to sing, or have music on board the boat, as the sea people love to hear men sing and forget to perform their spells till the fated moment has gone by.
IX. Ghosts and Haunted Houses.
In treating of the important subject of ghosts, I intend to include ghostly animals for, in local folk-lore, the people regard such as equal to the human phantom. This seems to imply that the beliefs are of very great, if not pre-Christian, antiquity in origin, just as the beliefs in magical stones are most archaic. Going round the Mayo coast from Ballina (Ballĭná) it is hardly surprising to find that the beautiful "Abbey" of Moyne is haunted, though its lesser sisters of Rosserk and Rathfran (so far as I am aware) have no such tales. The Moyne story is a variant of "Mary the maid of the inn," which was a "loved terror" of my childhood. Peter Gumming, among convivial friends, in Killala, wagered a guinea that he would go to the Abbey and fetch a skull from it that night. The company accepted the bet and he set off alone on his long dark walk. Sobered and nervous he entered the aisle and finding a heap of bones groped for a skull and took one. A sickly groaning voice asked, "What are ye doing with my skull?" and he saw his grandfather's ghost, resembling the man in his last illness, even to the tobacco stains on his chin! The perturbed spirit rebuked the drunken descendant. Peter summoned up courage and asked for a loan of the skull to win the bet, and promising to bury it decently in his parents' grave and to pay for masses for the repose of its soul. The ghost vanished. "Silence gives consent," and Peter won the bet, telling his awesome tale and being famous ever after for bravery and clever mendacity.[1]
Lieut. Henri told Otway how he himself had seen a Brocken spectre in a fog, which accounts for the ghost tales near Portacloy and Dookeghan about 1838. In my time a ghostly black dog had also been seen near the former place. Two ghosts of drowned men appear near Belmullet, one on Blacksod Bay; the latter ghostly sailor was seen as late as 1894. A ghost of
- ↑ Erris, pp. 181-250.
