d put it on the spit, and
set me turning it.' 'That will do,' says he; 'ye may go in there and
lie down on the bed.' And I went, nothing loath; and in the morning
where was I but in the middle of a green field!"

"Drumcliff" is a great place for omens. Before a prosperous fishing
season a herring-barrel appears in the midst of a storm-cloud; and at a
place called Columkille's Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient
boat, with St. Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a
moonlight night: a portent of a brave harvesting. They have their dread
portents too. Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon,
renowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or
care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest
boscage, and enjoy the conversation of Cuchullin and his heroes. A
vision of Hy Brazel forebodes national troubles.

Drumcliff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts. By bog, road, rath,
hillside, sea-border they gather in all shapes: headless women, men in
armour, shadow hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so on.
A whistling seal sank a ship the other day. At Drumcliff there is a
very ancient graveyard. The Annals of the Four Masters have this verse
about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871: "A pious soldier of
the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff." Not very long
ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night to pray,
saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where she was
going. It was the "pious soldier of the race of Con," says local
wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the
graveyard. Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of sprinkling
the doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young
child, thus (as belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from
the too weak soul. Blood is a great gatherer of evil spirits. To cut
your hand on a stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.

There is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the snipe-
ghost. There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know well:
for excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses or on
the slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea. There
is a history concerning the house and the bush. A man once lived there
who found on the quay of Sligo a package containing three hundred
pounds in notes. It was dropped by a foreign sea