In another story we see that it was the living girl who was carried off, and only a false image left to deceive her parents.[75] It is true that, through the magic of the fairies, she becomes deaf and dumb, but when this is overcome, she returns home safe and sound. The black knife used by Owen Boyle was doubtless an iron knife, that metal being always obnoxious to the fairies.
Stories of children being carried off by fairies are numerous. There was a man lived near Croghan Fort, not far from Lifford, who was short, and had a cataract—or, as the country-people call it, a pearl—on his eye. He was returning home after the birth of his child, when he met the fairies carrying off the infant. They were about to change a benwood into the likeness of a child, saying:
"Make it wee, make it short;
Make it like its ain folk;
Put a pearl in its eye;
Make it like its Dadie."
Here the man interrupted them, throwing up sand, and exclaiming: "In the name of God, this to youse and mine to me!" They flung his own child at him, but it broke its hinch, or thigh, and was a cripple all its days.
Plate X. [R. Welch, Photo.
TORMORE, TORY ISLAND.
It is not often that fairies are associated with the spirits of the departed, but in Tory Island and in some other parts of Donegal it is believed that those who are drowned become fairies. In Tory Island I also heard that those who exceeded in whisky met the same fate.
According to the inhabitants of this island, fairies can make themselves large or small; their hair may be red, white, or black; but they dress in black—a very unusual colour for fairies to appear in. It may perhaps be explained by remembering that Tory Island, or Toirinis, was a stronghold of the Fomorians, whom Keating describes as "sea rovers of the race of Cam, who fared from Africa."[76] I need hardly add that "Cam" is an old name for "Ham." I should infer that the fairies of Tory Island represent a dark race.