near his church of Ardmore.[1] The most usual preventative all over Clare is, however, to plant house-leek on a gable or hole in the wall or thatch of a house.
The very strange and unusual custom prevailed of sailing a new boat round the Sacred Isle of Iniscatha "in a course opposite to the sun." At Inisglora ships used to lower their topsails to St. Brendan, while in Aran the sails are dipped in honour of St. Gregory, opposite his reputed tomb, a dry-stone turret on the shore of Gregory's Sound Roderic O'Flaherty, in 1686, tells of a similar observance by boats passing between Mason Head and Cruach MacDara on the northern shore of Galway Bay, and of the melancholy fate of a captain who neglected this act of homage to St. Sinnach MacDara in 1672.[2]
The unpleasant custom of spitting on a child, or a new suit of clothes, "for luck," was still practised some thirty years ago, if not now, and a pinch was equally lucky for the wearer of the new suit.
Various protective phrases are in common use, even amongst some of the gentry. "God bless us" and "Glory be to God" are used without the least sense of unfitness when telling of some horrible crime or accident. "Good hour be it spoken," "Good word be it spoken," "The Lord be with us" (or "about us"), and these phrases with the names of the Virgin or the Saints inserted, are used in telling of any ghastly or uncanny thing or being, after a presumptuous or profane speech, or after praising a person or animal. (The local saints, save Senan and Patrick, are rarely mentioned nowadays.) "My Christmas box on you" and "My Patrick's pot on you" are of a different class, being merely hints for a present or a drink.
Miscellaneous charms.—Seven hairs were knotted in the mane of a horse or the tail of a cow to protect against fairies. If the
- ↑ "Vita S. Deglani" (13th cent.), Bollandists' Tome V, under July 24.
- ↑ A long list of these beliefs can be collected from Hely Button's Statistical Survey of the County Clare (1808), p. 306, the excellent letter of 1816 on Kilrush Parish by its curate, Rev. Jas. Graham, in Mason's Parochial Survey, vol. ii, p. 433, and S. F. (Samuel Ferguson) in Dublin University Magazine, vol. xviii. (1816), pp. 547-9. I heard many of the beliefs in 1875 and 1878 from the fishermen at Scattery and Kilkee.
