Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/64

56 as to disturbing old thorn-trees. The curate has heard a man swear most solemnly that he has seen some hundreds of the "wee-folk" dancing round these trees, and told him he should suffer for meddling with them. There is also among them a superstitious opinion as to cow's milk blinked, so that it will not produce butter for several days' churnings until some old woman with a charm elves it away. Another relates to cows being elf-shot; and the inhabitants will show you the spot where you may feel a hole in the flesh, but not in the skin, where the cow has been struck; she gives no milk till relieved.—(Vol. iii. p. 27.)

Whenever a person dies in a townland no work is done till the body is interred.—(p. 28.)

Saint Peter's, Athlone, county Roscommon.

The ridiculous notions of the existence of fairies and witches obtain implicit belief in the minds of the ignorant who are extremely superstitious, and the number of absurd stories told on this subject among them, received with incredible avidity, repeated and believed, however inconsistent with reason and common sense, is hardly to be credited The collection of people called patterns, more properly denominated patrons, being originally assemblies of people met together with their priest for prayers, and the religious adoration to be paid to the Trinity who are considered the patrons of the places where these are held; at which there is necessarily some holy well or other local object tending to call forth the attendant's devotion. At these places are always erected booths or tents as in fairs for selling whiskey, beer, and ale, at which pipers and fiddlers do not fail to attend, and the remainder of the day and night (after their religious performance is over, and the priest withdrawn) is spent in singing, dancing, and drinking to excess Such places are frequently chosen for the scenes of pitched battles fought with cudgels by parties not only of parishes but of counties, set in formal array against each other to revenge some real or supposed injury.—(pp. 72-73.)

May bushes are set up at the doors of the peasants on the last day of April, and the eve of St. John the Baptist is as constantly celebrated with bonfires here as in any other part of Ireland Flowers are gathered by the peasantry and strewed before their doors.