Delving into folklore

 _{Lost on the Galtees}

 

_{On a hot July day, five young men, two of whom were brothers, one of whom was Italian and all of whom were friends, were on a holiday in the south of Ireland. Mitchelstown Caves was a must-see and having spent the best part of a day exploring them, late in the evening they set off for their next stop, which was Tipperary. One of the young men became a famous novelist, one a well-known engineer, one an important judge and the other, provost of Trinity College. Who knows what happened the Italian. The brothers were Joseph and William Le Fanu, whose father was Church of Ireland dean of Emly and rector of Abington. The year was 1838. The five friends were on foot. Walking holidays were common in the 19* century and participants were used to travelling considerable distances. That fine July day, the friends calculated that leaving the Caves at seven in the evening, they could reach Tipperary around midnight. However, the distance would be much shorter if they cut across the Galtees and so off they went. They were not stupid and so they engaged the services of a guide "a fine young peasant" who said he knew the way across the mountains. The fact that he spoke little English cannot have been a help. The sunset from Galteemore was spectacular but then as so often happens on that mountain, fog came down as from nowhere. And soon the party, guide or no guide, was lost. As they stumbled on, trying to follow a river course, all they got from their hopeless guide was endlessly repeated "Nabochlish". Suddenly a horse of chestnut colour galloped past, the only evidence of any living thing other than themselves. The fog lifted as suddenly as it came but with no moonlight, they were still lost. All they could think to do was shout, hoping that there might be a dwelling and that someone might hear them. "At last, on the opposite side of a narrow glen full of rocks and brushwood, we saw the figures of men and women, lit up by a flaming sheaf of straw, which one of the men held up high." The five travellers were soon surrounded and in a mixture of Irish and English, were questioned what the hell they were doing on the mountain in the middle of night. The most urgently asked question of course was: "Are ye Peelers?" Satisfied by their now useful guide, the crowd escorted the five travellers to the nearest cabin and explained that they were out and about themselves because they were returning from a fair at Bansha. A huge turf fire was blazing on the hearth, at which the travellers gratefully dried themselves and their clothes, damp from the fog and stumbling into bog holes. Mugs of hot goat's milk were welcome and their host explained that he had upwards of 80 goats on the mountain. The mood of high good humour changed when one of the travellers casually asked his host, if he also owned the horse they had seen on the mountain. He replied that there were no horses on the mountain. But the question triggered a dramatic change of mood on the part of the locals. Questions were anxiously asked about the horse, leading one of the locals to conclude that the travellers had seen the "yella horse" and added: " It's a wonder ye all cum down alive and safe; it is few that sees the yella horse that has luck after."} 

_{The five travellers were told how earlier that day, a Massy-Dawson employee had been murdered and as such killings were more communal than private, they began to realise that stumbling about on the mountain was not very sensible. As one of their rescue party said, with some pride: "Wherever the devil is by day, he is sure to be in the Glen of Aherlow by night.}

 

_{The first hundred talks on Tipperary history by Denis G. Marnane}