Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/360

 328 Folk'l\iles from Western Ireland.

spoke. It was said that many children were taken at that time."

A Fairy Stroke.

Another member of this family — a young man — got a fairy stroke a {t.\\ years ago and died. The old man and his daughter told me about it. He got the stroke when out late one night, and knew it. He wound up his watch just before he died, and spoke in a clear strong voice. At the same time his brother-in-law saw him cross a field and went home and told his wife. She was the daughter whom the young men, whose bodies were supposed to be in the grave- yard, had tried to kidnap as a baby.

The Lost Child.

Biddy Lavan, an old woman, told me the story of the lost child of Maire na-h' Obert. She never doubted the truth of what she said : she knew the woman. I give it in her words as I heard them.

"Did ye know Tommy O'Donnell .'' He lived up there in Kiltimagh. He had an old mother, and she told me the story herself, and the tears would be running down her cheeks when she'd be telling it. When she was a young woman she went out into a field they called Lis h' Obert to milk the cows, and she took her child with her. It wasn't a year at the time, and she put it sitting on the ground while she would be milking. The child fell over on the grass, and it was what she thought it had stretched itself out to get the flowers, and she did not say 'God bless it.' When she had done the milking, she took up the child and carried it into the house, and boiled an Q^<g and fed it. She had no salt to put in the &gg, but for that she'd have saved it. The next morning what did she get but the child dead. Three days after it was buried the people were talking, and told her it was not her child that she had buried. She got