And I knew of a herd's house, where five or six herds went one after another and every one of them died, and their dogs and their cow. And the gentleman that owned the place came to ask another one to go in it, and his wife said she wouldn't go, for there was some bad luck about it. But she went after, and she was a very clean woman, not like some of them that do have the house dirty. Well, one day a woman came to the door and asked for a dish of oaten meal, and she took it from the shelf, and gave it to her. "I'll bring it back to you tomorrow," says she, "it'll be easy getting it then when it's market day." "Do not," says the woman of the house, "for if you do I won't take it." "Well," says the stranger, "you'll have luck after this; only one thing I tell you, keep that door at the back shut, and if you want any opening there, let you open the window." Well, so she did, and by minding that rule, and keeping the house so clean, she was never troubled but lived there all her life.
An Island Woman:
There are some houses that never bring luck. There is one over there, out of this village, and two or three died in it, and one night it blazed up and burned down, those that were out in the fishing boats could see it, but it was never known how it happened.
There was a house over in the other village and a woman living in it that had two forths of land. And she had clever children, but the most of them died one after another, boys and girls, and then the husband died. And after that one of the boys that had died came to her and said "You'd best leave this house or you'll be as we are, and we are all now living in the Black Rock at the gable end of the house. And two of the McDaraghs are with us there."
So after that she left the house—you can cut grass now in the place where it was, and it's green all through the summer and the winter—and she went up to the north side and she married a young man up there, for she was counted a rich woman. She had but two daughters left, and one of them was married, and there was a match to be made for the other, but the stepfather wouldn't allow her to give any of the land to her, so she said she'd go to America, and the priest drew up a stamped paper for her, that they'd keep a portion of money for her every year till she'd come back. It wasn't long after that the stepfather was out in one of the fields one day and two men came and knocked him down and gave him a beating. And it was his belief it was the father of the girl and one of the brothers that came to beat him.
And one of the neighbours that went to the house one night saw one of the brothers standing at the window, plump and plain. And a first cousin of theirs—a Donovan—was near the Black Rock one night, and he saw them playing ball there, the whole of them that had gone, and others with them. And when they saw him they whistled to make fun of him, and he went away.
The stepfather died after that, and the woman herself died, and was buried a week yesterday. And she had one son by the second husband and he was always silly-like, and the night she died he went into the room where she was, to the other side of the bed, and he called out, and then he came out walking crooked, and his face drawn up on one side; and so he is since, and a neighbour taking care of him. And you'd hardly mind what a poor silly creature like him would say, but what he says is that it was some of the boys that were gone that were in it. And now there's no one to take up the land that so many were after; the girl in America wouldn't for all the world come back to that place.