LITERALLY TRANSLATED FROM THE IRISH BY DOUGLAS HYDE.
[I found it hard to place Mr. Douglas Hyde's magnificent story. Among the ghosts or the fairies? It is among the fairies on the grounds that all these ghosts and bodies were in no manner ghosts and bodies, but _pishogues_--fairy spells. One often hears of these visions in Ireland. I have met a man who had lived a wild life like the man in the story, till a vision came to him in County ---- one dark night--in no way so terrible a vision as this, but sufficient to change his whole character. He will not go out at night. If you speak to him suddenly he trembles. He has grown timid and strange. He went to the bishop and was sprinkled with holy water. "It may have come as a warning," said the bishop; "yet great theologians are of opinion that no man ever saw an apparition, for no man would survive it."--ED.]
There was once a grown-up lad in the County Leitrim, and he was strong and lively, and the son of a rich farmer. His father had plenty of money, and he did not spare it on the son. Accordingly, when the boy grew up he liked sport better than work, and, as his father had no other children, he loved this one so much that he allowed him to do in everything just as it pleased himself. He was very extravagant, and he used to scatter the gold money as another person would scatter the white. He was seldom to be found at home, but if there was a fair, or a race, or a gathering within ten miles of him, you were dead certain to find him there. And he seldom spent a night in his father's house, but he used to be always out rambling, and, like Shawn Bwee long ago, there was
"the love of every girl in the breast of his shirt," and it's many's the kiss he got and he gave, for he was very handsome, and there wasn't a girl in the country but would fall in love with him, only for him to fasten his two eyes on her, and it was for that someone made this _rann_ on him--
"Feuch an rógaire 'g iarraidh póige, Ni h-iongantas mór é a bheith mar atá Ag leanamhaint a gcómhnuidhe d'árnán na gráineóige Anuas 's anios 's nna chodladh 'sa' lá."
_i.e._--"Look at the rogue, its for kisses he's rambling, It isn't much wonder, for that was his way; He's like an old hedgehog, at night he'll be scrambling From this place to that, but he'll sleep in the day."