‘Some men from the south island,’ he said, ’came over and bought some horses on this island, and they put them in a hooker to take across.  They wanted a curagh to go with them to tow the horses on to the strand, and a young man said he would go, and they could give him a rope and tow him behind the hooker.  When they were out in the sound a wind came down on them, and the man in the curagh couldn’t turn her to meet the waves, because the hooker was pulling her and she began filling up with water.

’When the men in the hooker saw it they began crying out one thing and another thing without knowing what to do.  One man called out to the man who was holding the rope:  “Let go the rope now, or you’ll swamp her.”

’And the man with the rope threw it out on the water, and the curagh half-filled already, and I think only one oar in her.  A wave came into her then, and she went down before them, and the young man began swimming about; then they let fall the sails in the hooker the way they could pick him up.  And when they had them down they were too far off, and they pulled the sails up again the way they could tack back to him.  He was there in the water swimming round, and swimming round, and before they got up with him again he sank the third time, and they didn’t see any more of him.’

I asked if anyone had seen him on the island since he was dead.

‘They have not,’ he said, ’but there were queer things in it.  Before he went out on the sea that day his dog came up and sat beside him on the rocks, and began crying.  When the horses were coming down to the slip an old woman saw her son, that was drowned a while ago, riding on one of them, She didn’t say what she was after seeing, and this man caught the horse, he caught his own horse first, and then he caught this one, and after that he went out and was drowned.  Two days after I dreamed they found him on the Ceann gaine (the Sandy Head) and carried him up to the house on the plain, and took his pampooties off him and hung them up on a nail to dry.  It was there they found him afterwards as you’ll have heard them say.’

‘Are you always afraid when you hear a dog crying?’ I said.

‘We don’t like it,’ he answered; ’you will often see them on the top of the rocks looking up into the heavens, and they crying.  We don’t like it at all, and we don’t like a cock or hen to break anything in the house, for we know then some one will be going away.  A while before the man who used to live in that cottage below died in the winter, the cock belonging to his wife began to fight with another cock.  The two of them flew up on the dresser and knocked the glass of the lamp off it, and it fell on the floor and was broken.  The woman caught her cock after that and killed it, but she could not kill the other cock, for it was belonging to the man who lived in the next house.  Then himself got a sickness and died after that.’

I asked him if he ever heard the fairy music on the island.