Here are some seasonal poems for Halloween, all true, as told by my family from North Longford...

"Old Clonbroney" is the story of a man who met a headless horseman when calling on a neighbour after moving into the area.

Above: (left) Irish famine victim with children (right) A black dog, thought of as a damned soul or personification of Satan

Apperantly this is actually true, the miller he was calling on was an uncle of mine who lived in Clonbroney, where an old road led up to a disused cemetry, and a new road now led to the village. The old road partly made the lane to his house and mill that used to be on the side of the old road, but the road was blocked of at the rear, where both sides had grown in to form one hedgegrow that went up the fiends to the old cemetry.
 
"The Hungry Grass" was where famine dead collapsed and breathed their last, and the ground on which they fell, should you walk on it, you would be overcome with a terrible hunger, that could not be sadisfied by the best of food, but only by tearing a loaf in your hands and eating the bread only with water or milk, as people did during the famine...
 
There was a spot outside the gate of Willie Carty's in Aughagreagh that was said to be of it, and an event of when he was a boy where a neighbour bust into the house demanding bread after standing on it... which was very bad etiquette in the peasent housholds, where a routine of denying hospitality and only accepting it under protest due to their belief that you "never left a house poorer than when you entered".
 
Ghost story lovers will love this story "Dead Souls and Black Dogs"- its true, honest! - of an old woman who died in North Longford some years back, whose soul, or that of the devil formed the form of a black dog on her death... and walked out the door! Hope that sends a chill up your spines...
 
Again Willie Cartys farm is the focus of the poem "Sitting There Saying Nothing". The ghost poem that tells of how my father swears he saw ghosts at a cousins farm he inherited, supposedly of a woman and her children who died outside the gate on the way to the workhouse... My family, though Irish, were none too helpful to the poor at the time, I gather from family legends...

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Old Clonbroney
==========================

One night dark walking along
A lane onto its end,
A neighbour walked up to a house
To call upon a friend.
The neighbour was new, his friends wife too
Had arrived not long ago,
And friendship new as neighbours do
They called on one another each other to know.
And as he approached the house,
He wondered at how strange shadows moves,
It looked as if it were a hearse,
And all of a sudden a sound of hooves,
And a wall through at terrific speed,
Driven by a horseman with no head,
A hearse up through the feilds fleed
To Old Clonbroney with its dead.
Our hero stood there shaking,
Wondered if he imaged was what he had seen,
When the woman opened the door to the house,
Asked where the horses had been?
He raced into the house so fast,
Slammed behind him the door,
Told how the hearse before him passed,
And where it came from before...
That it went up to Old Clonbroney,
After driving through a wall,
But it was not real: twas but a ghost,
For the wall was not damaged at all.
And drinking whiskey strong his nerves setlled down,
Though still great in him was fear,
Though you may mock and you may frown,
You too would shake if the headless horseman did appear...
And in time the husband returned,
A miller he was by trade,
He came to see his wife terrified,
And his neighbour, a man strong, afraid,
They told him of the horseman,
Of the hearse, that the man had no head,
He srugged his shoulder with a sigh,
Declared one of the neighbours dead.
It was like the banshee,
The miller said of the apparition,
When these neighbours died, the spectre youd see,
So was local superstition,
And so all a prayer they said,
For their own and the deceased sake,
Its not told the name of who was dead,
Or if the miller and his neighbour slept or stayed that night awake!

==========================
Sitting There Saying
Nothing
==========================
She sits there saying nothing
A wee woman and her wains
We know not who she is
That sits there with her bains
As the Scots would say if seeing
What my father claims to have seen
That sitting on a wall
In broad daylight had been…
Going to the workhouse
Stopping for a rest a while
A woman and two little ones
And one of the three smile
But just sitting there
A word by none was said
My father knew from famine times there were
Victims of, and dead
The dead will not harm you
Sometimes themselves they show
So another at another time
Of their pain will know.
Maybe twas too much poitin
Da knew how to make it pure
And enjoyed his brew testing
But I am not so sure.
If dead they be, from famine times
And they to show themselves cease
I hope they rest at the bosom of Mary
And their souls now know peace.
(i) wain: child (ii) bain (baby)