164 



^OTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s, N" 87., Aug. 29. '57. 



such Misdemeanour and Contempt, and requiring all 

 Maiors, Sheritfes, Justices of Peace, Bayliflfes and o'ther 

 our officers and Ministers to be aiding and assisting to 

 you and your deputies herein. And for so doing these 

 our letters shall be unto you and your deputies sufficient 

 warrant. Given at our Court at Whitehall the 15 day of 

 August, 1664, in the sixteenth year of our Raigne. 

 " By his Maj*"*' Command. 



" Will. Morrice." 



HAY LIFTS. 



A very old friend of mine has just been highly 

 delighted, and I am sure I shall be forgiven for 

 stating the circumstance : for what more agree- 

 able to think about than the play of satisfied smile 

 on a face which has already experienced upwards 

 of eighty years of the cares of life ? And when I 

 also state that the person to whom I am alluding 

 is even now under the necessity of earning a bit 

 of bread for himself and poor wife, by doing what 

 he can yet do in the way of shoemaking, I am 

 sure that his must be considered as having 

 been a life of severe cares. Nevertheless, the 

 jolly old man is always ready with a hearty laugh 

 — discovering the pleasurable countenance when- 

 ever possible, and therefore his delight on the 

 occasion to which I am now referring. 



"Here," said I, "look at this;" at the same 

 time putting into his hand a copy of a late num- 

 ber of the Illustrated London News. " Oh, yes," 

 was the reply ; " you know I am always fond of 

 pictures;" and then, wiping his spectacles, com- 

 menced at once his inspection. 1 said nothing 

 more, well knowing he would soon come to the 

 particular part I intended for his notice ; and he 

 did so — that of an account, accompanied with an 

 engraving, of how some hay had lately been lifted 

 up" from its comfortable quarters on the warm 

 ground and drifted over various fields in scat- 

 tered patches ; and this, too, at a time so remark- 

 ably calm in its atmospheric conditions as the 

 present summer season has altogether proved. 

 While, stranger still, the hay is stated to have 

 been carried off in quite a different direction to 

 the blowing of such trifling wind as could be de- 

 tected. 



Now, how is this ? And my old friend has long 

 been asking himself exactly the same question in 

 regard to a closely similar occurrence. In his 

 childhood, as he tells me, (and as he himself has 

 written out the full story in connexion with a 

 series of Irish Faery and other Legends*,) when 

 about four years old — that is, seventy-seven years 

 ago — he remembers seeing a considerable portion 

 of hay clinginw to parts of the roofage of the 

 Exchange at Waterford. This every one in the 



• A section of these Tales was printed two or three 

 years ago, Sirs. S. C. Hall having written an Introduc- 

 tion to the little book in favour of its aged author. 



town was marvelling at, and how the hay could 

 become so posited ! Waterford is washed, as he 

 says, by the noble river Suir, which is much wider 

 there than the Thames is at London ; and on the 

 opposite of the river is a village or hamlet called 

 Portraore, consisting of but a sparce scattering of 

 houses, backed by the open country. Here then, 

 in the close vicinity of Portmore, were some lusty 

 hay-makers at work, though not in scything down 

 the long grass, but in forming the dried brown 

 produce into those kind of piles called hay-cocks. 

 And now what happens ? Why, one of these new 

 up-buildings, even while two or three men are 

 busy in its erection, is observed to become inter- 

 nally disturbed, and actually moving in manner 

 truly miraculous. When, lo ! in another instant, 

 the whole bulk is forced upwards into the air, and, 

 taking a most leisurely flight right across the 

 river, — still more and more widening at its base, 

 the higher and further it got, but keeping in the 

 main pretty well together ; and then progressing 

 so far on its journey as Waterford itself, it still 

 continued sailing forward, until, coming in unfor- 

 tunate contact with the cupola, or other of the 

 higher points of the building before mentioned, 

 alPfurther progress was arrested ; and there the 

 results were to be seen, as my friend is still him- 

 self alive to testify. 



Nor is this all. That were impossible among a 

 people so imaginative as the Irish are : so, in time, 

 that which remained for so long a period the sub- 

 ject of everybody's talk became dovetailed into 

 the legend, — the version of the story being, that 

 a large troop of freakish fairies, taking it into 

 their heads to have a summer gambol, and at the 

 same time to surprise the staid folk of the ancietit 

 city of Waterford, sallied boldly out from their 

 clay-coverts, crept artfully under the said hay- 

 cock, and, by either putting their very un-Atlas- 

 like shoulders to the superincumbent burthen, or 

 through some other agency only known to them- 

 selves" so bore or impelled along the odoriferous 

 gathering, as gently gliding through the air; the 

 narrator in all cases forgetting to explain how 

 they, the " Good People," escaf)ed from the peril 

 of their position when their strange car or ship 

 struck upon the Exchange, and all became a total 

 wreck ! 



That, however, is not Ms business. Pleasmgly 

 deceived himself, he has no desire to undeceive 

 others ; and so the fact and the falsehood come 

 down to us almost inextricably mingled in most of 

 these legends ; and who, on such subjects, would 

 wish for a separation ? 



In conclusion, then, can any satisfactory reason 

 be assigned for these hay-lifts, or flights? for, 

 certainly, there seems to be much diflerence be- 

 tween the presumed causatory power of currying 

 frogs about in showery batches, and snails, crabs, 

 or herrings ia like manner (as a etatemeot of .the 



