Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/359

 Folk-Talcs from IWstcni Ireland. 327

" ' W hy's that ? ' says the teacher from Treenkeel.

"'It's many a journey we made to get her child,' says the old woman. ' l^ut whether she left the child in the cradle or the bed, or with the husband, or where ever she laid it down from her, but she had a steel needle in its cap.'

" It was then the boy didn't like the talk she had or the way she was asking about the woman back in Treenkeel."

The Child carrh-.d away by the Dead.

The following story was told me by the man to whom this thing happened. It was a vivid personal memory, and had been the same to his wife — who is now dead. It was well-known at the time among all the neighbours. The man's daughter asked me not to give the name of her family or that of her sister (who was married), as they would not like to have it talked about now. The old man told the story with the sincerity of conviction.

" We were living then back there in Ardroy," he said, " the other side of Killeaden. It was before the land was striped. It happened when Breed " (not the name) " was three months old. She was our first child. It might have been late in the night, and I was awake, and my wife was with me in the bed lying next the wall, the child by her side between her and the wall. I felt the child being taken out, but if I did I couldn't keep it. The mother felt it going, taken from her side, and it failed her to keep it. I felt it taken over me, and I not able to .stop its going or to speak. I seen two men standing in the kitchen, and two more outside the window. They looked well, }'oung men. They had been dead some time. I knew them. Though the mother couldn't stir she could speak, and when she felt the child gone she said in the Irish, ' God Almi^^hty save you,' and the child was put down by the fire. The men went out. And we got up from the bed, and the child was on the hearth. They had to leave her when the mother