full cry, and the sound of horns, across the upper field, leaped the fence, and disappeared into the quarry with a crash and groan. Mr. Francis Drew of Drewsborough, who was driving past with a friend, recognised and called to the ghostly rider; when he saw the supposed accident, he ran into the quarry, but could find nothing. Next day he heard of the death of the hunter, but far away from the quarry.^^

Supernatural, but evidently material, were the horses which came out of the caves of Kilcorney in the heart of the Burrenj^* for they left descendants, noted for their high spirits and fierceness, by earthly mares in the valley. A similar tale of sea-horses coming out of Galway Bay was told some thirty-five years since, and we owned a reputed scion of their race, a cob from Conne- mara on the opposite side of the Bay.

Dogs. — One spectral dog haunts the road between Carrigaholt and Ross in the long peninsula of the Irrus, and is believed to be the spirit of a comparatively recent local celebrity, " Robin of Ross," of whom many tales are told. He was a member of the Keane family, and one version makes his ghost a different dog from the one near Carrigaholt.--^ Another dog accompanies a human ghost on its nightly patrol between the railway bridge and the cemetery at the venerable church and shattered round tower of Dromcliff. The precincts of Ennistymon House were haunted by the spectre of a large black hound, quite harmless.^'^ Once very famous, but now nearly forgotten, was the ghostly " Black Dog of Cratloe." Many believed that they had seen the appari- tion, which used often to accompany the D'Esterre's coach and the mail car. My mother and my brother Ralph Hugh Westropp, who travelled through the great floods of the Shannon on February ist, 1869, told a very circumstantial tale of the dog."^

-3 So the late Capt. Ralph Westropp, from Mr. Drew.

"^ Ordnance Survey Letters, (Co. Clare), vol. i., p. 236 ; cf. Gough, Camden, vol. iv., p. 366.

25 So the MacDonnells and a driver named Russell. " Robin" lived in the early eighteenth century.

2^ So Mrs. Twigge.

"^ My mother in her diary notes, — " Drove home through several floods, the worst at Bunratty. . . . Saw the phantom dog at Cratloe."