Another man, also a little in liquor, was returning one night from a berrin. The moon was shining bright, and from the other side of the river came the sounds of merriment, and the notes of a bagpipe. Taking off his shoes and stockings, he waded across the river, and there he found a great crowd of people dancing on the Inch[435] on the other side. He mingled with them without being observed, and he longed to join in the dance; for he had no mean opinion of his own skill. He did so, but found that it was not to be compared to theirs, they were so light and agile.

He was going away quite in despair, when a little old man, who was looking on with marks of displeasure in his face, came up to him, and telling him he was his friend, and his father's[Pg 368] friend, bade him go into the ring and call for a lilt. He complied, and all were amazed at his dancing; he then got a table and danced on it, and finally he span round and round on a trencher. When he had done, they wanted him to dance again; but he refused with a great oath, and instantly he found himself lying on the Inch with only a white cow grazing beside him. On going home, he got a shivering and a fever. He was for many days out of his mind, and recovered slowly; but ever after he had great skill in fairy matters.

The dancers, it turned out, had belonged to a different faction, and the old man who gave him his skill to that to which he himself was attached.

In these genuine confessions it is very remarkable that the Good People are never represented as of a diminutive size; while in every story that we ever heard of them in Leinster, they were of pygmy stature. The following account of their mode of entering houses in Ulster gives them dimensions approaching to those of Titania's 'small elves.'

A Fairy, the most agile, we may suppose, of the party, is selected, who contrives to get up to the keyhole of the door, carrying with him a piece of thread or twine. With this he descends on the inside, where he fastens it firmly to the floor, or some part of the furniture. Those without then 'haul taut and belay,' and when it is fast they prepare to march along this their perilous Es-Sirat, leading to the paradise of pantry or parlour, in this order. First steps up the Fairy-piper, and in measured pace pursues his adventurous route, playing might and main an invigorating elfin-march, or other spirit-stirring air; then one by one the rest of the train mount the cord and follow his steps. Like the old Romans, in their triumphal processions, they pass beneath the lofty arch of the keyhole, and move down along the other side.

Lightly, one by one, they then jump down on the floor, to hold their revels or accomplish their thefts.

We have never heard of any being, in the parts of Ireland with which we are acquainted, answering to the Boggart, Brownie, or Nis. A farmer's family still, we believe, living in the county of Wicklow, used to assert that in their grandfather's time they never had any trouble about washing up plates and dishes; for they had only to leave them collected[Pg 369] in a certain part of the house for the Good People, who would come in and wash and clean them, and in the morning everything would be clean and in its proper place.

Yet in the county of Cork it would seem that the Cluricaun, of which we shall presently speak, used to enact the part of Nis or Boggart. Mr. Croker tells a story of a little being, which he calls a Cluricaun, that haunted the cellar of a Mr. Macarthy, and in a note on this tale he gives the contents of a letter informing him of another ycleped Little Wildbean, that haunted the house of a Quaker gentleman named Harris, and which is precisely the Nis or Boggart. This Wildbean, who kept to the cellar, would, if one of the servants through negligence left the beer-barrel running, wedge himself into the cock and stop it, till some one came to turn it.

His dinner used to be left for him in the cellar, and the cook having, one Friday, left him nothing but part of a herring and some cold potatoes, she was at midnight dragged out of her bed, and down the cellar-stairs, and so much bruised that she kept her bed for three weeks. In order at last to get rid of him, Mr. Harris resolved to remove, being told that if he went beyond a running stream the Cluricaun could not follow him. The last cart, filled with empty barrels and such like, was just moving off, when from the bung-hole of one of them Wildbean cried out, "Here, master! here we go all together!

" "What! " said Mr. Harris, "dost thou go also? " "Yes, to be sure, master. Here we go, all together!

" "In that case, friend," replied Mr. Harris, "let the carts be unloaded; we are just as well where we are. " It is added, that "Mr. Harris died soon after, but it is said the Cluricaun still haunts the Harris family.

In another of these Fairy Legends, Teigue of the Lee, who haunted the house of a Mr. Pratt, in the county of Cork, bears a strong resemblance to the Hinzelmann of Germany. To the story, which is exceedingly well told by a member of the society of Friends, now no more, also the narrator of the Legend of Bottle-hill, Mr. Croker has in his notes added some curious particulars.

A being named the Fear Dearg (i. e. Red Man) is also known in Munster. A tale named The Lucky Guest, which Mr. Croker gives as taken down verbatim from the mouth of[Pg 370] the narrator by Mr.

M'Clise, the artist, gives the fullest account of this being. A girl related that, when she was quite a child, one night, during a storm of wind and rain, a knocking was heard at the door of her father's cabin, and a voice like that of a feeble old man craving admission. On the door's being opened, there came in a little old man, about two feet and a half high, with a red sugar-loaf hat and a long scarlet coat, reaching down nearly to the ground, his hair was long and grey, and his face yellow and wrinkled. He went over to the fire (which the family had quitted in their fear), sat down and dried his clothes, and began smoking a pipe which he found there. The family went to bed, and in the morning he was gone.

In about a month after he began to come regularly every night about eleven o'clock. The signal which he gave was thrusting a hairy arm through a hole in the door, which was then opened, and the family retired to bed, leaving him the room to himself. If they did not open the door, some accident was sure to happen next day to themselves or their cattle. On the whole, however, his visits brought good luck, and the family prospered, till the landlord put them out of their farm, and they never saw the Fear Dearg more.

As far as our knowledge extends, there is no being in the Irish rivers answering to the Nix or Kelpie; but on the sea coast the people believe in beings of the same kind as the Mermen and Mermaids. The Irish name is Merrow,[436] and legends are told of them similar to those of other countries. Thus the Lady of Gollerus resembles the Mermaid-wife and others which we have already related. Instead, however, of an entire dress, it is a kind of cap, named Cohuleen Driuth, without which she cannot return to her subaqueous abode. Other legends tell of matrimonial unions formed by mortals with these sea-ladies, from which some families in the south claim a descent.

The Lord of Dunkerron, so beautifully told in verse by Mr. Croker, relates the unfortunate termination of a marine amour of one of the O'Sullivan family. The Soul-cages alone contains the adventures of a Mermau.

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The Irish Pooka[437] (uc) is plainly the English Pouke, Puck, and would seem, like it, to denote an evil spirit. The notions respecting it are very vague. A boy in the mountains near Killarney told Mr. Croker that "old people used to say that the Pookas were very numerous in the times long ago. They were wicked-minded, black-looking, bad things, that would come in the form of wild colts, with chains hanging about them.

They did great hurt to benighted travellers. " Here we plainly have the English Puck; but it is remarkable that the boy should speak of Pookas in the plural number. In Leinster, it was always the, not a Pooka, that we heard named. When the blackberries begin to decay, and the seeds to appear, the children are told not to eat them any longer, as the Pooka has dirtied on them.

The celebrated fall of the Liffey, near Ballymore Eustace, is named Pool-a-Phooka, or The Pooka's Hole. Near Macroom, in the county of Cork, are the ruins of a castle built on a rock, named Carrig-a-Phooka, or The Pooka's Rock. There is an old castle not far from Dublin, called Puck's Castle, and a townland in the county of Kildare is named Puckstown. The common expression play the Puck is the same as play the deuce, play the Devil.

The most remarkable of the Fairy-tribe in Ireland, and one which is peculiar to the country, is the Leprechaun.[438] This is a being in the form of an old man, dressed as he is described in one of the following tales. He is by profession a maker of brogues; he resorts in general only to secret and retired places, where he is discovered by the sounds which he makes hammering his brogues. He is rich, like curmudgeons of his sort, and it is only by the most violent threats[Pg 372] of doing him some bodily harm, that he can be made to show the place where his treasure lies; but if the person who has caught him can be induced (a thing that always happens, by the way) to take his eyes off him, he vanishes, and with him the prospect of wealth. The only instance of more than one Leprechaun being seen at a time is that which occurs in one of the following tales, which was related by an old woman, to the writer's sister and early companion, now no more.

Yet the Leprechaun, though, as we said, peculiar to Ireland, seems indebted to England, at least, for his name. In Irish, as we have seen, he is called Lobaircin, and it would not be easy to write the English Lubberkin more accurately with Irish letters and Irish sounds. Leprechaun is evidently a corruption of that word.[439] In the time of Elizabeth and James, the word Lubrican was used in England to indicate some kind of spirit. Thus Drayton gives as a part of Nymphidia's invocation of Proserpina:

That this was the Leprechaun is, we think, clear; for in the Honest Whore of Decker and Middleton, the following words are used of an Irish footman:

We thus have the Leprechaun as a well-known Irish fairy, though his character was not understood, in the sixteenth century.

The two following tales we ourselves heard from the peasantry of Kildare in our boyhood:[441]

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