’Sometimes I used to go out as a pilot at that time—­I went a few times only.  Well, one Sunday a man came down and said there was a big ship coming into the sound.  I ran down with two men and we went out in a curagh; we went round the point where they said the ship was, and there was no ship in it.  As it was a Sunday we had nothing to do, and it was a fine, calm day, so we rowed out a long way looking for the ship, till I was further than I ever was before or after.  When I wanted to turn back we saw a great flock of birds on the water and they all black, without a white bird through them.  They had no fear of us at all, and the men with me wanted to go up to them, so we went further.  When we were quite close they got up, so many that they blackened the sky, and they lit down again a hundred or maybe a hundred and twenty yards off.  We went after them again, and one of the men wanted to kill one with a thole-pin, and the other man wanted to kill one with his rowing stick.  I was afraid they would upset the curagh, but they would go after the birds.

’When we were quite close one man threw the pin and the other man hit at them with his rowing stick, and the two of them fell over in the curagh, and she turned on her side and only it was quite calm the lot of us were drowned.

’I think those black gulls and the ship were the same sort, and after that I never went out again as a pilot.  It is often curaghs go out to ships and find there is no ship.

’A while ago a curagh went out to a ship from the big island, and there was no ship; and all the men in the curagh were drowned.  A fine song was made about them after that, though I never heard it myself.

’Another day a curagh was out fishing from this island, and the men saw a hooker not far from them, and they rowed up to it to get a light for their pipes—­at that time there were no matches—­and when they up to the big boat it was gone out of its place, and they were in great fear.’

Then he told me a story he had got from the mainland about a man who was driving one night through the country, and met a woman who came up to him and asked him to take her into his cart.  He thought something was not right about her, and he went on.  When he had gone a little way he looked back, and it was a pig was on the road and not a woman at all.

He thought he was a done man, but he went on.  When he was going through a wood further on, two men came out to him, one from each side of the road, and they took hold of the bridle of the horse and led it on between them.  They were old stale men with frieze clothes on them, and the old fashions.  When they came out of the wood he found people as if there was a fair on the road, with the people buying and selling and they not living people at all.  The old men took him through the crowd, and then they left him.  When he got home and told the old people of the two old men and the ways and fashions they had about them, the old people told him it was his two grandfathers had taken care of him, for they had had a great love for him and he a lad growing up.