Editor’s Note: A fascinating piece where a common assault seems to have been disguised or claimed for convenience to have been a fairy attack.
McLaughlin was seriously assaulted on 15th and ‘[t]here was a rumour prevalent through Glentogher that the fairies had something to do with the assault’. Is this perhaps to do with the fact that one of the defendants James Diver’s sister, Ellen Diver ‘stated that on the night when the assault… her brother had not been out of the house from shortly before eight o’clock until he went to bed’. i.e. the fairies were a convenient excuse for attackers. Note the assailants were said to have used ‘sticks and a stone hammer’. ‘Alleged Serious Assault at Cardonagh’, Belfast News-Letter 28 October 1898 no 25969, p. 7.