captain. This my man
knew, but said nothing. It was money for freight, and the sea captain,
not daring to face his owners, committed suicide in mid-ocean. Shortly
afterwards my man died. His soul could not rest. At any rate, strange
sounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered
since the freight money. The wife was often seen by those still alive
out in the garden praying at the bush I have spoken of, for the shade
of the dead man appeared there at times. The bush remains to this day:
once portion of a hedge, it now stands by itself, for no one dare put
spade or pruning-knife about it. As to the strange sounds and voices,
they did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a
snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the troubled ghost, say
the neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.

My forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and Drumcliff these
many years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and can find
nothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such
as was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort--one of
the few stone ones in Ireland--under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben:
"They always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine": for it is
dangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself or
knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My
friend, "the sweet Harp-String" (I give no more than his Irish name for
fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart,
but then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields.
Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the
"dhoul" in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of prescriptive
right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are
almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage of
magicians be true.

THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE

I

Once a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the
cemetery where the poet Egil was buried. Its great thickness made them
feel certain it was the skull of a great man, doubtless of Egil
himself. To be doubly sure they put it on a wall and hit it hard blows
with a hammer. It got white where the blows fell but did not break, and
they were convinced that it was in truth the skull of the poet, and
worthy of every honour. In Ireland we have much kinship with the
Icelanders, or