the soul. These strange openings and closings and knockings were
warnings and reminders from the spirits who attend the dying.

The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is
put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live
with it. I remember two children who slept with their mother and
sisters and brothers in one small room. In the room was also a ghost.
They sold herrings in the Dublin streets, and did not mind the ghost
much, because they knew they would always sell their fish easily while
they slept in the "ha'nted" room.

I have some acquaintance among the ghost-seers of western villages.
The Connaught tales are very different from those of Leinster. These
H----- spirits have a gloomy, matter-of-fact way with them. They come to
announce a death, to fulfil some obligation, to revenge a wrong, to pay
their bills even--as did a fisherman's daughter the other day--and then
hasten to their rest. All things they do decently and in order. It is
demons, and not ghosts, that transform themselves into white cats or
black dogs. The people who tell the tales are poor, serious-minded
fishing people, who find in the doings of the ghosts the fascination of
fear. In the western tales is a whimsical grace, a curious extravagance.
The people who recount them live in the most wild and beautiful scenery,
under a sky ever loaded and fantastic with flying clouds. They are
farmers and labourers, who do a little fishing now and then. They do not
fear the spirits too much to feel an artistic and humorous pleasure in
their doings. The ghosts themselves share in their quaint hilarity. In
one western town, on whose deserted wharf the grass grows, these spirits
have so much vigour that, when a misbeliever ventured to sleep in a
haunted house, I have been told they flung him through the window, and
his bed after him. In the surrounding villages the creatures use the