Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/123

 CollecUinca. i 1 1

(No. 7), and who told about the Abhaa (No. 14). The wife of a small holder told the experiences of her neighbours (Nos. 4 and 16), who, along with Kate Caher (Nos. 2, 15, and 31), and the Hackett brothers (Nos. 17 and 23), are all middle-aged peasants of the glen ; so is the widow who described Pelticoat-loose. A farmer's sister, living on a desolate hill-top above the Poll a mhdna, told Nos. 3 and 12. Stories turning on local history and classic legend came from an old book-lover, Nos. 24, 25, 29, 30, and 32 being probably compounds of oral and printed lore. He also gave No. 26. No. 27 was told in Connaught Irish by a very old man, and translated by a bystander, through the medium of Munster Irish, into English. "The Sticky Spirit " (No. 2S) was told by one of the Hackett brothers, and No. 22 ("The Origin of Jacky-the-Lantern")canie from an old cowherd. Prof. Maarstrander has traced the history of the last tale through western Europe for a thousand years. -

To avoid an identification disagreeable to the reciters I have altered the names of places and persons.

E. USSHER.

20 Glenmore Road, Hampstead.

I. The Wickedness of the Clutharacdus.

The Clutharacdn ^ is a very small little object. He wears a red cap and a moustache and carries a purse called spardn fia scillinge.^ And every one who'd meet a Clutharacdn would be trying to knock spardn na scillinge off him. And before he'd give you the spardn ?ia scillinge, he'd bear any sort of hieing you'd be giving him. And he'd tell you: — "Look behind of you," he'd say, and if you took your two eyes off him you'd never agam see him.

A lios is supposed to be the name of the place where the fairies live. And every place there's one, there must be another in view. For in tiie old times their signal was to light a tire so that it could

"'' Deux Contes Irlandaises," in Miscellany Presented to Prof. Kittto Meyer.

•^Pronounced Clooard caiin, literally "one who lives in the shade." Cf. "The Cluricaune," T. Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and traditions of the South of /> eland (182^), Part i., pp. 149-216.


 * " The purse of the shillings,' pron. sparaun' nascill'inga.