, in the highlands. I remember seeing a
long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage of an old
miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told that he was
a fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has gathered that he
is believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether he becomes an
Amadan-na-Breena, a fool of the forth, and is attached to a household
there, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that I know well, and who has
been in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said, "There are fools
amongst them, and the fools we see, like that Amadan of Ballylee, go
away with them at night, and so do the woman fools that we call
Oinseachs (apes)." A woman who is related to the witch-doctor on the
border of Clare, and who can Cure people and cattle by spells, said,
"There are some cures I can't do. I can't help any one that has got a
stroke from the queen or the fool of the forth. I knew of a woman that
saw the queen one time, and she looked like any Christian. I never
heard of any that saw the fool but one woman that was walking near
Gort, and she called out, 'There's the fool of the forth coming after
me.' So her friends that were with her called out, though they could
see nothing, and I suppose he went away at that, for she got no harm.
He was like a big strong man, she said, and half naked, and that is all
she said about him. I have never seen any myself, but I am a cousin of
Hearne, and my uncle was away twenty-one years." The wife of the old
miller said, "It is said they are mostly good neighbours, but the
stroke of the fool is what there is no cure for; any one that gets that
is gone. The Amadan-na-Breena we call him!" And an old woman who lives
in the Bog of Kiltartan, and is very poor, said, "It is true enough,
there is no cure for the stroke of the Amadan-na-Breena. There was an
old man I knew long ago, he had a tape, and he could tell what diseases
you had with measuring you; and he knew many things. And he said to me
one time, 'What month of the year is the worst?' and I said, 'The month
of May, of course.' 'It is not,' he said; 'but the month of June, for
that's the month that the Amadan gives his stroke!' They say he looks
like any other man, but he's leathan (wide), and not smart. I knew a
boy one time got a great fright, for a lamb looked over the wall at him
with a beard on it, and he knew it was the Amadan, for it was the month
of June. And they brought him to that man I was tel