But one day in America he was shaving, and whether he cut the string or that he took it off I don't know, but he laid the charm down on a table. And when he looked for it again, if he was to burn the house down he couldn't find it. And it all came back on him again, and he was as bad as he was before.
So the wife wrote home to Father Callaghan, and he sent out another thing of the same sort; and bid him wear it, and from the time he put it on, he got well again. A priest has the power to do cures, but if he does he can keep nothing, one thing will die after another.
Biddy Early could do the same thing, she had to cast the sickness on some other thing—it might be a dog or a goat or a bird.
Priests can do cures if they will, but they are afraid to do them because their stock will die, and because they are afraid of loss in the other world as well as in this. There's a neighbour of your own lost his milch cow the other day for a small one he did,—Father Mulhall that is.
There was Father Rivers was called in to a woman that was bad, between Roxborough and Dunsandle. And he said to the father, "Which would you sooner keep, the wife or the child?" And he said, "Sure I'd sooner have the wife than all the children of the world." So Father Rivers went in and cured her so that she got well, but he put whatever she had on the son, so that he grew up an idiot. Harmless he used to be, not doing much. Well, when he came to twenty years, the mother said, "Come outside into the field, and cut the eyes of a few stone of potatoes for me." But he took up the graip that was at the door and made at her to kill her. And she ran in and shut the door, and then he made for the window and broke it. And at that time Mr. Singleton from Ceramina was passing by, and he stopped and called some men and they took him and took the graip from him, and he was brought away to Ballinasloe Asylum, but he didn't live more than six months after. Waiting all that time he was to do his revenge, but hadn't the power to do it till the twenty years were up.
There is a man that is living strong and well in the village of Lochlan and that has sixteen or seventeen children, and one time something came on him and he wore away till there was no more strength in him than in that thraneen. And there was an old woman used to be doing cures with herbs, and he sent for her, and she went out into the field and she picked two or three leaves of a plant she knew of. And as she was carrying it through the fields to the house she fell dead.