Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/190

 164 cause, should it be a fairy calling, to answer places one in their power. Prairies can repeat a call twice, but not three times. Again, if you have your hair washed, you must eat or drink something when it is dry before you go to bed, or the fairies can take you away.

The following changeling story was told me by Mary Carty of Drumkeeran, who stated that she had always heard it related as a fact:—

There was a girl living at Kilbride, three miles from Drumkeeran, and she went one day in harvest to mind a baby for a neighbour who was out getting hay, and she was there some time rocking the child. She got sick and cross that night, and she was that way for three years. She used to tell the people to come to her at sunset, and she would tell them about their people who were dead; and she said she could show them a certain priest who had died, riding about on a white horse; but the people were afraid to go and see the sight. There was a little boy to whom she took a great liking, and would have showed him more than anyone, only he was kept from her. At the end of three years she got very bad and sick one night, and said goodbye to the people, and said she had to be going to a place called Kilbride near Dublin, that there was a redhaired boy to be taken and she had to be there, and as she was going she would tell them how to get back their own. The mother was to go to a certain little byre upon a hill between twelve and one o'clock at night, to cut a drain round the byre with a black-hafted knife, to get a lot of hens' dirt and mix it up, and between twelve and one to stand inside the byre and throw three dashes of the dirt out of the door; and when that was done she was to shout. The mother did this, and then came home; and in the morning it was their own daughter that got up and began to tell them about people who were dead. She asked for a drink; and when her mother gave it to her she forgot all about the three years and began to talk as of yesterday and minding the child.