This is obviously the same story as that in our text, with the incidents of the knight and the hair omitted.
It contains, however, (1) the woman and her particular sin; (2) the fleeing before the hounds; (3) the pursuing huntsman; though in peculiarly Irish fashion, it is mercifully left uncertain as to whether she was overtaken or not.
The 8th novel of the 5th day of the Decameron seems to have been drawn from some cognate source. The hero perceives "correndo verso il luogo dove egli era una bellissima giovane ignuda—piaguendo e gridando forte mercè. E oltre a questo le vide a fianchi due grandissimi e fieri mastini." This is the soul of a dead woman with hell-hounds pursuing her. The very word "mastini" being the same as in the Irish story.
In the second incident that happened to the Cailleach there appears to be a reminiscence of Sindbad the sailor. But the story of the four herds who lifted the bier which all the men at the funeral had been unable to move, is told somewhat differently at p. 36 of Michael Timony's "Sgéalta gearra so-léighte an iarthair." It is there put into the mouth of "Aine an chnuic," Aine of the hill; who may be the same as the "Old Woman of Beare," and the four herds, the coffin—and a rider on a black horse who accompanied them—all disappeared in the side of a rock which opened to receive them and closed after them. "Aine" of "Cnoc Aine," or "Aine's hill," was the queen of the Limerick Fairies, but I hardly think that it is she who has got into the Mayo folk tale.
There is a proverb in Connacht which says, speaking of the oldest lives in the world, "the life of the yew tree, the life of the eagle,[59] and the life of the Old Woman of Beare."
See Kuno Meyer's edition of the song of the Old Woman of Beare in "Otia Merseiana" and "O Fotharta's Siamsa an Gheimhridh," p. 116, see also "The Vision of Mac Conglinne," p. 132, and my "Sgeuluidhe Gaedhealach."
The following story I wrote down very carefully word for word, about fifteen years ago, from the telling of Michael Mac Ruaidhri, of Ballycastle, Co. Mayo.
THE STORY.
There was an old woman in it, and long ago it was, and if we had been there that time we would not be here now; we would have a new story or an old story, and that would not be more likely than to be without any story at all.