Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/113



Probably long before the "dukedom" of Theseus, when the famous weaver was "translated," men and women were reputed to be carried off by spirits to supernatural palaces, caves and wilds. In my study of Co. Clare such stories were nearly absent, but they are far more plentiful in the islands of Connacht, notably Cliara (Clare), Bofin and Shark.

A Munster chief settled on Inishark (Shark) with his wife, children and nurse. One day the boy dreamed of a lovely land under the sea; his nurse was asleep and he induced the two other children to go to the shore, where they were drowned. The nurse, in her deep sorrow and self-reproach for her carelessness, secluded herself in a shore cave and spent her time in prayer and mourning. At last one day she found a bunch of strange, lovely flowers placed in her hand, and she at once died. The children evidently had been spirited away to "Ladra" or some other under-sea paradise, for children who die young are really alive in the fairy hills.

On Bofin it is considered very dangerous for young girls to be let go about by themselves, as there is a very splendid fairy