Collectanea.
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Michael Anthony O'Donnell, of Termoncarra, in the Mullet, locally known as " Master Mickletony " — gave Otway a mass of fairy lore. It tallies enough with local belief apart from its " dressing up," however, to be a valuable indication of Mullet folk-lore in 1838. Fairies were even then scarce, but Mickle- tony had seen and felt them seven years before. ^ After supper with a friend he was groping his way along a ".togher " or bog-causeway in the mirk of a clouded evening. He met a little man with green eyes, a long face and long crooked black nose holding a " live turf " (a bit of burning peat) in a " clip " by way of a lantern. O'Donnell asked his escort and light to Court Clough, and found it very hard to keep up with his conductor, who hopped and leaped along till the breathless man had to ask for time. Every now and then the stranger blew up the turf, and strange faces appeared grinning and peering out of the gloom. At last O'Donnell saw he was being led into the sandhills and got thoroughly frightened, when he remembered and lit his pipe. As the true fire blazed the fairy gave a cry like a curlew and vanished. He " signed the cross, said a pater and an ave and fell asleep," awaking at sunrise. Otway, who untactfully jested at the tale, found that Mickle- tony took it very seriously and was certain it was a design of the " Phouca " to mislead and injure him. Fortunately his offence took the form of telling a corroborative story.
" Miss Ellen," the daughter of the Protestant clergyman of Termoncarra Glebe in the time of Mickletony's father, fell in love with a French skipper, was betrayed and wasted away. Her father sent for a famous holy man, " Friar Cook, from Achill, who after six months cured her, won her to his faith and tied a " gospel " round her neck. Soon afterwards a man named Teelingfrom Sligomade honourable proposals for marriage with her ; she refused, and he in sudden anger snatched the " gospel " from her neck, when she fell dead. It was firmly believed that the fairies (and not the very natural delicacy and nerve collapse after her misfortunes and the excitement of an offer which must have painfully recalled the past) caused her untimely death.
' Erris and 'Jyrawlf}', p. 73.
