Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/196

170 The kitchen must always be cleaned up before being left at night, the fire raked, and a gallon of fresh water left for the good people. There are several tales told of the penalty paid for neglecting this duty. Here is one:—

Ketty Cassidy lived in Aughrim. One day her husband went to the fair, and there was no one left at home but herself. In the night, when she was in bed, there came in the full of the house of women, as she thought, and one of them got sick in the corner, and when the baby was born they went to look for clean water, but they had none to get, she had ne'er a drop in the house. One of them says: "What'll we do to wash the baby?" and they said: "What will we do but wash it in the churn that the buttermilk is in; and when she rises in the morning she'll know the odds of not leaving clean water within; and when she drinks it she'll find it worse."

Ketty was looking on at all, and in the morning she ran home to her father's house, and she told them what happened. Her mother told her to go home, and to throw out the buttermilk, and to wash the churn, and not leave the track of milk on it, and never again to be without leaving clean water in the house. From that night out she never found one of them in it again.

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The fairies are a quarrelsome lot; in fact to this the safety of human beings from their wiles is sometimes due, since it is asserted that whenever a band of them is endeavouring to capture a mortal, another band will generally try and thwart their rivals. The fiat bottom known as Beirne's rock on the northern side of Leitrim townland, Kiltubbrid parish, used in the olden time to be a favourite place of resort for the good people, and great fights used to take place there, the parties fighting all the way up the lonesome valley which lies between the townlands of Lisdrumacrone and Corglass. On Lisdrumacrone there was a house, now pulled down, where lived a widow