Clare County Library | Clare
Folklore |
Customs,
Lore and Legend of Other Clare Days: Superstitious Beliefs and Charms |
"On the night of December 11th, 1876, a servant of the Macnamaras was doing his rounds at Ennistymon, a beautiful spot in a wooded glen, with a broad stream falling in a series of cascades. In the dark he heard the rumbling of wheels on the back avenue, and, knowing from the hour and place that no "mortal vehicle" could be coming, concluded that it was the death coach and ran on to open gates before it. He had just time to open the third gate and throw himself on his face beside it, on the bank, before he heard a coach go clanking past . . . On the following day Admiral Burton Macnamara died in London."
There was a fairly widespread belief
that people who died young were sometimes taken by the fairies. Indeed
it was believed that the fairies could interfere in human affairs
at all stages in life and it was deemed prudent to stay on the right
side of them at all times. "My own brother was, and no mistake about it. It was one day he was following two horses with the plough, and it was about five o'clock, and what way it came I don't know, but he fell twice on the stones - God bless the hearers and the place I'm telling it in. And at ten o'clock the next morning he was dead in his bed. Young he was, not twenty year, and nothing ailed him when he went out; but the place he was ploughing in that day was a strange place. Sure and certain I am its by them he was taken. I used often to hear crying in the field after that, but I never saw him again. |
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