called Columkille’s Strand, a place of marsh and mire, an ancient boat, with St. Columba himself, comes floating in from sea on a moonlight night:  a portent of a brave harvesting.  They have their dread portents too.  Some few seasons ago a fisherman saw, far on the horizon, renowned Hy Brazel, where he who touches shall find no more labour or care, nor cynic laughter, but shall go walking about under shadiest boscage, and enjoy the conversation of Cuchullin and his heroes.  A vision of Hy Brazel forebodes national troubles.

Drumcliff and Rosses are chokeful of ghosts.  By bog, road, rath, hillside, sea-border they gather in all shapes:  headless women, men in armour, shadow hares, fire-tongued hounds, whistling seals, and so on.  A whistling seal sank a ship the other day.  At Drumcliff there is a very ancient graveyard.  The Annals of the Four Masters have this verse about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871:  “A pious soldier of the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff.”  Not very long ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night to pray, saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where she was going.  It was the “pious soldier of the race of Con,” says local wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the graveyard.  Again, the custom is still common hereabouts of sprinkling the doorstep with the blood of a chicken on the death of a very young child, thus (as belief is) drawing into the blood the evil spirits from the too weak soul.  Blood is a great gatherer of evil spirits.  To cut your hand on a stone on going into a fort is said to be very dangerous.

There is no more curious ghost in Drumcliff or Rosses than the snipe-ghost.  There is a bush behind a house in a village that I know well:  for excellent reasons I do not say whether in Drumcliff or Rosses or on the slope of Ben Bulben, or even on the plain round Knocknarea.  There is a history concerning the house and the bush.  A man once lived there who found on the quay of Sligo a package containing three hundred pounds in notes.  It was dropped by a foreign sea captain.  This my man knew, but said nothing.  It was money for freight, and the sea captain, not daring to face his owners, committed suicide in mid-ocean.  Shortly afterwards my man died.  His soul could not rest.  At any rate, strange sounds were heard round his house, though that had grown and prospered since the freight money.  The wife was often seen by those still alive out in the garden praying at the bush I have spoken of, for the shade of the dead man appeared there at times.  The bush remains to this day:  once portion of a hedge, it now stands by itself, for no one dare put spade or pruning-knife about it.  As to the strange sounds and voices, they did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the troubled ghost, say the neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.