Jack Dogherty lived on the coast of the county Clare. Jack was a fisherman, as his father and grandfather before him had been. Like them, too, he lived all alone (but for {62} the wife), and just in the same spot. People used to wonder why the Dogherty family were so fond of that wild situation, so far away from all human kind, and in the midst of huge shattered rocks, with nothing but the wide ocean to look upon. But they had their own good reasons for it.
 The place was just the only spot on that part of the coast where anybody could well live. There was a neat little creek, where a boat might lie as snug as a puffin in her nest, and out from this creek a ledge of sunken rocks ran into the sea. Now when the Atlantic, according to custom, was raging with a storm, and a good westerly wind was blowing strong on the coast, many a richly-laden ship went to pieces on these rocks; and then the fine bales of cotton and tobacco, and such like things, and the pipes of wine and the puncheons of rum, and the casks of brandy, and the kegs of Hollands that used to come ashore! Dunbeg Bay was just like a little estate to the Doghertys.
 Not but they were kind and humane to a distressed sailor, if ever one had the good luck to get to land; and many a time indeed did Jack put out in his little corragh (which, though not quite equal to honest Andrew Hennessy’s canvas life-boat would breast the billows like any gannet), to lend a hand towards bringing off the crew from a wreck. But when the ship had gone to pieces, and the crew were all lost, who would blame Jack for picking up all he could find?
 “And who is the worse of it?” said he. “For as to the king, God bless him! everybody knows he’s rich enough already without getting what’s floating in the sea.”
 Jack, though such a hermit, was a good-natured, jolly fellow. No other, sure, could ever have coaxed Biddy Mahony to quit her father’s snug and warm house in the middle of the town of Ennis, and to go so many miles off to live among the rocks, with the seals and sea-gulls for next-door neighbours. But Biddy knew that Jack was the man for a woman who wished to be comfortable and happy; for to say nothing of the fish, Jack had the supplying of half {63} the gentlemen’s houses of the country with the Godsends that came into the bay. And she was right in her choice; for no woman ate, drank, or slept better, or made a prouder appearance at chapel on Sundays, than Mrs. Dogherty.
 Many a strange sight, it may well be supposed, did Jack see, and many a strange sound did he hear, but nothing daunted him. So far was he from being afraid of Merrows, or such beings, that the very first wish of his heart was to fairly meet with one. Jack had heard that they were mighty like Christians, and that luck had always come out of an acquaintance with them. Never, therefore, did he dimly discern the Merrows moving along the face of the waters in their robes of mist, but he made direct for them; and many a scolding did Biddy, in her own quiet way, bestow upon Jack for spending his whole day out at sea, and bringing home no fish. Little did poor Biddy know the fish Jack was after!
 It was rather annoying to Jack that, though living in a place where the Merrows were as plenty as lobsters, he never could get a right view of one. What vexed him more was that both his father and grandfather had often and often seen them; and he even remembered hearing, when a child, how his grandfather, who was the first of the family that had settled down at the creek, had been so intimate with a Merrow that, only for fear of vexing the priest, he would have had him stand for one of his children. This, however, Jack did not well know how to believe.
 Fortune at length began to think that it was only right that Jack should know as much as his father and grandfather did. Accordingly, one day when he had strolled a little farther than usual along the coast to the northward, just as he turned a point, he saw something, like to nothing he had ever seen before, perched upon a rock at a little distance out to sea. It looked green in the body, as well as he could discern at that distance, and he would have sworn, only the thing was impossible, that it had a cocked hat in its hand. Jack stood for a good half-hour straining his eyes, {64} and wondering at it, and all the time the thing did not stir hand or foot. At last Jack’s patience was quite worn out, and he gave a loud whistle and a hail, when the Merrow (for such it was) started up, put the cocked hat on its head, and dived down, head foremost, from the rock.
 Jack’s curiosity was now excited, and he constantly directed his steps towards the point; still he could never get a glimpse of the sea-gentleman with the cocked hat; and with thinking and thinking about the matter, he began at last to fancy he had been only dreaming. One very rough day, however, when the sea was running mountains high, Jack Dogherty determined to give a look at the Merrow’s rock (for he had always chosen a fine day before), and then he saw the strange thing cutting capers upon the top of the rock, and then diving down, and then coming up, and then diving down again.
 Jack had now only to choose his time (that is, a good blowing day), and he might see the man of the sea as often as he pleased. All this. however, did not satisfy him — “much will have more”; he wished now to get acquainted with the Merrow, and even in this he succeeded. One tremendous blustering day, before he got to the point whence he had a view of the Merrow’s rock, the storm came on so furiously that Jack was obliged to take shelter in one of the caves which are so numerous along the coast; and there, to his astonishment, he saw sitting before him a thing with green hair, long green teeth, a red nose, and pig’s eyes. It had a fish’s tail, legs with scales on them, and short arms like fins. It wore no clothes, but had the cocked hat under its arm, and seemed engaged thinking very seriously about something.
 Jack, with all his courage, was a little daunted; but now or never, thought he; so up he went boldly to the cogitating fishman, took off his hat, and made his best bow.
 “Your servant, sir,” said Jack.
 “Your servant, kindly, Jack Dogherty,” answered the Merrow. {65}
 “To be sure, then, how well your honour knows my name!” said Jack.
 “Is it I not know your name, Jack Dogherty? Why man, I knew your grandfather long before he was married to Judy Regan, your grandmother! Ah, Jack, Jack, I was fond of that grandfather of yours; he was a mighty worthy man in his time: I never met his match above or below, before or since, for sucking in a shellful of brandy. I hope, my boy,” said the old fellow, with a merry twinkle in his eyes, “I hope you’re his own grandson!”
 ’Never fear me for that,” said Jack; “if my mother had only reared me on brandy, ’tis myself that would be a sucking infant to this hour!”
 “Well, I like to hear you talk so manly; you and I must be better acquainted, if it were only for your grandfather’s sake. But, Jack, that father of yours was not the thing! he had no head at all.”
 “I’m sure, said Jack, “since your honour lives down under the water, you must be obliged to drink a power to keep any beat in you in such a cruel, damp, could place. Well, I’ve often heard of Christians drinking like fishes; and might I be so bold as ask where you get the spirits?”
 “Where do you get them yourself, Jack?” said the Merrow, twitching his red nose between his forefinger and thumb.
 “Hubbubboo,” cries Jack “now I see how it is; but I suppose, sir, your honour has got a fine dry cellar below to keep them in.”
 “Let me alone for the cellar,” said the Merrow, with a knowing wink of his left eye.
 “I’m sure,” continued Jack, “it must be mighty well worth the looking at.”
 “You may say that, Jack,” said the Merrow; “and if you meet me here next Monday, just at this time of the day, we will have a little more talk with one another about the matter.”
 Jack and the Merrow parted the best friends in the world. {66}
 On Monday they met, and Jack was not a little surprised to see that the Merrow had two cocked hats with him, one under each arm.
 “Might I take the liberty to ask, sir,” said Jack, “why your honour has brought the two hats with you today? You would not, sure, be going to give me one of them, to keep for the curiosity of the thing?”
 “No, no, Jack,” said he, “I don’t get my hats so easily, to part with them that way; but I want you to come down and dine with me, and I brought you that hat to dive with.”
 “Lord bless and preserve us!” cried Jack, in amazement, would you want me to go down to the bottom of the salt sea ocean? Sure, I’d be smothered and choked up with the water, to say nothing of being drowned! And what would poor Biddy do for me, and what would she say?”
 “And what matter what she says, you pinkeen? Who cares for Biddy’s squalling? It’s long before your grandfather would have talked in that way. Many’s the time he stuck that same hat on his head, and dived down boldly after me; and many’s the snug bit of dinner and good shellful of brandy he and I have had together below, under the water.”
 “Is it really, sir, and no joke?” said Jack; “why, then, sorrow from me for ever and a day after, if I’ll be a bit worse man nor my grandfather was! Here goes — but play me fair now. Here’s neck or nothing!” cried Jack.
 “That’s your grandfather all over,” said the old fellow; “so come along, then, and do as I do.”
 They both left the cave, walked into the sea, and then swam a piece until they got to the rock, The Merrow climbed to the top of it, and Jack followed him. On the far side it was as straight as the wall of a house, and the sea beneath looked so deep that Jack was almost cowed.
 “Now, do you see, Jack,” said the Merrow: “just put this hat on your head, and mind to keep your eyes wide open. Take hold of my tail, and follow after me, and you’ll see what you’ll see.”
 In he dashed, and in dashed Jack after him boldly. {76}
 They went and they went, and Jack thought they’d never stop going. Many a time did he wish himself sitting at home by the fireside with Biddy. Yet where was the use of wishing now, when he was so many miles, as he thought, below the waves of the Atlantic? Still he held hard by the Merrow’s tail, slippery as it was; and, at last, to Jack’s great surprise, they got out of the water, and he actually found himself on dry land at the bottom of the sea. They landed just in front of a nice house that was slated very neatly with oyster shells! and the Merrow, turning about to Jack, welcomed him down.
 Jack could hardly speak, what with wonder, and what with being out of breath with travelling so fast through the water. He looked about him and could see no living things, barring crabs and lobsters, of which there were plenty walking leisurely about on the sand. Overhead was the sea like a sky, and the fishes like birds swimming about in it.
 “Why don’t you speak, man?” said the Merrow: “I dare say you had no notion that I had such a snug little concern here as this? Are you smothered, or choked, or drowned, or are you fretting after Biddy, eh?”
 “Oh! not myself indeed,” said Jack, showing his teeth with a good-humoured grin; “but who in the world would ever have thought of seeing such a thing?”
 ’Yell, come along, and let’s see what they’ve got for us to eat?”
 Jack really was hungry, and it gave him no small pleasure to perceive a fine column of smoke rising from the chimney, announcing what was going on within. Into the house he followed the Merrow, and there he saw a good kitchen, right well provided with everything. There was a noble dresser, and plenty of pots and pans, with two young Merrows cooking. His host then led him into the room, which was furnished shabbily enough. Not a table or a chair was there in it; nothing but planks and logs of wood to sit on, and eat off. There was, however, a good fire blazing upon the hearth — a comfortable sight to Jack. {68}
 “Come now, and I’ll show you where I keep — you know what,” said the Merrow, with a sly look; and opening a little door, he led Jack into a fine cellar, well filled with pipes, and kegs, and hogsheads, and barrels.
 “What do you say to that, Jack Dogherty? Eh! may be a body can’t live snug under the water?”
 “Never the doubt of that,” said Jack, with a convincing smack of his upper lip, that he really thought what he said.
 They went back to the room, and found dinner laid. There was no tablecloth, to be sure — but what matter? It was not always Jack had one at home. The dinner would have been no discredit to the first house of the country on a fast day. The choicest of fish, and no wonder, was there. Turbots, and sturgeons, and soles, and lobsters, and oysters, and twenty other kinds, were on the planks at once, and plenty of the best of foreign spirits. The wines, the old fellow said, were too cold for his stomach.
 Jack ate and drank till he could eat no more: then taking up a shell of brandy, “Here’s to your honour’s good health, sir,” said he; “though, begging you pardon, it’s mighty odd that as long as we’ve been acquainted I don’t know your name yet.”
 “That’s true, Jack,” replied he; “I never thought of it before, but better late than never. My name’s Coomara.”
 “And a mighty decent name it is,” cried Jack, taking another shellfull: “here’s to your good health, Coomara, and may ye live these fifty years to come!”
 “Fifty years!” repeated Coomara; “I’m obliged to you, indeed! If you had said five hundred, it would have been something worth the wishing.”
 “By the laws, sir,” cries Jack, “youz live to a powerful age here under the water! You knew my grandfather, and he’s dead and gone better than these sixty years. I’m sure it must be a healthy place to live in.”
 “No doubt of it; but come, Jack, keep the liquor stirring.”
 Shell after shell did they empty, and to Jack’s exceeding {69} surprise, he found the drink never got into his head, owing, I suppose, to the sea being over them, which kept their noddles cool.
 Old Coomara got exceedingly comfortable, and sung several songs; but Jack, if his life had depended on it, never could remember more than

“Rum fum boodle boo,
Ripple dipple nitty dob;
Dumdoo doodle coo,
Raffle taffle chittiboo!” 

It was the chorus to one of them; and, to say the truth, nobody that I know has ever been able to pick any particular meaning out of it; but that, to be sure, is the case with many a song nowadays.
 At length said he to Jack, “Now, my dear boy, if you follow me, I’ll show you my curiosities!” He opened a little door, and led Jack into a large room, where Jack saw a great many odds and ends that Coomara had picked up at one time or another. What chiefly took his attention, however, were things like lobsterpots ranged on the ground along the wall.
 “Well, Jack, how do you like my curiosities?” said old Coo.
 “Upon my sowkins, [8] sir,” said Jack, “they’re mighty well worth the looking at; but might I make so bold as to ask what these things like lobster-pots are?”
 “Oh! the Soul Cages, is it?”
 “The what? sir!”
 “These things here that I keep the souls in.”
 “ Arrah! what souls, sir?” said Jack, in amazement; “sure the fish have no souls in them?”
 “Oh! no,” replied Coo, quite coolly, “that they have not; but these are the souls of drowned sailors.”
 “The Lord preserve us from all harm!” muttered lack, “how in the world did you get them?”
 “Easily enough: I’ve only, when I see a good storm {70} coming on, to set a couple of dozen of these, and then, when the sailors are drowned and the souls get out of them under the water, the poor things are almost perished to death, not being used to the cold; so they make into my pots for shelter, and then I have them snug, and fetch them home, and is it not well for them, poor souls, to get into such good quarters?”
 Jack was so thunderstruck he did not know what to say, so he said nothing. They went back into the dining-room, and had a little more brandy, which was excellent, and then, as Jack knew that it must be getting late, and as Biddy might be uneasy, he stood up, and said he thought it was time for him to be on the road.
 “Just as you like, Jack,” said Coo, “but take a duc an durrus [9] before you go; you’ve a cold journey before you.”
 Jack knew better manners than to refuse the parting glass.
 “I wonder,” said he, “will I be able to make out my way home?”
 “What should ail you,” said Coo, “when I’ll show you the way?”
 Out they went before the house, and Coomara took one of the cocked hats, and put it upon Jack’s head the wrong way, and then lifted him up on his shoulder that he might launch him up into the water.
 “Now,” says he, giving him a heave, “you’ll come up just in the same spot you came down in; and, Jack, mind and throw me back the hat.”
 He canted Jack off his shoulder, and up he shot like a bubble — whirr, whiff, whiz — away he went up through the water, till he came to the very rock he had jumped off where he found a landing-place, and then in he threw the hat, which sunk like a stone.
 The sun was just going down in the beautiful sky of a calm summer’s evening. Feascor was seen dimly twinkling in the cloudless heaven, a solitary star, and the waves of the Atlantic flashed in a golden flood of light. So Jack, {71} perceiving it was late, set off home; but when he got there, not a word did he say to Biddy of where he had spent his day.
 The state of the poor souls cooped up in the lobster-pots gave Jack a great deal of trouble, and how to release them cost him a great deal of thought. He at first had a mind to speak to the priest about the matter. But what could the priest do, and what did Coo care for the priest? Besides, Coo was a good sort of an old fellow, and did not think he was doing any harm. Jack had a regard for him, too, and it also might not be much to his own credit if it were known that he used to go dine with Merrows. On the whole, he thought his best plan would be to ask Coo to dinner, and to make him drunk, if he was able, and then to take the hat and go down and turn up the pots. It was, first of all, necessary, however, to get Biddy out of the way; for Jack was prudent enough, as she was a woman, to wish to keep the thing secret from her.
 Accordingly, Jack grew mighty pious all of a sudden, and said to Biddy that he thought it would be for the good of both their souls if she was to go and take her rounds at Saint John’s Well, near Ennis. Biddy thought so too, and accordingly off she set one fine morning at day-dawn, giving Jack a strict charge to have an eye to the place. The coast being clear, away went Jack to the rock to give the appointed signal to Coomara, which was throwing a big stone into the water. Jack threw, and up sprang Coo!
 “Good morning, Jack,” said he; “what do you want with me?”
 “Just nothing at all to speak about, sir,” returned Jack, “only to come and take a bit of dinner with me, if I might make so free as to ask you, and sure I’m now after doing so.”
 “It’s quite agreeable, Jack, I assure you; what’s your hour?”’
 “Any time that’s most convenient to you, sir — say one o’clock, that you may go home, if you wish, with the daylight.” {72}
 “I’ll be with you,” said Coo, “never fear me.”
 Jack went home, and dressed a noble fish dinner, and got out plenty of his best foreign spirits, enough, for that matter, to make twenty men drunk. Just to the minute came Coo, with his cocked hat under his arm. Dinner was ready, they sat down, and ate and drank away manfully. Jack, thinking of the poor souls below in the pots, plied old Coo well with brandy, and encouraged him to sing, hoping to put him under the table, but poor Jack forgot that he had not the sea over his head to keep it cool. The brandy got into it, and did his business for him, and Coo reeled off home, leaving his entertainer as dumb as a haddock on a Good Friday.
 Jack never woke till the next morning, and then he was in a sad way. “’Tis to no use for me thinking to make that old Rapparee drunk,” said Jack, “and how in this world can I help the poor souls out of the lobster-pots?” After ruminating nearly the whole day, a thought struck him. “I have it,” says he, slapping his knee; “I’ll be sworn that Coo never saw a drop of poteen, as old as he is, and that’s the thing to settle him! Oh! then, is not it well that Biddy will not be home these two days yet; I can have another twist at him.”
 Jack asked Coo again, and Coo laughed at him for having no better head, telling him he’d never come up to his grandfather.
 “Well, but try me again,” said Jack, “and I’ll be bail to drink you drunk and sober, and drunk again.”
 “Anything in my power,” said Coo, “to oblige you.”
 At this dinner Jack took care to have his own liquor well watered, and to give the strongest brandy he had to Coo. At last says he, “Pray, sir, did you ever drink any poteen? — any real mountain dew?”
 “No,” says Coo; “what’s that, and where does it come from?”
 “Oh, that’s a secret,” said Jack, “but it’s the right stuff — never believe me again, if ’tis not fifty times as good as brandy or rum either. Biddy’s brother just sent me a {73} present of a little drop, in exchange for some brandy, and as you’re an old friend of the family, I kept it to treat you with.”
 “Well, let’s see what sort of thing it is,” said Coomara.
 The poteen was the right sort. It was first-rate, and had the real smack upon it. Coo was delighted: he drank and he sung Rum bum boodle boo over and over again; and he laughed and he danced, till he fell on the floor fast asleep. Then Jack, who had taken good care to keep himself sober, snapt up the cocked hat-ran off to the rock-leaped, and soon arrived at Coo’s habitation.
 All was as still as a churchyard at midnight — not a Merrow, old or young, was there. In he went and turned up the pots, but nothing did he see, only he heard a sort of a little whistle or chirp as he raised each of them. At this he was surprised, till he recollected what the priests had often said, that nobody living could see the soul, no more than they could see the wind or the air. Having now done all that he could for them, he set the pots as they were before, and sent a blessing after the poor souls to speed them on their journey wherever they were going. Jack now began to think of returning; he put the hat on, as was right, the wrong way; but when he got out he found the water so high over his head that he had no hopes of ever getting up into it, now that he had not old Coomara to give him a lift. He walked about looking for a ladder, but not one could he find, and not a rock was there in sight. At last he saw a spot where the sea hung rather lower than anywhere else, so he resolved to try there. Just as he came to it, a big cod happened to put down his tail. Jack made a jump and caught hold of it, and the cod, all in amazement, gave a bounce and pulled Jack up. The minute the hat touched the water away Jack was whisked, and up he shot like a cork, dragging the poor cod, that he forgot to let go, up with him tail foremost. He got to the rock in no time and without a moment’s delay hurried home, rejoicing in the good deed he had done.
 But, meanwhile, there was fine work at home; for our {74} friend Jack had hardly left the house on his soul-freeing expedition, when back came Biddy from her soul-saving one to the well. When she entered the house and saw the things lying thrie-na-helah [10] on the table before her — “Here’s a pretty job!” said she; “that blackguard of mine — what ill-luck I had ever to marry him! He has picked up some vagabond or other, while I was praying for the good of his soul, and they’ve been drinking all the poteen that my own brother gave him, and all the spirits, to be sure, that he was to have sold to his honour.” Then hearing an outlandish kind of grunt, she looked down, and saw Coomara lying under the table. “The Blessed Virgin help me,” shouted she, “if he has not made a real beast of himself! Well, well, I’ve often heard of a man making a beast of himself with drink! Oh hone, oh hone! — Jack, honey, what will I do with you, or what will I do without you? How can any decent woman ever think of living with a beast?”
 With such like lamentations Biddy rushed out of the house, and was going she knew not where, when she heard the well-known voice of Jack singing a merry tune. Glad enough was Biddy to find him safe and sound, and not turned into a thing that was like neither fish nor flesh. Jack was obliged to tell her all, and Biddy, though she had half a mind to be angry with him for not telling her before, owned that he had done a great service to the poor souls. Back they both went most lovingly to the house, and Jack wakened up Coomara; and, perceiving the old fellow to be rather dull, he bid him not to be cast down, for ’twas many a good man’s case; said it all came of his not being used to the poteen, and recommended him, by way of cure, to swallow a hair of the dog that bit him. Coo, however, seemed to think he had had quite enough. He got up, quite out of sorts, and without having the manners to say one word in the way of civility, he sneaked off to cool himself by a jaunt through the salt water.
 Coomara, never missed the souls. He and Jack continued {75} the best friends in the world, and no one, perhaps, ever equalled Jack for freeing souls from purgatory; for he contrived fifty excuses for getting into the house below the sea, unknown to the old fellow, and then turning up the pots and letting out the souls. It vexed him, to be sure, that he could never see them; but as he knew the thing to be impossible, he was obliged to be satisfied.
 Their intercourse continued for several years. However, one morning, on Jack’s throwing in a stone as usual, he got no answer. He flung another, and another, still there was no reply. He went away, and returned the following morning, but it was to no purpose. As he was without the hat, he could not go down to see what had become of old Coo, but his belief was, that the old man, or the old fish, or whatever he was, had either died, or had removed from that part of the country.

The ancient burial-place of the Cantillon family was on an island in Ballyheigh Bay. This island was situated at no great distance from the shore, and at a remote period was overflowed in one of the encroachments which the Atlantic has made on that part of the coast of Kerry. The fishermen declare they have often seen the ruined walls of an old chapel beneath them in the water, as they sailed over the clear green sea of a sunny afternoon. However this may be, it is well-known that the Cantillons were, like most other Irish families, strongly attached to their ancient burial-place; and this attachment led to the custom, when any of the family died, of carrying the corpse to the seaside, where the coffin was left on the shore within reach of the tide. In the morning it had disappeared, being, as {76} was traditionally believed, conveyed away by the ancestors of the deceased to their family tomb.
 Connor Crowe, a county Clare man, was related to the Cantillons by marriage. “Connor Mac in Cruagh, of the seven quarters of Breintragh,” as he was commonly called, and a proud man he was of the name. Connor, be it known, would drink a quart of salt water, for its medicinal virtues, before breakfast; and for the same reason, I suppose, double that quantity of raw whiskey between breakfast and night, which last he did with as little inconvenience to himself as any man in the barony of Moyferta; and were I to add Clanderalaw and Ibrickan, I don’t think I should say wrong.
 On the death of Florence Cantillon, Connor Crowe was determined to satisfy himself about the truth of this story of the old church under the sea: so when he heard the news of the old fellow’s death, away with him to Ardfert, where Flory was laid out in high style, and a beautiful corpse he made.
 Flory had been as jolly and as rollicking a boy in his day as ever was stretched, and his wake was in every respect worthy of him. There was all kind of entertainment, and all sort of diversion at it, and no less than three girls got husbands there — more luck to them. Everything was as it should be; all that side of the country, from Dingle to Tarbert, was at the funeral. The Keen was sung long and bitterly; and, according to the family custom, the coffin was carried to Ballyheigh strand, where it was laid upon the shore, with a prayer for the repose of the dead.
 The mourners departed, one group after another, and at last Connor Crowe was left alone. He then pulled out his whiskey bottle, his drop of comfort, as he called it, which he required, being in grief; and down he sat upon a big stone that was sheltered by a projecting rock, and partly concealed from view, to await with patience the appearance of the ghostly undertakers.
 The evening came on mild and beautiful. He whistled an old air which he had heard in his childhood, hoping to keep {77} idle fears out of his head; but the wild strain of that melody brought a thousand recollections with it, which only made the twilight appear more pensive.
 “If ’twas near the gloomy tower of Dunmore, in my own sweet country, I was,” said Connor Crowe, with a sigh, “one might well believe that the prisoners, who were murdered long ago there in the vaults under the castle, would be the hands to carry off the coffin out of envy, for never a one of them was buried decently, nor had as much as a coffin amongst them all. ’Tis often, sure enough, I have heard lamentations and great mourning coming from the vaults of Dunmore Castle; but,” continued he, after fondly pressing his lips to the mouth of his companion and silent comforter, the whiskey bottle, “didn’t I know all the time well enough, ’twas the dismal sounding waves working through the cliffs and hollows of the rocks, and fretting themselves to foam. Oh, then, Dunmore Castle, it is you that are the gloomy — looking tower on a gloomy day, with the gloomy hills behind you; when one has gloomy thoughts on their heart, and sees you like a ghost rising out of the smoke made by the kelp burners on the strand, there is, the Lord save us! as fearful a look about you as about the Blue Man’s Lake at midnight. Well, then, anyhow,” said Connor, after a pause, “is it not a blessed night, though surely the moon looks mighty pale in the face? St. Senan himself between us and all kinds of harm.”
 It was, in truth, a lovely moonlight night; nothing was to be seen around the dark rocks, and the white pebbly beach, upon which the sea broke with a hoarse and melancholy murmur. Connor, notwithstanding his frequent draughts, felt rather queerish, and almost began to repent his curiosity. It was certainly a solemn sight to behold the black coffin resting upon the white strand. His imagination gradually converted the deep moaning of old ocean into a mournful wail for the dead, and from the shadowy recesses of the rocks he imaged forth strange and visionary forms.
 As the night advanced, Connor became weary with watching. He caught himself more than once in the act {78} of nodding, when suddenly giving his head a shake, he would look towards the black coffin. But the narrow house of death remained unmoved before him.
 It was long past midnight, and the moon was sinking into the sea, when he heard the sound of many voices, which gradually became stronger, above the heavy and monotonous roll of the sea. He listened, and presently could distinguish a Keen of exquisite sweetness, the notes of which rose and fell with the heaving of the waves, whose deep murmur mingled with and supported the strain!
 The Keen grew louder and louder, and seemed to approach the beach, and then fell into a low, plaintive wail. As it ended Connor beheld a number of strange and, in the dim light, mysterious-looking figures emerge from the sea, and surround the coffin, which they prepared to launch into the water.
 “This comes of marrying with the creatures of earth,” said one of the figures, in a clear, yet hollow tone.
 “True,” replied another, with a voice stiff more fearful, “our king would never have commanded his gnawing white-toothed waves to devour the rocky roots of the island cemetery, had not his daughter, Durfulla, been buried there by her mortal husband!” “But the time will come,” said a third, bending over the coffin,

“When mortal eye — our work shall spy,
And mortal ear — our dirge shall hear.”

“Then,” said a fourth, “our burial of the Cantillons is at an end for ever!”
 As this was spoken the coffin was borne from the beach by a retiring wave, and the company of sea people prepared to follow it; but at the moment one chanced to discover Connor Crowe, as fixed with wonder and as motionless with fear as the stone on which he sat. “The time is come,” cried the unearthly being, “the time is come; a human eye looks on the forms of ocean, a human ear has heard their voices. Farewell to the {79} Cantillons; the sons of the sea are no longer doomed to bury the dust of the earth!”
 One after the other turned slowly round, and regarded Connor Crowe, who still remained as if bound by a spell. Again arose their funeral song; and on the next wave they followed the coffin. The sound of the lamentation died away, and at length nothing was heard but the rush of waters. The coffin and the train of sea people sank over the old churchyard, and never since the funeral of old Flory Cantillon have any of the family been carried to the strand of Ballyheigh, for conveyance to their rightful burial-place, beneath the waves of the Atlantic.

“The name Lepracaun,” Mr. Douglas Hyde writes to me, “is from the Irish leith brog — i.e., the One-shoemaker, since he is generally seen working at a single shoe. It is spelt in Irish leith bhrogan, or leith phrogan, and is in some places pronounced Luchryman, as O’Kearney writes it in that very rare book, the Feis Tigh Chonain.”
 The Lepracaun, Cluricaun, and Far Darrig. Are these one spirit in different moods and shapes? Hardly two Irish writers are agreed. In many things these three fairies, if three, resemble each other. They are withered, old, and solitary, in every way unlike the sociable spirits of the first sections. They dress with all unfairy homeliness, and are, indeed, most sluttish, slouching, jeering, mischievous phantoms. They are the great practical jokers among the good people.
 The Lepracaun makes shoes continually, and has grown very rich. Many treasure-crocks, buried of old in war-time, has he now for his own. In the early part of this century, according to Croker, in a newspaper office in Tipperary, they used to show a little shoe forgotten by a Lepracaun.
 The Cluricaun, (Clobhair-ceann, in O’Kearney) makes himself drunk in gentlemen’s cellars. Some suppose he is merely the Lepracaun on a spree. He is almost unknown in Connaught and the north.
 The Far Darrig (fear dearg), which means the Red Man, for he wears a red cap and coat, busies himself with practical joking, especially with gruesome joking. This he does, and nothing else. {81}
 The Fear-Gorta (Man of Hunger) is an emaciated phantom that goes through the land in famine time, begging an alms and bringing good luck to the giver.
 There are other solitary fairies, such as the House-spirit and the Water-sheerie, own brother to the English Jack-o’-Lantern; the Pooka and the Banshee — concerning these presently; the Dallahan, or headless phantom — one used to stand in a Sligo street on dark nights till lately; the Black Dog, a form, perhaps, of the Pooka. The ships at the Sligo quays are haunted sometimes by this spirit, who announces his presence by a sound like the flinging of all “the tin porringers in the world” down into the hold. He even follows them to sea.
 The Leanhaun Shee (fairy mistress), seeks the love of mortals. If they refuse, she must be their slave; if they consent, they are hers, and can only escape by finding another to take their place. The fairy lives on their life, and they waste away. Death is no escape from her. She is the Gaelic muse, for she gives inspiration to those she persecutes. The Gaelic poets die young, for she is restless, and will not let them remain long on earth — this malignant phantom.
 Besides these are divers monsters — the Augh-iska, the Water-horse, the Payshtha (píast = bestia), the Lake-dragon, and such like; but whether these be animals, fairies, or spirits, I know not.

Pat Diver, the tinker, was a man well-accustomed to a wandering life, and to strange shelters; he had shared the beggar’s blanket in smoky cabins; he had crouched beside the still in many a nook and corner where poteen was made {91} on the wild Innishowen mountains; he had even slept on the bare heather, or on the ditch, with no roof over him but the vault of heaven; yet were all his nights of adventure tame and commonplace when compared with one especial night.
 During the day preceding that night, he had mended all the kettles and saucepans in Moville and Greencastle, and was on his way to Culdaff, when night overtook him on a lonely mountain road.
 He knocked at one door after another asking for a night’s lodging, while he jingled the halfpence in his pocket, but was everywhere refused.
 Where was the boasted hospitality of Innishowen, which he had never before known to fail? It was of no use to be able to pay when the people seemed so churlish. Thus thinking, he made his way towards a light a little farther on, and knocked at another cabin door.
 An old man and woman were seated one at each side of the fire.
 “Will you be pleased to give me a night’s lodging, sir?” asked Pat respectfully.
 “Can you tell a story?” returned the old man.
 “No, then, sir, I canna say I’m good at story-telling,” replied the puzzled tinker.
 “Then you maun just gang farther, for none but them that can tell a story will get in here.”
 This reply was made in so decided a tone that Pat did not attempt to repeat his appeal, but turned away reluctantly to resume his weary journey.
 “A story, indeed,” muttered he. “Auld wives fables to please the weans!”
 As he took up his bundle of tinkering implements, he observed a barn standing rather behind the dwelling-house, and, aided by the rising moon, he made his way towards it.
 It was a clean, roomy barn, with a piled-up heap of straw in one corner. Here was a shelter not to be despised; so Pat crept under the straw and was soon asleep.
 He could not have slept very long when he was awakened {92} by the tramp of feet, and, peeping cautiously through a crevice in his straw covering, he saw four immensely tall men enter the barn, dragging a body which they threw roughly upon the floor.
 They next lighted a fire in the middle of the barn, and fastened the corpse by the feet with a great rope to a beam in the roof. One of them began to turn it slowly before the fire. “Come on,” said he, addressing a gigantic fellow, the tallest of the four — “I’m tired; you be to tak’ your turn.”
 “Faix an’ troth, I’ll no’ turn him,” replied the big man.
 “There’s Pat Diver in under the straw, why wouldn’t he tak’ his turn?”
 With hideous clamour the four men called the wretched Pat, who, seeing there was no escape, thought it was his wisest plan to come forth as he was hidden.
 “Now, Pat,” said they, “you’ll turn the corpse, but if you let him burn you’ll be tied up there and roasted in his place.”
 Pat’s hair stood on end, and the cold perspiration poured from his forehead, but there was nothing for it but to perform his dreadful task.
 Seeing him fairly embarked in it, the tall men went away.
 Soon, however, the flames rose so high as to singe the rope, and the corpse fell with a great thud upon the fire, scattering the ashes and embers, and extracting a howl of anguish from the miserable cook, who rushed to the door, and ran for his life.
 He ran on until he was ready to drop with fatigue, when, seeing a drain overgrown with tall, rank grass, he thought he would creep in there and lie hidden till morning.
 But he was not many minutes in the drain before he heard the heavy tramping again, and the four men came up with their burthen, which they laid down on the edge of the drain.
 “I’m tired,” said one, to the giant; “it’s your turn to carry him a piece now.”
 “Faix and troth, I’ll no’ carry him,” replied he, “but {93} there’s Pat Diver in the drain, why wouldn’t he come out and tak’ his turn?”
 “Come out, Pat, come out,” roared all the men, and Pat, almost dead with fright, crept out.
 He staggered on under weight of the corpse until he reached Kiltown Abbey, a ruin festooned with ivy, where the brown owl hooted all night long, and the forgotten dead slept around the walls under dense, matted tangles of brambles and ben-weed.
 No one ever buried there now, but Pat’s tall companions turned into the wild graveyard, and began digging a grave.
 Pat, seeing them thus engaged, thought he might once more try to escape, and climbed up into a hawthorn tree in the fence, hoping to be hidden in the boughs.
 “I’m tired,” said the man who was digging the grave; “here, take the spade,” addressing the big man, “it’s your turn.”
 ”Faix an’ troth, it’s no’ my turn,” replied he, as before. “There’s Pat Driver in the tree, why wouldn’t he come down and tak’ his turn?”
 Pat came down to take the spade, but just then the cocks in the little farmyards and cabins round the abbey began to crow, and the men looked at one another.
 “We must go,” said they, “and well is it for you, Pat Diver, that the cocks crowed, for if they had not, you’d just ha’ been bundled into that grave with the corpse.”
 Two months passed, and Pat had wandered far and wide over the county Donegal, when he chanced to arrive at Raphoe during a fair.
 Among the crowd that filled the Diamond he came suddenly on the big man.
 “How are you, Pat Diver?” said he, bending down to look into the tinker’s face.
 “You”ve the advantage of me, sir, for I havna’ the pleasure of knowing you,” faltered Pat.
 “Do you not know me, Pat?” Whisper — “When you go back to Innishowen, you’ll have a story to tell!”

Notes
8. Sowkins, diminutive of soul.
9. Recte, deoch an dorrus — door-drink or stirrup-cup.
10. Tri-na-cheile, literally through other — i.e., higgledy-piggledy.
11. “Yellow bird”, the yellow-bunting, or yorlin.
12. A festival held in honour of some patron saint.