Los Angeles daily herald., 1886-10-28

crooked" at fort. A rabbit burrow in
it may not be dug. A house must not
be built near it. Woe to the unwary
To stick spade in its limits, to straight
on boundary or continue a pillow reach
gives him death as his portion.
The ''Tabu that hangs over the fort
is as old as the belief in Fairie Land.
The Reman Catholic religion professed
by the majority of the people and that
OF the English church by the remainder.
the national schools, the railroads, the
telegraph and the penny newspapers
have swept away the vestige of many a
superstition, but all have recoiled, beaten
from assaults upon the fort and its good
people.
Not long since there was fort some
twenty miles from the seaboard and hard
by was prosperous hamlet. The fort
was on hilltop and the hill was kept in
pasture by the villagers. The prices of
cattle went down. The villagers con-
cluded to till the hill. One was a dis
sentient. He wandered moodily one
evening in the cleaning around the hill.
He saw the fetch" of his only child flee.
ing away before him and sound OF
lalnS music was III LIS cais - hc S"hSo,
but vainly--
For like blast
Away she past,
And no man saw her more.
He returned home, to find that in his
absence she had died. The villagers
titled the hill. Ill seasons came and sore
sickness. Cattle died. OF the village
one sees not stone remaining, and
many of the children of thuse who were
born in Gurteen, and who are now in the
States, still speak in hall. .hushed tones
of the awful vengeance wreaked by the
"good people" of the hill.
SOME EXTRAORDINARY HAPPENINGS.
1 am neither the apologist nor
Devils Advocate" of these supersti
tions. 1 merely relate them, and re.
| count some extraordinary and infelici.
tous condolences which befell synchro.
nously with the invasion of their cred.
tied domain, and which, of course, have
intensified popular faith in faerie power.
For instance, some years ago, when,
after the famine, the simeon of the in
iouitous "Encumbered Estates Court"
swept off the greater part of the Irish
gentry and placed "King Stork," in
Stead of "King Log" over the peas.
antry, one purchaser, a Yorkshire far
mer, kindly man ian exception to that
class of purchasers), bought small
estate in the Dnnmore district OF Gal
way county. He lived there on the best
of terms with the people. A. Mr..
Roper had fort on his land. lie de-
sired to cultivate where ii lay. He di-
rected his laborers 10 work at it. They
refused and left his employment He,
as they were about leaving and as they
were demonstrating with him, began to
in the Spring Of 1855 He was o strong
man, in the prime of life, accustomed to
farmers toll. He went to bed and
passed away in sleep that night. What
more would you have? That night
lights had danced around the fort and
the music of the irate "good people"
was heard as if from cnverns beneath
the outraged territory.
THE ARIsTocRATIo BANsHEE.
The Banshee's influence is fading.
That weird washerwoman of snow.whIte
parb. who with resonant clapping of
hands and wailiug, remained nightly by
the old dwelling when the death hour
of one Of its household was approaching,
was affected not at the sorrow to fall
upon either the noureaa richie or the
peasant Her eerie notes of anguish were
reserved for those old houses whose own
ers came, it was deemed, from nobler
stock, and in whose veins ran gontler
blood. She clung to them, mindless OF
changes of fortune and regardless OF dif-
ferences of their religious faiths.