1892-93-] 5^ x 



caught, have not the power of escaping as long as you keep your 

 eye steadily fixed upon them. Keep one in this manner if you 

 can catch him, and you can command treasures to whatever 

 extent you may ask. The little creature will use every wile he 

 knows to induce you to loosen your hold or to take your eyes 

 off him even for a second, and if you do he vanishes at once, 

 and is almost certain to outwit you and to get safely away 

 without leaving you a penny the richer. Sometimes a person 

 is lucky enough to catch a Leprauhaun several times, and at 

 last succeeds in forcing him to give enough gold to make him 

 rich for life. 



The mermen and mermaids belonged to another branch of the 

 fairy kingdom. Sometimes a fisherman succeeded in catching 

 a mermaid asleep on the beach, and if he could obtain possession 

 of her little cap, she not only could not take to the water, but 

 lost all wish to do so. Usually the fisherman and the mermaid 

 fall in love and are married ; they live happily together and 

 have many children, till one unlucky day, when the husband is 

 away, the wife goes rummaging about the house and finds the 

 little cap that her husband has kept hidden all these years. She 

 tries it on, and in a moment is seized with a desire to visit her 

 own people under the sea ; she runs down to the rocks, plunges 

 in, and is never seen again. 



In connection with lakes, and rivers, and pools in Ireland, 

 there is a wide-spread belief in certain enchanted monsters that 

 haunt their waters, and endeavour to drag in persons or animals 

 which venture too near the edge at certain times. Sometimes 

 this beast is described as like a grey-hound, but with a black 

 and shiny skin like that of an eel. More generally the lake is 

 haunted by a serpent or dragon of immense size. Near Dun- 

 given, in County Derry, there is a deep glen called Lig-na- 

 peisthe, because they say a great snake, called in Irish a piast 

 or peisthe, wriggled its way up from the sea and formed the glen 

 as it went ; at the head of the glen the snake made a deep hole 

 for itself beneath a waterfall, and went in head downwards ; but 

 he still claims one out of every three living creatures that come 

 to the edge of this bottomless hole. 



