THE OTTER HUNTER. 75 



up. I was in a cruel fright, and the dogs whimpered, 

 and would not stir from my foot. I was afraid to 

 stay where I was, as I knew the gentle-people were about 

 me ; and I was unwilling to attempt the quagh,* for fear 

 the light would leave me, and then I would get neither back 

 nor forward. Well, the wind began to rise ; the rain grew 

 worse ; I got desperate, and resolved to speak to the fairies 

 civilly. ' Gentlemen and ladies/ says I, making a bow to 

 the place where the lights were dancing, ' may be ye would 

 be so obliging as to light me across the bog.' In a minute 

 there was a blaze from one end of the quagh to the other, 

 and a hundred lights were flashing over the bogs. I took 

 heart and ventured ; and wherever I put my foot, the place 

 was as bright as day, and I crossed the swamp as safely as 

 if I had been walking on a gravelled road. Every inch the 

 light came with me, till I reached the boreein^ leading to 

 Morteein Crassagh's ; then, turning about, I made the fairies 

 a low bow : ' Gentlemen and ladies/ says I, ' I'm humbly 

 thankful for your civility, and I wish ye now a merry night 

 of it/ God preserve us ! The words were hardly out, when 

 there was a roar of laughter above, below, and around me. 

 The lights vanished, and it became at once so dark, that 

 I could scarcely make out my way. When I got fairly inside 

 Morteein's kitchen, I fainted dead; and when I came to, 

 I told them what had happened. Many a time, fairy candles 

 are seen at Lough na Mucka ; but sorrow mortal was ever 

 lighted across the quagh by the gentle-people but myself, 

 and that the country knows. Well the master is laugh- 

 ing at me ; but I'll hobble to the cabin, or they'll think that 

 the good people have carried me off at last, as they did Shamus 

 Bollogh,t from Ballycroy." 



* A morass. f A horsepath leading into bogs. 



$ James the Stutterer. 



This gentleman's temporary sojourn with the fairies is generally 

 credited in Bally croy. Why the gentlefolk, who are accounted scrupulous 

 in selecting youth and beauty when they abduct mortals, should have 

 pitched upon Shamus, is unaccountable. His charms are of the plainest 

 order, and he had long passed his teens before the period of his being 

 carried away. His own account of the transaction is but a confused 

 one and all I recollect of the particulars is, that he crossed to Tallaghan, 

 over an arm of the sea, on a grey horse, behind a little man dressed in 

 green. Neither good nor evil resulted from this nocturnal gallop of " the 

 Stutterer," if we except a sound horse-whipping which he received from 



