Some Ckaracieristics of Irish Folklore. 253
' No, thanks,' says he, ' I must get along to the market.' ' 'Tis lucky for you John Daly,' says the old girl in the corner, ' that you did not taste her tay, for she'll not be forgiving you breaking her thigh, and 'tis all your life you'd be remembering it' "
Hares are certainly beasts of ill-omen, universally to be regarded with grave suspicion. As one-time whip to a pack of beagles I am tempted to digress and ask why ? Has it anything to do with the hare's custom of running in a ring when hunted, and the uncanny way in which Puss will turn and jump right through her pursuers } Not so many years ago none of the country folk would go down
one of the avenues of , my cousin's home in Co.
Tyrone, because it passed by a wood where a black hare had been seen, and a man was not ashamed to confess he would " never go on his loneness " there after dark, for the black hare was certainly a witch. As hares are witches they should be stoned on May Day. A Limerick lady told me, " It was only a few years ago they burnt a woman for a witch, I remember. She started digging potatoes with her left foot of a Monday morning. That would be bringing a curse on the crop, so they stoned her in the field and burnt her." This was "since 1905." Cross-questioning elicited nothing more definite, but the time tallies with the even vaguer mention of a recent witch-burning made by a man in the Royal Irish Constabulary, and rumours of witch- burning are to hand within the last ten years in Clare, Kerry, Sligo, and Roscommon.
I have no details, but some at least could be found in the records of the R.I.C. Speaking of the south and west a police sergeant told me two years ago, " There be many witches in those parts. There was a quack doctor, Quin was his name, in Tipperary, and he took a woman and burnt her for a witch." Nor was this the notorious Clonmel case, when a woman was burnt because she was supposed to be a fairy changeling.
