Moouey.] i-±— [April 15, 



the result of natural causes. The supposed fairy is sometimes threatened 

 to force him to reveal his identity, and when the case is evidently hope- 

 less, although the patient still lingers, a piece of Lus-Mor* or foxglove, 

 is put under his bed. If he be a changeling, the fairies will be compelled 

 to restore, at once and in good health, the person taken away. If the in- 

 valid be really present in his proper person, he will not recover, but die. 

 The reason of this is, that when the soul, after death, is brought up for 

 judgment, it is sometimes condemned to return and re-animate the body, 

 and endure with it all the miseries of sickness until its sins have been ex- 

 piated, when it is finally separated from the flesh and enters into eternal 

 happiness. The fairies take advantage of this temporary absence of the 

 soul before the judgment bar to put one of their number into the body so 

 that when the soul returns it finds its place occupied and is obliged to go 

 with them. The presence of the lus-mor compels the fairies to take away 

 their spirit from the body and release the soul, which then enters at once 

 into glory. This, of course, i^no part of the Catholic belief, but a survi- 

 val of the old paganism. 



Lameness is frequently the result of having intruded upon the precincts 

 of the fairies or interfered with them in some other way. For this reason 

 the people are especially careful not to disturb the fairy forts or venture 

 near them after nightfall. A girl near Feakle, in the County Clare, fell 

 asleep in a fort on a harvest day, and on awaking in the morning found 

 herself unable to walk on account of a painful ulcer on her limb. The 

 fairies had struck her for coming upon their ground. After a long illness 

 something like a thread of flax came out of the wound and she recovered. 

 Ulcers, scrofula and running sores are commonly called " fairy strokes," 

 and attributed to fairy influence. The particles of hardened pus which 

 sometimes come out of the sore are the fairy darts which have caused the 

 wound. A man near Dunmore, in Galway, rented a small farm upon 

 which was a fairy fort, which was overgrown with bushes. As these were 

 never disturbed they at last began to encroach upon the cultivated ground. 

 In spite of the remonstrances of his wife he determined to root out some 

 of them, but had hardly begun the work when he was struck with such a 

 sharp pain in his leg that he fell to the ground and had to be carried into 

 the house and put to bed. His wife went out and replanted the bushes 

 just as they were before, when he at once got relief. This was told bj-- the 

 man himself and confirmed by his wife, who was present and added : "If 

 there is one thing certain, it is that there are fairies in Ireland." He holds 

 a responsible position at a salary of 81300 per year. Near Bandon, in the 

 County Cork, lived a man who in his youth was a noted jumper, and on 

 cue occasion leaped across a ditch twenty-two feet in width and alighted 

 in such a manner as to severely injure his foot. A running sore appeared 

 on his ankle and pieces of bone came out. His mother procured from a 

 fairy woman a "bottle of herbs," which was rubbed upon the foot and 



♦Pronounced lus-more; literally the "great herb." 



