Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

Witchcraft^ Sorcery^ Ghosts, and Fetches. 191
immediately after lie cried to her in low and interrupted
accents, " Ellen, dear, I am suffocating ; send for Dr. C."
She sprang up, huddled on some clothes, and, without
waiting for the slow movements of the servant, she ran
to his house. He came with all speed, but his efforts
for his friend were useless. He had burst a large blood-
vessel in the lungs, and was soon beyond human aid.
In the passionate lamentations which the bereaved
wife could not restrain in the presence of the physician,
she frequently cried out, " Oh ! the fetch, the fetch !
At a later period she told him of the appearance the
night before her husband's death ; and as he thoroughly
believed her statement, it involved the theory he henceforth
entertained on the
able confusion.
subject of Fetches in consider-
It is not a difficult matter to a person of finely strung
nerves to conjure up the eidolon of one in whom he or
she is deeply interested.
A few accidental instances of deaths speedily following
on such manifestations were sufficient to establish the
existence of fetches.
THE APPARITION IN OLD ROSS.
An instance came under our own notice of the almost
establishing of a ghost story that would have braved in-
vestigation and contradiction. A gentleman farmer,
Mr. J. of Old Ross, was returning home in company with
his daughter, about eleven o'clock at night, from a visit
paid in their neighbourhood. They were going up a
steep hill, -with a stiff breeze at their backs, and as they
advanced they saw on the top of the ascent a headless
man, perfectly motionless. The poor young woman was
terribly frightened, and held convulsively by her father's
"