Stories from Leitrim and Cavan.
The following stories were told to me in 1894 by a domestic servant named Ellen McKeever, the daughter of a small farmer living near the town of Cavan. Her mother, from whom she had obtained some of them, was a native of county Leitrim.
The Dead Letter.
This was a very poor old woman, she used to go about begging, and every week she'd give half-a-crown to the priest to say a token of a mass for some of the souls in purgatory. So this week she could only give a shilling, so she went to the priest and told him and asked him if he'd say it for her, and he said he would. The priest asked her who he'd say it for, and she said for the most needful soul.[1]
One very cold morning not long after that she was sitting in a field praying and feeling very hungry, when a very old man with a long white beard came up to her. He pointed out a gentleman's place near there and gave her a letter, and told her to go there and to give that letter to nobody only the master of the house. So she went there and rung the bell, and the butler came to the door. So she asked to see the master, and the butler laughed at her, and said she couldn't see him, and to send a message. And she said no, that she'd have to see the master himself. So the butler went and told him, and he said to show her into the room. I think it was in his bedroom he was. So the old woman went up to the room, and gave him the letter, and told him that an old man gave it to her. He got very pale when he read it, and he told her to examine all the pictures round the room to see if she saw a face like the man that gave her the letter. So she pointed to one hanging over his bed and said that was it. So the gentleman said that was his father, that was dead for twenty years, and told her that what was in the letter was that he was to make her comfortable all her life, for she was the cause of sending him[2] to Heaven.
So he married her and she lived ever after there.
