1 2 Collectanea,
IV. Fairies, Fairy Forts and Mounds.
Going round the coast of Mayo I found traces of fairy belief everywhere, but, as I was a mere bird of passage, gathered few detailed stories. Fairy behef at Portacloy centred round sidh mounds. One was a hillock called Cruickeen na sheehoge, or "fairy mound," in a little river glen near Benwee and Dun- minulla. The loneliness of the spot prevented Dr. Fogerty and me from getting any information about it when examining the promontory forts of Dunanierin or Dookeeghan and Dun- minulla. At the latter great rock platform the swan children of Lir, the sea god, had been used to rest, so the place behind Benwee was a haunt of gods and their degenerate equivalents, the fairies. Caesar Otway ^ (who here got his information from a most reliable informant, Lieut. Henri, who during over forty years' coastguard service had amassed a large collection of notes), tells one tale of this place. The Sheehoga or "gentry" were powerful in the glen, so when Otway sent one Bryan O'Donnell one evening from Portacloy to the Dookeeghan coastguard station, and the latter returned six hours later covered with mud and in abject terror, no one but Otway felt much surprise. O'Donnell ran in crying, " It's all true," and told how on his journey he saw a cluster of pale lights, which he supposed to be Cariateige village, when he fell into a mud-pool and heard laughter and clapping of hands all round him. When he got out he saw lights flashing in every direction and that he was hopelessly lost on Benwee. He remembered to turn his coat, and at once, after six hours' wandering, found himself back at Portacloy. " Sheehoges, pookies, ghosts , and hobgoblins" were then very abundant in Erris ; as I said, the pooka was merely a malicious sprite, not (at least in my informant's tales) a demon horse or goat. He appears in human form below the fort of Dunminulla.
In the Mullet and the Mayo Islands a person born in the early morning is supposed to be able to see ghosts and fairies. One such person said,"'^ It is true in my case." -^ • ' ■""■ '
A less reliable witness than Henri — a " reduced gentleman,"
^ Erris and Tyrazvley, p. 123.
