was a bit of a girl at the time, playing about and sporting myself, but
I mind her as well as if I saw her there now!" My friend asked how the
woman was dressed, and the old woman said, "It was a gray cloak she had
on, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied round
her head, like the country women did use to wear in them times." My
friend asked, "How wee was she?" And the old woman said, "Well now, she
wasn't wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the Wee
Woman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you would
say. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round in the
face. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother's sister, and Betty was
like none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any of them. She
was round and fresh in the face, and she never was married, and she
never would take any man; and we used to say that the Wee Woman--her
being like Betty--was, maybe, one of their own people that had been
took off before she grew to her full height, and for that she was
always following us and warning and foretelling. This time she walks
straight over to where my mother was standing. 'Go over to the Lough
this minute!'--ordering her like that--'Go over to the Lough, and tell
Joseph that he must change the foundation of this house to where I'll
show you fornent the thornbush. That is where it is to be built, if he
is to have luck and prosperity, so do what I'm telling ye this minute.'
The house was being built on 'the path' I suppose--the path used by the
people of faery in their journeys, and my mother brings Joseph down and
shows him, and he changes the foundations, the way he was bid, but
didn't bring it exactly to where was pointed, and the end of that was,
when he come to the house, his own wife lost her life with an accident
that come to a horse that hadn't room to turn right with a harrow
between the bush and the wall. The Wee Woman was queer and angry when
next she come, and says to us, 'He didn't do as I bid him, but he'll
see what he'll see."' My friend asked where the woman came from this
time, and if she was dressed as before, and the woman said, "Always the
same way, up the field beyant the burn. It was a thin sort of shawl she
had about her in summer, and a cloak about her in winter; and many and
many a time she came, and always it was good advice she was giving to
my mother, and warning her what not to do if she would have good luck.
There was no