The phantom of a coach and horse was seen not far from Corofin, at Cragmoher, not long since, but it is agreed that no death took place after the apparition. An equally vague story was told about 1870 at Attyflin by a very old woman, Norry Halloran, whom the sound of the coach pursued one dark evening for a long way, but it did not pass her door, and nothing happened afterwards. Westropp ‘Clare’ 193-194
A man living at Annaghneale was returning from Tulla late at night. As he reached the corner of Fortanne demesne he heard a heavy rumbling behind him, and horses trotting. Surprised after a time by its not coming nearer, he looked back and saw a large dark mass with a figure on the box. It came no closer to him, and in a fright he hurried on. At a bend in the road he ventured to stand at the fence and look again. This time he saw the horses and carriage drive over the wall and ditch into Fortanne. He fell, nearly insensible with terror, but, hearing and seeing nothing more, hurried home. This was told to a steward at Maryfort about twenty years ago, and happened ‘long after the sale of Fortanne’ to its present owner in 1879. The present tradition of Fortanne says that the coach was heard at the deaths of certain Westropps after 1873, but nothing happened after its last appearance. Westropp ‘Clare’ 193-194
Nevertheless the son of a farmer named Nihill told me in 1892 that, after some days wreckage and removal of the outer wall of the fine triple stone fort of Cahercalla, near Quin, his father was stricken with acute pain, and only recovered from his illness when the work was stopped,-whence this interesting ruin has been preserved to the present day. Westropp ‘Clare’ 194
A very old woman, Kate (Geerin) Molony, a henwife at Maryfort, near Tulla, whom I faintly remember in 1869, was many years before anxious about her little daughter’s failing health, and went to a ‘wise woman,’ who assured her that the child was ‘changed’. She spoke of this on her return, and unfortunately the patient was old enough to understand the fearful decision. The poor child turned over on the bed with a groan, and was a little later found to be dead. Westropp ‘Clare’ 198-199
My second sister, whose delicacy, when an infant, excited remark, was, about 1842, taken out by a servant to be exposed on a shovel on the doorstep at Carnelly. The angry and hasty intervention of another servant saved the child, but the would-be ‘exposer’ was convinced of the propriety of her attempt ‘to get back the real child’ from the fairies. Westropp ‘Clare’ 198
At the natural moat crowned by the small stone ring wall of Croaghateeaun, near Lisdoonvarna, we were told to cross ourselves as a protection against the Danann. The place was, nevertheless, undoubtedly regarded by the older people living near it as a most dangerous fairy fort, and we were told how certain badger hunters, (who brought drink with them), after a long festival on its summit got benighted there; they eventually returned home sobered by fright, as they suddenly ‘saw the whole fleet’ of ‘them’ coming up the mound, and escaped only just in time. Westropp ‘Clare’ 198
The appearances of the fairies also seem now very rare indeed. At Newmarket-on-Fergus, acentre of much folklore, we find that, besides the two forts named above and a low earth mound (perhaps sepulchral), only one spot has been honoured by an actual apparition in the last ten years. In this case a man walking on the Ennis road, not far from Lough Gaish, saw a very little man neatly dressed in green and walking on the path. Suspecting the green man to be a leyrechaun, and hence an owner of gold, the Clare man tried to grasp him, but the sprite vanished out of his hands. Westropp ‘Clare’ 197
A locally famous ‘astronomer’ and weather prophet tried, many years ago, to blast a dolmen in Inchiquin Barony, and a splinter hit his hand, which was badly injured and afterwards festered. The wreckage of the dolmen was lying untouched on the ground a few years ago. Westropp ‘Clare’ 194-195
Fairies haunted the well of Tobesheefra, while even at the holy well of the powerful and vengeful St. Mochulla at Fortanne milk was once offered to them. The butter had refused to ‘come,’ and the mistress of the house, (a Protestant woman of good birth and fair education), as she told me herself about 1878, took some of the refractory milk to the well, made the sign of the cross over it, said the Lord’s Prayer, dug a hole in the mud at the well with her left heel, and went away without looking back. As might have been expected, the butter had ‘come’ by the time she had got home again, and she used to quote the case as ‘proof positive.’ Westropp ‘Clare’ 195-196
The collapse of a calf shed on its occupants followed the demolition of Templenaraha oratory for building the unstable structure; this might be ascribed to a more sacred anger than that of the fairies, but the oratory stood in a ring fort. Westropp ‘Clare’ 195