Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/366

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344
Collectanea.

shouting back across the valley, was in the Laxey gill coming home with a good sup at him [i.e. with a drop too much]. When he heard the horn he began shouting,—"Save thy wind and go thy ways home!" The Dooinney-Oie didn't mind him at first. Then he said something that made the Dooinney-Oie jump out of his seat and rush down the Lhergy shouting and stamping till he was making the ground shake under him. Hearing the sound coming nearer and nearer the man got frightened, and took to his heels for his life, knowing now that he was in the way of danger. Luckily for him there was plenty of water in the river, and when the Dooinney-Oie got to the bottom of the mountain he found the stepping-stones covered. He went back up the hill a little bit, then he took a run, gave a shout, made a leap, and over he went. Poor Joe knew now that there was only one chance for him, and that was to get to the house of a religious man that was on his way home, so he took to his heels for all he was worth, trembling with fear, as the shout was coming nearer and nearer. He got inside the house just when one big shout at the door made the scraas [turfs] shake on the rafters and the thatch rattle as if a shower of hailstones was coming down. Luckily that was all the harm the Dooinney-Oie could do. Joe stopped there for that night, and took good care never to shout after the Night-Man any more.

Years after this, when the horn of the Dooinney-Oie was seldom heard, a Grawe man took it into his head that he trees growing around the place where he used to come were a hindrance. So he went and made a new road from the Chibhyr-y-Pherick road, thruogh the trees, but that didn't coax him a bit. Then he took the notion that the poor Night-Man must be dead, and that, as he was such a faithful old friend of the people, he deserved a monument. So he went and got quarrymen and masons, and they put up a big round tower on the spot. The Dooinney-Oie came to put a sight on it just before it was finished, but somehow or another it didn't suit him, so he took hold of it, and gave one big shout out of him, and tore it every bit to the ground, and from that day to this he was never seen again.

Some say that he will come back once more, and some think that he never will. But on still evenings, when the sun is sinking