Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/321

Rh 'Congalach, son of Maelmithig (+ 956), was at the fair of Teltown on a certain day, when he saw a ship (sailing) along in the air. One of the crew cast a dart at a salmon. The dart fell down in the presence of the gathering, and a man came out of the ship after it. When he seized its end from above, a man from below seized it from below. Upon which the man from above said: "I am being drowned," said he. "Let him go," said Congalach; and he is allowed to go up, and then he goes from them swimming.' In the Book of Leinster, p. 274a, 37, the appearance of three ships in the air is mentioned as one of the wonders of Teltown, when King Domnall mac Murchada ( 763) was at the fair, which agrees with an entry in the Annals, LL. p. 25b, 3: 'Naues in aere uisae sunt.' Not in Giraldus.

20. I think we have now mentioned nearly all those things that are most necessary to mention about this land. Yet there is one thing more behind which we may mention, if you like, for the sake of sport and merriment. A certain merry-man there was in that land long ago, and yet he was a Christian. And that man was called Klefsan by name. It was said of this man that no one he saw he would not make laugh with his merry words, even though they were dying. And though a man were sad in his thought, yet it is said that he could not refrain from laughing if he heard the talk of that man. And he fell ill and died, and was then buried in the churchyard like other men. He lay in the earth a long time, so that all the flesh was decayed from his bones, and most bones had decayed with it. Then it happened that some bodies were being buried in the same churchyard, and they were digging so near the place where Klefsan was buried, that they dug up his skull, which was whole. And they placed it afterwards up on a high stone in the churchyard, and it has stood there ever since. And whoever comes there and sees and looks at the place where his mouth was and his tongue, then laughs he forthwith, even though he was in a sad mood before he saw the head. And his dead bones now make little fewer people laugh than when he was alive.