Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/358

 326 Folk-Tales from Western Ireland.

boil, in fact, remained as cold as when it came out of the well. The priest asked her where she had got the water, and she told him. He then said she had done wTong in taking it from the well, and bade her put it back. That night the well moved to the field by the Swinford road, where it is to-day. In the morning the people found it had gone from Cilleen. It is said that there were old men and women not long ago who had seen the well up in Cilleen. People show the spot where it was, and nothing will grow there. A man once tried to dig the ground, but the loy was thrown out of his hand, and a white bird flew up from the ground. There is a thorn bush on Cilleen, and if you struck it with a hatchet an animal -would come out of the tree.

This is Catherine Ivors' tale baldly told. The incident of the white bird is interesting, as in an ancient Irish tale given by Mr. Nutt in his The Happy Other Land, the Sidhe approach St. Patrick in the form of white birds. Note, also, the geni of the thorn tree appears when the tree is struck with iron.

The Careful. Mother.

An old woman, Bridget Groak, told me the short story of "The Careful Mother." She gave the name of the teacher and the locality he came from with the assurance of one who was relating a true incident. Treenkeel is a place in the parish of Killeaden, and she once lived there. I give her words as I took them down.

" There was a teacher, one Mullany, who was going to England. There was no train at that "time, and when near Dublin he put up in a cottage for the night. In the house there was an old woman the size of a stick. It was not long he was by the fire when she was asking him about a woman who lived near the place he had come from. 'That's the best mother that's in Ireland,' she said.