Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/369

 Folk- Tales from West on Ireland. '}^'i,'j

that while she was sitting in it the cart became so heavy that the horse could scarcely drag the load. She would sit still and silent, and though he dared not full}' look at her, he could see her b}' sidelong glaiKes. Then, having kept him company for a time, she would leap off and disappear.

Thk Womax takkn uv thk Fairiks.

Lis-Ard is an oval tree-crowned rath on the summit of a hill in Killeaden. It is the Cnocan Sevear — the sharp- edged little hill of the blind peasant poet Raftery. "A blessed place," he calls it in one of his poems in the Irish, "that the sun shines on." It is a noted fairy haunt ; and a tale is told of a woman who, having " been carried away," managed to get herself rescued before the fatal seven years elapsed, and who on returning to her friends told them that she had visited every fairy rath in Ireland, but in none had she seen so many beautiful palaces as those in Lis Ard. One day the old man whose baby had been so nearly carried away was digging at the foot of the hill. He was alone, and the sun was setting. He looked up and saw a great number of men and women just within the rath, or at the edge of the trees, looking down at him. The men were standing, and the women were sitting down. The women had black dresses on and white caps on their heads. They never moved, but " kept looking down at me," he said. " I knew then it was time for me to be going, and I took up the loy and said ' Good luck to ye,' and with that they went off."

On the side of the hill is an old white thorn. A woman in Killeaden dreamt that there was gold under it guarded by a dog. In the dream she was told that she and an old man in Killeaden were to dig for it, but they must take some living thing with them to give the dog. She told the old man, Johnny Canavan, but they were afraid to dig lest the dog should devour them. The old man told me the