Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/186

 178 Leland L. Duncan.

winter's night. Among the older people, too, memories of past ideas yet linger, which, though changing rapidly into "superstitions", or " pistogues", as they themselves will tell you, yet have a certain amount of credence given them.

Such, for instance, is the story attaching to Polaphuca, or Lugaphuca, a piece of disused road running past Anna- dale, Mr. James Slacke's residence. There are tales of phantom asses to be seen there at times, but they are paled by that told of a certain man named O'Neil, who was returning home one night before the road was diverted further from the house. It was very dark as he rode down the slope of the hill, when suddenly a pooca jumped up on the horse behind him, and began to squeeze him to death. It was going hard with him, when he remembered a black- handled knife that was in his pocket ; so he out with it, and struck behind him, and presently the hold of the creature relaxed, and he got to his own door. There, half- dead with fright, he flung his horrible burden on the heap beside the house, and went in to bed. Next morning he found nothing on the heap but a log of wood with a great gash in it.

This I was told by Francis Mulvanerty, who is nearly seventy years of age, and who gave it as the reason for the place being called Lugaphuca (the Hollow of the Ghosts).

Most of the fire-side tales relate to the doings of some (generally nameless) hero against the giants, who belong to a far-away period, having been driven out by the good people. According to the popular story, the fairies chal- lenged the giants to fight in harvest time, and chose a cornfield for the battle. When the giants arrived, the fairies made themselves invisible, and set to work to fight with the butts of the sheaves. The giants stood this for some time, and then, finding it impossible to return the blows of their assailants, they turned and fled.

A belief in the present-day existence of the "good