a headless young man is seen near this, sitting on a fence, near the little mound on the Mullet, where it is said certain peasants, massacred by the yeomanry, were buried in 1798. It glides from the fence to the mound, into which it vanishes. The ghost of Major Bingham (of equivocal legendary repute) rides on a ghostly horse and makes rings on the sward at Carn, not far to the west. Bingham is said to have lived and died hated, early in the last century. I also heard of his and other ghosts in the sandhills from Termoncarra to Binghamstown in 1910, and the place is indeed lonely and weird enough for ghostly gatherings.
Ghosts are often spoken of on Cliara and Inishturk, but I heard no details, even at the Abbey on the former island. Some belief in the ghost of Grania Uaile (Grainne O'Mailley) attaches, to her castle there; one got the impression that the tales were dying out with the older people.
Some farmers, driving cattle from the fair of Ballina, into Erris, one evening, saw a crowd of people and cattle going in the same direction. One of the men named Paddy MacCormick was astonished to recognize in the crowd two of his own bullocks which had been lost in a boghole some time before, even seeing his own brand clearly marked on them. He separated them and was driving them from the rest of the herd when a man ran up and asked him what he was doing. The drover saw to his terror that it was one Terry Barrett, the first husband of his own wife. Despite MacCormick's terror he was angry at being called a thief, and pointing to his brand said Barrett had no right to the beasts. The ghost replied that MacCormick was an ignorant fellow for "I have as good a right to your cattle who died honestly in the boghole of Poulsesare as you have to my living wife." He struck the drover, who struck back, and a crowd of dead neighbours ran up and beat him soundly. Otway was told this near Bangor Erris in 1838, and his driver added that Pat was still alive but had not done much good since.[1]
Near Ballycroy, Dr. Charles Browne was told that the ghosts of some people, who were killed in a faction fight, appear in a field between the two town lands of the name. They usually
- ↑ Erris, p. 33.
