SUPERSTITIONS AND HAUNTINGS 271 



shoots back, " Good luck to yerself, then, but 

 may neither of them happen." 



" The curse of the Crows " is an old Irish curse. 

 If you disturb a rookery your home will be broken 

 up and go to strangers, and the black birds wiU 

 curse you. 



" The curse of the Crows on you "Ms almost the 

 worst thing which can be said to you. 



Here again I give a story, without comment, 

 when my uncle, a barrister in Dublin, dreaded to 

 give up work and come to live at his own home in 

 Clare ; he plunged into farming with the zeal of the 

 novice and one of his crazes was clearing out trees. 



The rooks had had a home for generations in a 

 plantation which he wished to clear away. 



Old men prayed to him to let it be, but he knew 

 no superstition and down went the rookery, in 

 spring, with the bewildered birds circling and 

 lamenting overhead. 



" The curse of the crows will fall on the Coun- 

 sellor," everyone said. "The craythurs that was 

 lookin' to nesht." 



I really cannot say what the crows had to do 

 with it, but in two years my uncle died and in 

 some way had lost all his money. No one ever 

 found out how. There was nothing for his eldest 

 son to keep up and alter the old place on. It is 

 old and gone, and falling to ruin rapidly. 



* This curse is said to have originated from a crow or raven on the 

 flag of the Danes 



