Irish Folk Lore

There is now living in Bristol a Mrs. Linahan, an old Irish woman, who has not seen her own country for forty years. She is old, poor, bed-ridden, and suffering, but patient and cheerful beyond belief. Her strongest feeling is love for Ireland, and she likes talking to me because I am Irish. Many a time, sitting in her little close room, above the noisy street, she told me about Banshees, and Pookas, and fairies - especially the first. She declares solemnly that she once heard the cry, or cooing, of a Banshee.

"It was when I was a little young child," she told me, "and I knew nothing at all of Banshees or of death. One day my mother sent me to see after my grandmother, the length of three miles from our house. All the road was deep in snow, and I went my lone - and didn't know the grandmother was dead, and my aunt had gone to the village for help. So I got to the house, and I see her lying so still and quiet I thought she was sleepin'. When I called her and she wouldn't stir or spake, I thought I'd put snow on her face to wake her.

"I just stepped outside to get a handful, and came in, leaving the door open, and then I heard a far-away cry, so faint and yet so fearsome that I shook like a leaf in the wind. It got nearer, and then I heard a sound like clapping or wringing of hands, as they do in keening at a funeral. Twice it came, and then I slid down to the ground, and crept under the bed where my grandmother lay, and there I heard it for the third time crying, "Ochone, Ochone!" at the very door.

"Then it suddently stopped! I couldn't tell where it went, and I dared not lift up my head till the woman came in to the house. One o' them took me up and said, "It was the Banshee the child heard, for the woman that lies there was one of the real ould Irish families - she was an O'Grady, and that's the raison of it."

And then seeing I was rather grave - though my family are of the humble modern race, only two or three hundred years old, so we don't keep a Banshee - Mrs Linahan went on to tell me, in her poetical south-country language, about catching a leprachaun.

"Did you ever here tell of a leprachaun, dear? He's a little ould man, as cute as a fox, and as hard to grip hould of. But if ye can catch him and keep him as safe for a year and a day, he'll tell ye where the fairy gold is lyin', and ye'll be rich ever after. Well, there was a foolish man away in Connaught - they're mostly fools there, my dear - and he catched a leprachaun sleeping under some white clover, and carried him home, and then he was bothered intirely where to keep him. So he put him in a wicker basket turned upside down, close by the fire, right forenest where himself would be always sitting on his creepy. "Faix! that'll do for ye now," said he, and went to get his supper. But the leprachaun set up such an hullaboloo, "Let me out! let me out, let me go to my wife and dchildher," and kept up the same, day and night, till the poor man was nigh crazed, and went into a tantrum and turned up the wicker basket. "Musha! go'long out of that," ses he, and the leprachaun was up and away out of the door. but wait till I tell ye dear , of another man I knowed myself that catched a leprachaun. He was an Ulster man, and they knows the ways of the world better nor them o'Connaught. So he never heeded the leprachaun's crying, but just said "Whist, ye cripple, be asy now, as asy as ye can," till the year and the day were out. And then the lepracahun cried out in his little small voice, "The north side of the hill, undher the great big stone. Let me out, let me out." So the Ulster man let him out, and went to the north side of the hill, and what he found there nobody knew; but he grew a rich man, and go to the very top o' the tree.'"

An Unknown Country, by the author of John Halifax.
Reprinted in the Leicester Chronicle, 3rd September 1887.