Collectanea. 337
The Dog Spirit.
There were two brothers once who Hved on two farms close together, and one of them had a pothook.! making at a forge some distance away, and one evening there came a skiff of snow. So he said to the wife, as he couldn't do anything else he would go to the forge for the pothook. So he put on a heavy frieze coat and went to the forge and got the pothook and hung it round his neck, and started to come home.
When he came to the cross near his house, where one road went to his farm and one to his brother's, it was getting dark, but he could see by the light from the snow a big black dog lying by the roadside. And the brother's dog used to be there very often, many a time before he met him, and the man thought it was him that was there. So he called him by his name and the dog didn't stir; and he called him again three times, and the third time the dog jumped up at his throat. So he stooped down and the dog went over his head. And as soon as the dog was over, it ran round and made the same attempt for three times after each other. And the third time the man stooped along to the gripe ^ to see would he get a stone, and he laid his hand on a donkey that was there. And as soon as he did the donkey ran on, and the man held on to him and threw his leg over him and put his arms round his neck.
The donkey ran along the road with the man on him for a long way, and the dog after him. And they ran and ran till they came to a little running stream across the road. And the donkey crossed, but the dog couldn't, but he turned into the field and took half the hedge with him in a blaze of fire.
The man got home then all right, and he went to the priest next morning and told him. The priest told him it was the devil that was waiting for somebody else, and that he disturbed him.
The narrator of the foregoing story attributed the farmer's happy escape to the hook which he carried round his neck, iron being much dreaded by spirits. I have been told of a malevolent ghost that used to haunt a road in Kerry and that often injured
' The pothook is S-shaped and used for suspending the potato-pot from the " crook," which is an iron bracket projecting from the back of the chimney. - i.e., the ditch beside the road. VOL. XV, Z
