Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/258

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Collecta^iea.

he told the priest when he got there, and the priest asked him if he had got a candle, and he got him one. And they went along to where the young man met Petticoat-loose. And there she was again, standing among some old ruins on the side of the road. So then the young man pointed her out to the priest, and he told him to light the candle, and he took out his book and he began to read his office. Then the priest asked her what had damned her soul. And she said it was that she had took a child's life away during mass hours. Well, he there and then banished her, and she went in a flare of light into the sky, and she fell down, head downwards, and feet up, into the Red Sea.

2 2. The Origin of Jacky-the-Lantern [\Vill-o-the-Wisp].is«

Jacky was keeping a good life, and he had no one but his mother. And his mother died. And because he was so good to his mother. Our Lord came to him and told him he would give him three wishes, and he told him " think to himself then." Then Jacky said he had got his wishes. His first wish was that any man that should sit on a chair, he would stop in the chair till him- self would be after letting him go. Now the second wish then was this : — He said that he had a garden, and that the apples were stolen from him, and he wanted that anybody who should take an apple, his hand should stick to the apple and the apple to the tree, and he should stick till he came to catch him. Well, the third wish then was this : — He had a pooch [purse], and anything that would go into it would stop into it till he liked to let him come out. Well then, he lived for seven years then, and then the Devil came to him — " Come on now," says he ; " come along with me." " Sit down," says Jack, says he, " till I be ready for ye." So, when Jack was ready, then says he, — " Come on, now," says he. Well, when he thought he'd get up, he couldn't get up, because he was tied to the chair. " Let me up," says the Devil, says he, " and I'll give ye seven years more till I come again." So Jacky let him go then.

Well he took great care to come for him again when the seven years was up. " Don't be making game of me now," says the Devil, says he, " Come along with me now," says he. " Och, well," says

i^'Cf. W. A. Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictiotts, vol. i., pp. 390-5, for other versions of this story of ' The Three Wishes.'