There was a man driving cattle from Craughwell to Athenry for a fair. And it was before sunrise and dark, and presently he saw a light by the side of the road, and he was glad of it, for he had no matches and he wanted to light his pipe to smoke it. So he turned aside, and there were some people sitting there, and they brought him in, through a sort of a door and asked him to sit down. And so he did, and he saw that they were all strangers, not one he knew among them. And there was a fire and they put food and drink on the table, and asked him what would he have. And there opposite him he saw his own cows that were brought in too, and he knew that he was in a faery place. But in all these places there's always one well-wisher, so while he was sitting there, an old woman came to him and whispered in his ear, "Don't for your life eat a bit or drink a drop of what they give you, or you'll never go away again." So he would take nothing. If it hadn't been for the old woman, he might have taken something, just not to vex them. And at sunrise they let him out, and he was on the road again and his cattle before him.
Well, when he was coming back from the fair, there were two men with him, and he pointed them out the place where all this happened, for when three persons are together, there's no fear of anything and they can say what they like. And the others told him it was a faery place and many strange things had happened there. And they told him how there was a woman had a baby lived close by there, and before it was a week old her husband had to leave her because of his brother having died. And no sooner was she left alone than she was taken, and they sent for the priest to say Mass in the house, but she was calling out every sort of thing they couldn't understand, and within a few days she was dead.
And after death the corpse began to change, and first it looked like an old woman, and then like an old man, and they had to bury it the next day. And before a week was over she began to appear. They always appear when they leave a child like that. And surely she was taken to nurse the faery children, just like poor Mrs. Raynor was last year.
There's a well near Kinvara, Tubbermacduagh it's called, and it's all hung with rags, and piles of seven stones about it, for it's a great place to bring children to, to get them back when they've been changed by the faeries. Nine days they should be going to it, and saying prayers each day. And you'll see the child that's coming back will be like itself one day and like an old person another day and sometimes it will feel a picking, picking at it and it in its mother's arms. McCullagh's daughter that was taken is often to be seen there.
When any one is taken something is put in their place—even when a cow or the like goes. There was one of the Simons used to be going about the country skinning cattle and killing them, even for the country people if they were sick. One day he was skinning a cow that was after dying by the roadside, and another man with him. And Simon said, "It's a pity he can't sell this meat to some butcher, he might get something for it." But the other man made a ring of his fingers like this, and looked through it and then bade Simon to look, and what he saw was an old piper; and when he thought he was skinning the cow, what he was doing was cutting off his leather breeches. So it's very dangerous to eat beef you buy from any of those sort of common butchers. You don't know what might have been put in its place.
A Man at Corcomroe:
There was Shane Rua that was away every night for seven years. He told his brother-in-law that told me that in that hill behind the abbey there is the most splendid town that was ever seen. Often he was in it, and ought not to have been talking about it, but he said he wouldn't give them the satisfaction of it, he didn't care what they did to him. But he fainted that night they took him from the wake, and you know what a strong man Peter Nestor was, and he couldn't hold him.
Buried he is now beside that wall.