Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/356

 FOLK-TALES FROM WESTERN IRELAND.

BY L. M' MAN US.

These stories were taken, some in the summer of 1902, others more recently, down from the lips of men and women in the parish of Killeaden, Co. Mayo, with the exception of the three tales, " The Woman that Hopped like a Magpie," "The Cry of the Women," and "The Peacock Scream," which were told me by an engineer who was working for the Congested Districts Board. His brother had seen the woman that hopped like a magpie on a road at some distance from Ballina, and had heard the caoining in the same neighbourhood ; while his father and a man- servant had experienced the adventure in the thfrd story. The other tales were told simply and with belief, as if the speakers were assured of the existence of a hidden world lying within the one visible to the senses. In several instances they were told as the adventures and seeings of the speakers. In what were clearly folk-tales, like "The Woman that grinned," or in the tale of " The Well that moved," the incidents were spoken of as if they had happened quite recently, and the locality and the names of the actors were given with what seemed certainty of know- ledge, as of intimate acquaintance with .place and persons. The story nearly always took for its time the present or the very recent past. It began with the well-known and familiar^ but swiftly reached the marvellous and the mysterious.

Thus the old man. Red John S, who told me of "The

Woman who Grinned," commenced his story with " There was a boy named Rush who lived at Bellachy." Rush has