Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/122

 I lo Collectanea.

through the courtly "sets" to the sound of a flute in a space of about twelve feet square. The old people sit under the hedge, the men silently smoking, and all watching the light feet fly. " Goo-o-d, well done, well done," is the way in which some observant old woman voices applause from all. Equally sociable in their work, they lend each other animal or implement, and help as a matter of course to get each other's harvests in, after which they dance again.

From the starved life of struggle with the stubborn soil the minds of these brave friendly people have taken refuge in imaginings of unseen and supernatural beings, and the district is covered with sites associated with those beings. Above the hamlet is the thorn-grown lios (pronounced liss) where fairies dwell, and where, once upon a time, they lit their beacon fire. Across the pool is that other lios which carried the signal on. (See the first tale). On the skyline of a low ridge can be seen the broken gateway where a peasant-girl, like a classical hero of eleven centuries ago, saw the Badbh (pron. Bibe), the ancient goddess of death and destruction.^ Just above and beyond that spot, in the heather of which the Danes used to make beer, is the Poll a mhdna (pron. Polavauna), a moorland pool on the moss- grown marge of which the Slua^h (pron. Slua), or the " Host of the Dead," plays hurling matches at pight. Every locality has its Sluag/i, but this desolate region boasts the largest Sluagh in Ireland ! During the still midnight watches the living shudder at the tramp of former friends and neighbours who pass along the weedy runnelled highway, where the water never dries, because there the ghosts come to drink ! This road runs through the Poll Cam (pron. Pole Kowm), or "crooked hill," where the scene of some of our tales is laid.

It is most difficult to say how far the narrators themselves believe the stories. My own impression is that the clue is given by an Irish greeting, — "What wonders have you to tell me to-day?" (See No. 28, "The Sticky Spirit.") However this may be, the tales were taken down verbatim at the time of telling. Those dealing with Clutharacdns were chiefly contributed by the elderly. It was an old-age pensioner who received "the fireside visitors" 'Cf. vol. xxi., pp. I So, 1 87, )i. 21.