15. The Ghost of Sneem
16. Owen Roe O'Sullivan

The Ghost of Sneem

The old wife of Martin Doyle said that once he was at work on an estate at some distance from Sneem, and one evening the gentleman who employed Martin told him to go that night on an errand to Sneem.

"Well," said he, "it's too late and the road is very lonesome. There is no one to care for my mother but me, and if anything should happen to me she'd be without support. I'll go in the morning."

"That will not do," said the gentleman: "I want to send a letter, and it must be delivered tonight."

"I won't risk it; I won't go," said Martin.

Martin had a cousin James, who heard the conversation, and, stepping up he said, "I'll go. I am not afraid of ghost or spirit, and many a night have I spent on that road."

The gentleman thanked him and said:

"Here is a sword for you, if you need it." He gave James the letter with directions for delivering it.

James started off, and took every short cut and by-path. When he thought he was halfway to Sneem a ghost stood before him in the road and began to make at him. Whenever the ghost came near, James made a drive at him with the steel sword, for there is great virtue in steel made by an Irish blacksmith. The ghost was darting at James, and he driving at the ghost with his sword till he came to a cross-road near Sneem. There the ghost disappeared. James hurried on with great speed to Sneem. There he found that the gentleman who was to receive the letter had moved to a place six miles away, near Blackwater bridge, halfway between Sneem and Kenmare. The place had a very bad name; old people declare that back then there was no night without spirits and headless people being around Blackwater bridge.

James knew what the place was, but he made up his mind to deliver the letter. When he came to the bridge and was going to cross it, a ghost attacked him. This ghost was stronger than the first one. He ran twice at James, who struck at him with the sword. Just then he saw a big man without a head running across the road at the other side of the bridge and up the cliff, although there was no path there. The ghost stopped attacking and ran after the headless man.

James crossed the bridge and walked a little farther, when he met a stranger, and the two saluted each other. The man asked James where he lived, and he said: "I came from Drumfada."

"Do you know what time it is?" asked James.

"I don't; but when I was passing that house just below there, the cocks were beginning to crow. Did you see anything?

"I did," said James, and he told how the ghost attacked him and then ran away up the cliff after the headless man.

"Oh," said the stranger, "that headless body is always roaming around the bridge at night. Hundreds of people have seen it. It ran up the cliff and disappeared at cock-crow, and the ghost that attacked you followed when the cocks crowed."

The stranger went on and James delivered the letter. The man who received it was very thankful and paid him well. James came home safe and sound, but he said: " I'd be a dead man this day but for the steel."

(From Jeremiah Curtin's Tales of Irish Fairies and Ghosts, p. 140-44)

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Owen Roe O'Sullivan

1

Owen Roe O'Sullivan was one of the greatest poets that ever was. Poets see things as they are, and manage to find words too. What he was best at, after poetry, was making small lads. It was said of him that if he threw a copper over a fence it would, like as not, fall on the head of one of his own. He was an auctioneer as well, and he was middling good as a doctor too.

One day a young boy met him on the road, and Owen spoke to him for a while, and then he gave him a penny, telling him that the next time that he saw him he would give him a shilling. The young lad hopped at once over the fence and ran over a couple of fields and was there on the road before Owen Roe again.

"You said that you would give me a shilling the next time that you saw me," said he.

"True," answered Owen. "Here is the shilling, and another for your intelligence. You must be one of my own."

2

On another day Owen Roe was passing a priest's house with a companion, and there was a grand smell of salmon cooking coming out of the house. The two of them were middling hungry, and the companion said to Owen Roe:

"It's a shame that we are starving and that the priest should have more than enough."

"I'll bet you for a wager," said Owen, who was always ready for a bit of sport, "that I will both eat the dinner with the priest and put him to shame."

"Agreed," said the companion, and Owen set about the business. He knocked at the door of the priest's house and asked if he could see the priest.

"You cannot," said the housekeeper, after she had looked him up and down, "he is just sitting down to his dinner, and he said that he was not to be disturbed."

"But it is a very important matter," said Owen then. "Go up to him and tell him that I have a troubled mind, and that I want to know what a man should do if he has money found."

The housekeeper went up and told the priest, and came back and asked Owen inside. She said:

"The priest says that if you wait until he has his dinner finished, he will answer your question. He also told me to give you this herring," said she, putting a sprateen of a herring before him.

Owen looked at the herring for a minute, and then he took it up on the fork, and he whispered to it, and then he put its mouth to his ear and listened.

The housekeeper watched him do this, and then she went up to the priest again and told him of Owen's queer behaviour.

"Go down to him," said the priest, "and ask him what he is doing, and why is he doing it."

Down went the housekeeper again, and she asked Owen.

"Oh!" said Owen, "I had a brother who travelled to foreign parts years ago, and I was just asking the herring if he had any news of him."

When the housekeeper told this to the priest, he thought that he had a simple fool to deal with, and would soon be able to settle the business of the found money.

"Send him up to me," he told the housekeeper.

When Owen arrived in the dining room, the priest told him what the housekeeper had told him.

"You say that you can understand the language of fishes," he said.

"Yes," answered Owen.

"Well," said the priest, "I had a brother, too, who travelled abroad. Could you get news of him for me from your friend the herring?"

"You had better ask that of the salmon before you," answered Owen. "He is a much bigger and stronger fish, and more used to priests and their kin than the common herring."

"You are a deal smarter man than I took you to be," said the priest, thinking that he would have more trouble in settling the business of the found money than he thought at first. "You'd better sit down and eat the salmon with me," he said then, thinking that they might be able to come to some agreement over the money.

They ate the salmon away together, and then he asked Owen to drink the punch with him, which Owen did. When the dinner was finished, and they had their bellies full, the priest turned to Owen.

"You sent up word that you had a troubled mind about found money," he said then.

"That is true, I did," replied Owen.

"Now how much money would it be that you found?" asked the priest.

"A copper penny," said Owen. "I was only wondering what would be the case if I did find money."

In this way he won his wager with his companion.

(Adapted from Glassie, p. 97-100)