It was soon after that day that the mother and I went to Loughrea, and when we came back, the child had slipped on the threshold of the house and got a fall, and he was screeching and calling out that his knee was hurt, and from that time he did no good, and pined away and had the pain in the knee always.
And Biddy Early said, "While you're talking to me now the child lies dying," and that was at twelve o'clock in the day. And she made up a bottle for me, herbs I believe it was made of, and she said, "Take care of it going home, and whatever may happen, don't drop it"; and she wrapped it in all the folds of my handkerchief. So when I was coming home and got near Tillyra I heard voices over the wall talking, and when I got to the Roxborough gate there were many people talking and coming to where we were. I could hear them and see them, and the man that was with me. But when I heard them I remembered what she said, and I took the bottle in my two hands and held it, and so I brought it home safely. And when I got home they told me the child was worse, and that at twelve o'clock the day before he lay as they thought dying. And when I brought the bottle to him, he pulled the bed-clothes up over his head, and we had the work of the world to make him taste it. But from the time he took it, the pain in the knee left him and he began to get better, and Biddy Early had told me not to let many days pass without coming to her again, when she gave me the bottle. But seeing him so well, I thought it no use to go again, and it was not on May Day, but it was during the month of May he died. He took to the bed before that, and he'd be always calling to me to come inside the bed where he was, and if I went in, he'd hardly let me go. But I got afraid, and I didn't like to be too much with him.
He was but eight years old when he died, but Ned Cahel that used to live beyond there then told me privately that when I'd be out of the house and he'd come in, the little chap would ask for the pipe, and take it and smoke it, but he'd never let me see him doing it. And he was old-fashioned in all his ways.
Another thing Biddy Early told me to do was to go out before sunrise to where there'd be a boundary wall between two or three estates, and to bring a bottle, and lay it in the grass and gather the dew into it. But there were hundreds of people she turned away, because she'd say, "What's wrong with you has nothing to do with my business."
There was a Clare woman with me when I went there, and she told me there was a boy from a village near her was brought tied in a cart to Biddy Early, and she said, "If I cure you, will you be willing to marry me?" And he said he would. So she cured him and married him. I saw him there at her house. It might be that she had the illness put upon him first.
The priests don't do cures by the same means, and they don't like to do them at all. It was in my house that you see that Father Gregan did one on Mr. Phayre. And he cured a girl up in the mountains after, and where is he now but in a madhouse. They are afraid of the power they do them by, that it will be too strong for them. Some say the bishops don't like them to do cures because the whiskey they drink to give them courage before they do them is very apt to make drunkards of them. It's not out of the prayer-book they read, but out of the Roman ritual, and that's a book you can read evil out of as well as good.
There was a boy of the Saggartons in the house went to Biddy Early and she told him the house of his bachelor [the girl he would marry] and he did marry her after. And she cured him of a weakness he had and cured many, but it was seldom the bottle she'd give could be brought home without being spilled. I wonder did she go to them when she died. She got the cure among them anyway.
Mrs. Dillon:
My mother got crippled in her bed one night—God save the hearers—and it was a long time before she could walk again with the pain in her back. And my father was always telling her to go to Biddy Early, and so at last she went. But she could do nothing for her, for she said, "What ails you has nothing to do with my business." And she said, "You have lost three, and one was a grand little fair-haired one, and if you'd like to see her again, I'll show her to you." And when she said that, my mother had no courage to look and to see the child she lost, but fainted then and there. And then she said, "There's a field of corn beyond your house and a field with hay, and it's not long since that the little fellow that wears a Llanberis cap fell asleep there on a cock of hay. And before the stooks of corn are in stacks he'll be taken from you, but I'll save him if I can." And it was true enough what she said, my little brother that was wearing a Llanberis cap had gone to the field, and had fallen asleep on the hay a few days before. But no harm happened him, and he's all the brother I have living now. Out in the stable she used to go to meet her people.