There was a first cousin of mine used sometimes to go out the house, that none would see him going, And one night his brother followed him, and he went down a path to the sea, and then he went into a hole in the rocks, that the smallest dog wouldn't go into. And the brother took hold of his feet and drew him out again. He went to America after that, and is living there now; and sometimes in his room they'll see him kicking and laughing as if some were with him.
One night when some of the neighbours from these islands were with him, he told them he'd been back to Inishmaan, and told all that was going on. And some would not believe him. And he said, "You'll believe me next time." So the next night he told them again he had been there, and he brought out of his pocket a couple of boiled potatoes and a bit of fish and showed them, so then they all believed it.
An Old Man from the State of Maine says, hearing this:
I knew him in America, and he used often to visit this island, and would know about all of them were living, and would bring us word of them, and all he'd tell us would turn out right. He's living yet in America.
An Aran Woman:
There was a woman in Killinny was dying, and it was she used to be minding the Lodge over there, and when she was near death her own little girl went out, and she saw her standing, and a black-haired woman with her. And she came back and said to her father "Don't be fretting, my mother's not there in the bed, I saw her up by the Lodge and a black woman with her, that took her in with her." And there was a man from Arklow there, and he said, "That's not your wife at all that's in the bed—that's not Maggie Mulkair. That is a black woman and Maggie Mulkair is red-haired." And the husband looked in the bed, and so it wasn't Maggie Mulkair that was in it, but at that minute she died. It's well known they bring back the old to put in the place of the young.
There was a girl in the County Clare, and she went to get married, and she and the husband were riding back on the one horse and it slipped and fell. And when she got to the house, she sat quiet and not a word out of her. And everybody said she used to be a pleasant, jolly girl, but this was like an old woman.
And she sat there by the hob for three days and she didn't turn her face to the people. But the husband said, "Let her alone, maybe she's shy yet." But his mother got angry at last and she said, "I'd sooner be rubbing stones on the clothes than watching an idle woman." And she went out to the flax and she said to the girl, "You'd best get the dinner ready before the men come in." But when she came in there was nothing done; and she gave her a blow with some pieces of the flax that were in her hand, and said, "Get out of this for a good-for-nothing woman!" And with that she went up the chimney and was gone. And the mother got the dinner ready, and then she went out, not knowing in the world how to tell the husband what she had done. But when she got to the field where they were working, there was the girl walking down the hill, and she took the two hands of the mother and said, "It's well for me you hadn't patience to last two days more or I'd never have got back, but I never touched any of the food while I was with them."
Mrs. Casey: