Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/372

 340 Folk-Talcs from Western Ireland.

of them said, " Who is to carry the coffin ? " And the other said, " It is Anthony O'Neill," and told him to carry the coffin. He refused, but they made him ; and the weight nearly crushed him to the ground. They led him through a country he did not know, and went into a grave- yard. The two men began to dig a grave, and something in the coffin struggled to get out. The men told him that if he let the thing out they would put him in the coffin. When the grave was ready they laid the coffin in it, and shovelled the earth on top. They then left the graveyard, and went to a house. There was a big room in it, and rows of tables along the walls, with big dishes of stirrabout and noggins of milk. There were many men and women in the room, eating and drinking, and they asked Anthony to take some stirrabout. He was going to do so, when a woman he knew, named Anne Goulding, who had died in child-birth, pinched him in the back, and he refused to eat. He got out of the house, and found himself in his own quarter-land, and the kiln before him. He has seen " the people" twice, he said, and added that there Avere times when it was easy for them to take the people they want \ easy to take a woman in child-birth, and a young man when he marries.

The Tale of a King.

About thirty-three years ago, just after his marriage, he told me, he was standing in one of his own fields when he saw a king. I asked how he knew it was a king. He said by his look, and his dress, which was of every colour, and there was gold on his neck, and gold on his head, and gold on his arms. The king spoke to him, and told him he must help him to get his bride. He refused, but found he had to help. The king took a gold trumpet from his pocket, and blew on it, and in a minute the field was full of men and horses. He was put on one, and they rode through a country