Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/124

 92 Facing the bog stands a small cottage, and the owner was sitting one sunny day in the doorway, when he noticed what he thought was a small child with a red cap coming down the slope on the far side of the little marshy bog. His curiosity was not excited until the little figure advanced across the heather, and reaching the big stone was seen no more. He then crossed the hundred yards that intervened, and went round the stone, but could not find anyone, and there was no place of hiding. Days passed away, and he had almost forgotten the occurrence when once more from his doorway he perceived the little figure dressed as before coming down the opposite slope. Throwing down his pipe, he ran to meet it, but when the leprechaun (for so it was) saw his object, he skipped across the grass and heather so rapidly that he reached the stone almost simultaneously with the man who told me the story, and in a moment got on the other side of it and disappeared! "Well," said my friend, "it was unlucky I could not catch him, or I might have got the crock of gold. But the little chap wasn't undacent, for when I got my spade and dug down close to the stone I found not far from the surface them quare stones and bits of things which I brought to your uncle, Mr. Beresford; and he, God bless him, got a nice little sum for them from the Royal Irish Academy for me." At this lapse of time, I cannot remember what the finds were, but there were some stone celts, and, I think, one or two bronze articles. This happened about the year 1860, and I have forgotten the man's name.

A Magic Cave.

There is a feeder to the River Aille which runs into L. Mask, Co. Mayo, which gathers on the foothills of the Partry Mountains, and as it reaches the lower slopes is blocked by a transverse outcrop of limestone cliff, beneath which it burrows, and after about half a mile or more of subterranean course rises from the ground in a large pool, and then joins the main stream. In heavy rains the entrance to the caves in the cliff becomes a raging whirlpool, which rises 15 or 20 feet up the face of the cliff, the subterranean passage being unable to give vent to the flood. But in ordinary weather one can penetrate some distance into the caverns which