John Flatley:
There was a man I knew, Andy White, had a little chap, a little summach of four years. And one day Andy was away to sell a pig in the market at Mount Bellew, and the mother was away someplace with the dinner for the men in the field, and the little chap was in the house with the grandmother, and he sitting by the fire. And he said to the grandmother: "Put down a skillet of potatoes for me, and an egg." And she said: "I will not; what do you want with them, sure you're not long after eating." And he said, "Take care but I'll throw you over the roof of the house." And then he said, "Andy"—that was his father—"is after selling the pig to a jobber, and the jobber has it given back to him again, and he'll be at no loss by that, for he'll get a half-a-crown more at the end." So when the grandmother heard that she wouldn't stop in the house with him but ran out, and he only four years old.
When the mother came back and was told about it she went out and she got some of the leaves of the Lus-Mor, and she brought them in and put them on him; and he went, and her own child came back again. They didn't see him going or the other coming, but they knew it by him. But if her child had died among them, and they can die there as well as in this world, then he wouldn't come back, but that shape in his place would take the appearance of death.
Mrs. Cooke:
There's a man in Kildare that lost his wife. And every night at twelve o'clock she came back, to look at her child. And it was told the husband that if he had twelve men with him with forks when she came in, they would be able to stop her from going out again.
So the next night he was there, and with him his twelve friends with forks. And when she came in they shut the door, and when she could not get out she sat down and was quiet.
And one night she was sitting by the hearth with them all, she said to her husband, "It's a strange thing that Lenchar would be sitting there so quiet, with the bottom after being knocked out of his churn."
So the husband went to Lenchar's house, and he found it was true what she had said, and the bottom was after being knocked out of his churn. But after that he left her, and lived in the village and wouldn't go near her any more.
Myself, I saw when I was but a child a woman come to the door that had been seven years with the good people, but do you think that could be true? And she had two strong girls with her. My brother was ill at the time, where he had his hip hurt with the shaft of a cart he was backing into the shed, and my father asked her could she cure him. And she said, "I will, if you will give me the reward I ask for." "What is that?" said he. And she stooped down and pointed at a little kettle that stood below the dresser, and it was the last thing my mother had bought in this world before she died. So he was vexed because she cast her eye on that, and he bid her go out of the house for she wouldn't get it, and so she went away.