That girl I was telling you about in my own village, Sibby Dempsey, I had a letter about her the other day when I was in Cashel, and she that had been in her bed seventeen years is walking out and going to Mass, a nice respectable woman. They told me no more than that in the letter, but Tom Carden the policeman that had been there for his holiday told that there had come a wandering woman—one of her own sort, it's likely—to the house one night, and asked a lodging in the name of God. Sibby called out, and asked Maggie, the girl, who was that? And the woman stopped the night, and whatever they did was between themselves, and in the morning the wandering woman went away, and Sibby got up out of the bed, that she never had left for seventeen years. Now she never was there all that time in my belief, for if it was an oak stick was lying there through all those years wouldn't it be rotten? It is in the faeries she was, and it not herself used to be in it in the night-time. (Note [43].)
(Later.) Sibby Dempsey is getting ready now for her wedding. She is all right now; she has gone through her years.
But what do you say to what happened her father shortly after she being brought back? His horse fell with him coming home one evening and both his legs were broke, and the horse was killed. That is the revenge they took for the girl being taken away from them.
One Lanigan:
My own mother was away for twenty-one years, and at the end of every seven years she thought it would be off her, but she never could leave the bed. She could not sit up and make a little shirt or such a thing for us. It was of the fever she died at last.
The way she got the touch was one day after we left the place we used to be in. And we got our choice place in the estate, and my father chose Cahirbohil, but a great number of the neighbours went to Moneen. And one day a woman that had been our neighbour came over from Moneen, and my mother showed her everything and told her of her way of living. And she walked a bit of the way with her, and when they were parting the woman said, "You'll soon be the same as such a one," and as she turned away she felt a pain in her hand. And from that day she lost her health. My father went to Biddy Early, but she said it was too late, she could do nothing, but she would take nothing from him.
There was a man out at Roxborough, Colevin was his name, was known to be away with them. And one day there were a lot of the people footing turf, and a blast of wind came and passed by. And after it passed a joking fellow that was among them called out, "Is Colevin with you?" And the blast turned and knocked an eye out of him, that he never had the sight of it again.
J. Joyce:
There was a little chap I used to go to school with was away. He was in bed for three or four years, and then he could only walk on two sticks, till one day his father was going into Clough and he wanted to go, and the father said, "They'll be laughing at you going on your two sticks." So then he said, "Well, I'll go on one," and threw one away and after that he got rid of the other as well—and got all right. He never would tell anything about where he was, but if any one asked him he'd begin to cry. He was very smart at his books, and very handy, so that when he got well he got a good offer of work and went to America.