PREFACE.
The following little story, taken down in Irish by my friend Father Kelleher from the dictation of Mary Sweeney, aged 82, of Coolea, Ballyvourney, Co. Cork, and sent me by Miss G. Schoepperle, who published the text in the revue Celtique in 1911, is of great interest, because it is almost unique as showing a point of contact—one of the exceedingly few points of contact—between Breton and Irish folk-lore. "Il n'est, que je sache, d'autre example en Irlande d'un messager surnaturel, tel que l'enfant mystérieux qui parait dans le conte qui suit," says Miss Schoepperle, truly, but in Brittany, she goes on to say, the "buguel" (Irish,
) noz," i.e., the boy or herdsman of the night, is well known. It is generally described as a little child with its head too large for its body, which only seldom appears, but which is heard to cry and lament in fields or on deserted roads. Its apparition is a presage of death. Lebraz in his Légende de la Mort has more than one story of its appearance. The salient points in the following story which seem to connect it with the Breton legend are: (1) The gradual growth in size of the being which was at first small; (2) the lamentations and cries which it utters, and (3)—most remarkable of all—that it described itself as a herdsman, and was a presage of death.
The Bearchan of this story must have been the bishop of
in
(King's County) about the year 690. He was of the race of the
