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ePaper created 2014-04-08, 18:05:31 | version 1.29.01
19 saw a general decline in belief in fairies in post-famine Ireland.22 The selection of poems, prose, newspaper articles and folklore accounts below however suggest that fairy belief formed part of popular, supernatural Ulster Scots culture up until at least the end of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, many of the tropes of fairy belief in Catholic, Gaelic Ireland are present in Ulster Scots culture: changeling abduction, fairy trees, elf-shot, and the gradual pulling away of educated culture from popular beliefs. Fairy belief- general [Back to Contents] O/S Memoirs, Parishes of County Londonderry II, vol. 9, Townland of Derrybeg, J. Butler Williams, J. Bleakly, CW. Ligar, 1 May 1835. (p. 126) ‘In the townland of Derrybeg in Benjamin Irwin’s house, a little woman apparently dressed in green came into the house to borrow a dish of oatmeal, and told them not to throw their water out at the back door as it went down upon their chimney, and also shut up the back door as it was upon their pass. (The pass means the fairy’s road). At the request of the fairy woman the door was shut up and remains shut to the present day. The little woman came back the harvest following and paid the dish of oatmeal she had borrowed from Mrs Irwin. The house is now occupied by Thomas Douglass. Information obtained from William Beacon and John [?] Stewart.’ O/S Memoires, Parishes of County Londonderry II, vol. 9, Parish of Drumachose, J. Butler Williams, J. Bleakly, C.W. Ligar, May 1835. (p. 126) ‘It is said that the brooneys were invisible creatures who appeared by the night and used to thresh the corn through the country, for those who were favourites. The above superstition applies to all the neighbouring parishes. Information obtained from Matthew Irwin, farmer. 15 May 1835.’ O/S Memoirs, Parishes of County Londonderry XI, vol.31, Parish of Ballynascreen. J. Stokes, 1836. 22 Timothy Corrigan Correll, ‘Believers, Sceptics, and Charlatans: Evidential Rhetoric, the Fairies, and Fairy Healers in Irish Oral Narrative and Belief’ in Folklore, 116 (2005):1-3; Ó Giolláin, ‘The Fairy Belief and Official Religion in Ireland’: 208.