Posted in Posts and podcasts

The Headless Coach – Kinvara

The Headless Coach

Behind the gate Photo: EO’D

The Headless Coach is a sort of a topic of a story that is talked of in the country inns. But it is not entirely a fairy tale.

When a person sees the Headless Coach they are supposed to die soon afterwards.

I went up for a holiday in Kinvara, and I went down to the small quay where the turf boats used come in to unload and load. I saw a hearse coming up the street and a crowd of mourners behind it “Who is dead” I said to one of the Irish fishermen “Ní thuigeann tú” he said and then he started to fire a flow of Irish questions at me with such speed that I could not understand head nor tail of what he said. When I did not answer him he answered them himself so I took my leave. I went to a group of boys and men who were standing outside a shop. I asked them “Who is dead” and they told me that a man who said that he had seen the Headless Coach a week ago.

A girl in the Convent nearby said that she had heard a great rattling of chains on the night that the man had peofessed to have seen the Headless Coach as if horses werestraining at their traces, so there might be some truth in the story.

 

Duchas.ie
School: Cill Moicheallóg (B.) (roll number 15740)
Kilmallock, Co. Limerick
Teacher: Conchobhar Mac Raghnaill
Collector: Maurice Power, age 13
Kilmallock, Co. Limerick
Informant: (name not given), age 50
Language: English
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Posted in Posts and podcasts

The Horseman – Ballinderreen 1938

From Duchas.ie
Collected 1937/1938
Ballinderreen, Co. Galway. Teacher: Treasa Bean Uí Bheirn
Collected by Rose Niland from Martin Kelly, Tyrone, Co. Galway
About fifty years ago a horse-man used to pass the Ballinderreen road towards Kilcolgan every night. A certain woman used to look out after it so she lost the sight of one of her eyes. My grandfather and a few companions were coming from a dance from James St. Georges about two o’clock one night and as they were coming back at Glynn’s they heard a galloping horseman coming towards them. They said it must be some man going to the Loughrea horse fair. So when the horseman was within five or six yards of them they moved in one side of the road to let it pass. They heard something like a breeze of wind passing between them and the wall but they saw nothing. Just a few yards behind them they heard the horse galloping again. They knew then that it was no living person that was in it but the fairy horseman that used to pass the way every night.