Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/253

 Collectanea. 225

he was tackled by a youngster of ours, a slim little fellow, really no match for him. But the German it was who died, and I remember his face afterwards. He might have been asleep dream- ing of some wickedness. Later, I found our men burying him most carefully — face downwards. You know why. If he began digging his way out he would only go deeper.' But this respect for the dead is general. I know of a sniper of ours who, lying out one night in the open, got an unsuspecting German, and was then so troubled by the presence of an enemy, no longer dangerous, that he took the risk of going for a spade and returning to bury his foe."

[About 1887 a reputed witch is said to have been buried near Portmahomack, Ross-shire. A grave was dug, and the coffin was placed in it head downwards. 8th Series, JVofes and Queries, iv. (1893), p. 8.]

Folk Lore and Legends from the Coasts of Counties Mayo and Galway.

{Continued from p. 106).

3. The Legend of Downpatrick Head. Some miles from Ballycastle, a long peninsula, rising towards the sea, ends in a gigantic isolated rock tower, 150 feet above the waves, called Duftbriste, the broken fort. On the mainland opposite lies a little oratory of St. Patrick, with a curious pillar and little stations. ^ The headland beside Dunbriste is fortified by a strong wall of fine slab masonry, with a narrow gate. On Dunbriste rock, a low wall of ruder and smaller stonework is still seen, and in 1839 it had one pier of a gateway with inclined jambs. The place is not named in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, or Tirechan^s Notes, though minute particulars of St. Patrick's mission to Erris in the time of Fiacra's son Amalgaidh ^ are given. I have no earlier mention of the name than one in the

^ See infra for the patterns and ' ' anvil stone " there.

2 Tripartite Life of St. Patrick (ed. W. Stokes, Rolls Series), pp. 133-7.