do," said he, his eye kindling with enthusiasm ; 66 sure it is the language of the ould country and the ould times, the language of my father and all that's gone before me-the language of these mountains, and lakes, and these glens, where I was bred and born; but you know," he continued, "the children must have larnin', and, as they tache no Irish in the National School, we must have recourse to this to instigate them to talk English." Upon further inquiry we found that the school alluded to was upwards of three miles distant, and that one of the able-bodied villagers escorted the children there each day, summer and winter, occasionally carrying the weak, and conducting the party with safety across the fords, and through some difficult passes which intervened.

"The fairy legends and traditions of the south of Ireland ;" the Cluricaune, the Merrow; the Duhallane, and the O'Donohues, &c., have been already faithfully described by Mr. Crofton Croker; but the subject is by no means exhausted, even in Munster; while a new set of elves, spirits, and goblin influences, with somewhat dif ferent ideas attached to each, pervade the west, particularly Mayo, Galway, and the Isles which speckle the wild Atlantic along their shores-the group of Arran, Turk, Boffin, Innis Shark, Clare Island, Achill, and from InnisBeagle to the far-famed Innis- Murray, opposite to the Sligo coast. Even when the legend common to the south or north is retained in these localities, it is in a new dress, with new dramatis personæ, and entirely new scenery, machinery, decorations and processions; thus, the story of Daniel O'Rourke is told upon a winter's night, by the laussogue's blaze,* in the Islands of Shark and Boffin, as a warning to the stayers out late, under the name of Terence O'Flaherty, by people who never heard of the work we have alluded to.† The phraseology of our Connaught story-teller is also different in many respects from that of the northern or Munsterman, as may be gleaned even from this chapter.

But it is not in the west, or among what is termed the true Celtic popu lation alone, that superstitions and mystic rites are still practised. We have fortune-tellers within the Circular-road of Dublin! and fairy doctors, of repute, living but a few miles from the metropolis. Not six months ago, a man was transported for ten years, for so far practising upon the credulity of a comfortable family, in the county of Longford, as to obtain sums of money, by making them believe he was their deceased father, who was not dead, but only among the good people, and permitted to return occasionally to visit his friends. While we write, a country newspaper informs us of the body of a child having been disinterred at Oran, in the County Roscommon, and its arms cut off, to be employed in the performance of certain mystic rites. About a year ago, a man, in the county of Kerry roasted his child to death, under the impression that it was a fairy. He was not brought to trial, as the crown prosecutor mercifully looked upon him as insane.

Madness has been either assumed, or sworn to, as a means of getting off prisoners, on more than one occasion, to our own knowledge. We remember sitting, some years ago, beside a celebrated veteran prisoner's counsel in a county town in Connaught, who was defending a man on his trial for murder, committed apparently without provocation, in the open day, and before a number of witnesses; the prisoner having, with a heavy spade, clove through the skull of his unre sisting victim. The defence intended to be set up was, as usual, an alibi, Numbers of people were ready to come forward and swear he was not, and could not, be at the place specified in the indictment at all. As the trial proceeded, however, the sagacious lawyer at once saw that he had not a leg to stand on, and, turning abruptly to the prisoner's attorney, swore with an oath bigger than that taken by any of the witnesses, "He'll be hanged. Could not you prove him mad?”

"O! yes; mad as a March hare.

I'll get plenty of people to prove that," was the solicitor's ready reply.

"But did you ever know of his doing anything out of the way? Now, did you ever hear of his eating his shoes, or the likes of that ?"

"Shoes! I'll get you a man that will swear he eat a new pair of brogues, nails and all."

"Well, then," said the barrister, "put him up; and let us get our dinner."

The attorney retired to look after his witnesses, while a prolonged crossexamination of one of the prosecutors then upon the table, enabled the "sharp practitioner" to alter his tactics and prepare for the defence. Accordingly, the very first witness produced for the defence swore to the insanity of the prisoner; and the intelligent jury believing in the truth of the brogue-eating, including the digestion of tips, heel-taps, sole-nails, squares, tacks, sprigs, hangups, peavers and sparables, acquitted the prisoner. He was about to be discharged from the dock, when the judge committed him to the Lunatic Asylum.*

There are certain types of superstition common to almost all countries in similar states of progress or civilisation, and others which abound in nearly every condition of society; and strange to say, what was science-written, acknowledged, and accepted sciencenot more than two centuries ago, is now pronounced vulgar error and popular superstition. It would, no doubt, form a subject of great interest to trace back our traditional antiquities, and to compare them one with another-the German and Scandinavian with the Irish, Scotch, or English-those of the western and eastern continents generally, with the rites and ceremonies, or opinions, of which vestiges still exist among ourselves; when, indeed, strange affinities and similarities would be found to obtain among the North American Indians, and the Burmese and other Orientals, with those even yet practised in the Irish highlands and islands; but this would be a labo

rious task, and unsuited to the pages of a periodical, or to the popular elucidation of our fairy lore.

Of all superstitions, the medical lingers longest, perhaps, because the incentive to its existence must remain, while disease, real or imaginary -either that capable of relief, or to tally incurable-continues to afflict mankind, and, therefore, in every country, no matter how civilized, the quack, the mountebank, the charm. worker, and the medico-religious impostor and nostrum-vender, will find a gullable, payable public to prey upon. The only difference between the waterdoctor living in his schloss, the mesmeriser practising in the lordly hall, or the cancer and the consumption curer of the count or duchess, spending five thousand a-year in advertisements, paid into the Queen's exchequer, who drives his carriage and lives in Soho-square, and the "medicine man" of the Indian, or the "knowledgeable woman" of the halfsavage islander, residing in a hut cut out of the side of a bog-hole, or formed in the cleft of a granite rock, is, that the former are almost invariably wilful impostors, and the latter frequently be lieve firmly in the efficacy of their art, and often refuse payment for its exercise.

We commenced a collection of Irish popular superstitions, chiefly, however, bearing upon the subject of medicine, some years ago, and when we had filled a goodly manuscript volume with cures, charms, mystic rites and fairy lore, we found them so much intermixed with the general popular antiquities of the country, that it was almost impossible to separate them completely without destroying in a great measure the interest of both, as may be seen by the tales and legends in the following chapter. Some of these medical superstitions are, like many other subjects connected with the healing art, unsuited to the general reader, and others would possess little interest, except for their antiquity or absurdity.

THE fairies, or "good people"-the dhoine shee of the northerns are looked upon by us from beyond the Shannon, as the great agents and prime movers in all accidents, diseases, and death, in "man or baste ;" causing the healthfulness and fertility of seasons, persons, cattle and localities; blighting crops, abstracting infants or young people, spiriting away women after their accouchements, raising whirlwinds and storms, and often beating people most unmercifully. In fact, in former times, and even yet, in the islands of the extreme west, except from sheer old age, or some very ostensible cause, no one is ever believed to" die all out." True it is, that all the outward and visible signs of death are therespeech, motion, respiration, and sensation have ceased; the fountains of life are stopped, and heat has fled, the man is "cowld as a corpse, but what of that? isn't it well known he got a blast.

Sure 'tis no later than the day before yesterday week he was up and hearty, the likeliest boy in the parish, and there he is to-day as stiff as a peeler's ramrod. Didn't I see him with my two livin' eyes at Cormac Maguire's funeral, and he riding home. fair and asey, the quitest baste that ever was crassed, without as much as a deligeen brostoh* on him-and he, I may say, all as one as black fasting;† only he tuck share of three half-pints at Tubber-na-Skollig-when the mare boulted at a wisp of straws that was

furlin (whirling) at the cross-roads, when off she set, gallopin' ever ever, till he fell on his head in the shuch‡ forninst his own door, and when they lifted him he was speechless and never tasted a bit of the world's bread from that day to this. The priest said an office for him, and the doctor said he was fractured; but sure everybody knows the good people had a hand in it."

Decomposition may indeed afford the physiologist proof positive that the vital spark has fled, but why argue the question with the people, who firmly believe that he is "with the fairies on the hill of Rawcroghan (Rath Croghan), or the Fort of Mullagadooey, where there's plenty of the neighbours gone afore him." So rooted is this belief that we have known food of different kinds, bread, meat, and whiskey to be brought by the relatives of deceased persons, and laid for weeks after in these places for their comforts. Fairy-women are often employed to "set a charm," and bargain for their release with the king and queen of the gentry. Years may elapse, yet will the friends and relatives still cling with desperate intensity to the delusive hope that the fairy-stricken will return; and they listen with avidity to the various legends which tell how such and such of their neighbours, or the people in former times were seen in the court of Fin Varrah, or down in the Well of Oran, and sent home

sense.