Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

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Legends of the " Good Peopkr 95
fields, was annoyed at not finding the stirabout ready,
and opened his mind on the subject. Katty was vexed
with him and herself, and cursed a little, as was
customary sixty years since among men and women in
remote districts of our country. All these annoyances
prevented her from remembering the holy water, and
from sprinkling some drops on her little son, and making
the sign of the cross on his innocent forehead. When
the men and boys left the house for their out-door work
after breakfast, Katty took her pailful of soiled linen to
the spot where the stream formed a little pool, and
where the villagers had fixed a broad and flat " beetling"
stone. While she was employed in cleaning the clothes,
she let her child sit or roll about on the grassy slope
behind her.
All at once she heard a scream from the boy, and
when she turned, and ran to him, she found him in convulsions.
She ran home with him, administered salt and
water, and the other specifics popular in the country.
The fit passed away, but she was grieved to perceive
that the weazened, pained expression still remained on
his face, and that his whimpering and whining did not
abate—in fact, to use a well-worn Irish expression, '' the
cry was never out of his mouth." He ate as much as
would suftice a full-grown man, and was always ready for
food both at regular meal-times and between them.
After a week of this state of things, the neighbours came
to the conclusion that it was a sheeoge that Katty was
slaving her life out for. Katty's family came next into
the same persuasion, and lastly, but with some doubts,
Katty herself.
At a family and neighbourly council, held round the
fire, after the children had been sent to bed, they proceeded
to get rid of the little wretch, and this was the
order of the ceremonial :
A neighbour took the shovel, rubbed it clean, laid it
on the floor, and his wife, seizing on the supposed fairy,
placed it sitting on the broad iron blade. She held it