It was in the night she used to go to them, and if the door was shut, she'd come in by the key-hole. The first time they came for her, she was in bed between her two sisters, and she didn't want to go, And they beat her and pinched her, till her brother called out to know what was the matter.
She often told me about them, and how she was badly treated because she wouldn't eat their food. She got no more than about three cold potatoes she could eat all the time she was with them.
All the old people about here put out food every night, the first of the food before they have any of it tasted themselves. And she said there was a red-haired girl among them, that would throw her into the river she got so mad with her. But if she'd had their food ate, she'd never have got away from them at all.
She married a serving-man after, and they went to Sydney, and if nothing happened in the last two years they're doing well there now.
Mrs. Casey:
Near my own house by the sea there was a girl went out one day to get nuts near the wood, and she heard music inside the wood. And when she went home she told her mother. But the next day she went again, and the next, and she stopped so long that the mother sent the other little girl to look for her, but she could see no one. But she came in after a time, and she went inside into the room, and while she was there the mother heard music from the room; but when the girl came out she said she heard nothing. But the next day after that she died.
The neighbours all came in to the wake, and there was tobacco and snuff there, but not much, for it's the custom not to have so much when a young person dies. But when they looked at the bed, it was no young person they saw in it, but an old woman with long teeth that you'd be frightened, and the face wrinkled, and the hands. So they didn't stop but went away, and she was buried the next day. And in the night the mother would hear music all about the house, and lights of all colours flashing about the windows.
She was never seen again except by a boy that was working about the place. He met her one evening at the end of the house, dressed in her own clothes. But he could not question her where she was, for it's only when you meet them by a bush you can question them there.
A Man of Slieve Echtge:
There was a man, and he a cousin of my own, lost his wife. And one night he heard her come into the room, where he was in bed with the child beside him, and he let on to be asleep, and she took the child and brought her out to the kitchen fire and sat down beside it and suckled it.