‘I heard some of the boys talking in the school a while ago,’ he said, ’and they were saying that their brothers and another man went out fishing a morning, two weeks ago, before the cock crew.  When they were down near the Sandy Head they heard music near them, and it was the fairies were in it.  I’ve heard of other things too.  One time three men were out at night in a curagh, and they saw a big ship coming down on them.  They were frightened at it, and they tried to get away, but it came on nearer them, till one of the men turned round and made the sign of the cross, and then they didn’t see it any more.’

Then he went on in answer to another question: 

’We do often see the people who do be away with them.  There was a young man died a year ago, and he used to come to the window of the house where his brothers slept, and be talking to them in the night.  He was married a while before that, and he used to be saying in the night he was sorry he had not promised the land to his son, and that it was to him it should go.  Another time he was saying something about a mare, about her hoofs, or the shoes they should put on her.  A little while ago Patch Ruadh saw him going down the road with brogaarda (leather boots) on him and a new suit.  Then two men saw him in another place.

‘Do you see that straight wall of cliff?’ he went on a few minutes later, pointing to a place below us.  ’It is there the fairies do be playing ball in the night, and you can see the marks of their heels when you come in the morning, and three stones they have to mark the line, and another big stone they hop the ball on.  It’s often the boys have put away the three stones, and they will always be back again in the morning, and a while since the man who owns the land took the big stone itself and rolled it down and threw it over the cliff, yet in the morning it was back in its place before him.’

I am in the south island again, and I have come upon some old men with a wonderful variety of stories and songs, the last, fairly often, both in English and Irish, I went round to the house of one of them to-day, with a native scholar who can write Irish, and we took down a certain number, and heard others.  Here is one of the tales the old man told us at first before he had warmed to his subject.  I did not take it down, but it ran in this way:—­

There was a man of the name of Charley Lambert, and every horse he would ride in a race he would come in the first.

The people in the country were angry with him at last, and this law was made, that he should ride no more at races, and if he rode, any one who saw him would have the right to shoot him.  After that there was a gentleman from that part of the country over in England, and he was talking one day with the people there, and he said that the horses of Ireland were the best horses.  The English said it was the English horses were the best, and at last they said there should be a race, and the English horses would come over and race against the horses of Ireland, and the gentleman put all his money on that race.