Tyrone Folk Tales E-Book

Doreen McBride

• Herausgeber: THP Ireland
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 297

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The people of Tyrone have the reputation for having 'open hearts and a desire to please' and their folk tales are as varied as their landscape. There are the tales of the amazing feats of the giant Finn McCool and the derring-do of the Red Hand of Ulster as well as the dramatic story of Half-Hung MacNaughton and the hilarious tale of Dixon from Dungannon and his meeting with royalty. All these stories and more are featured in this collection of tales which will take you on an oral tour across the country from the Sperrin Mountains in the west to the flat peatlands of the east.

Leseprobe

First published in 2016

The History Press Ireland

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This ebook edition first published in 2016

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Text © Doreen McBride, 2016

Illustrations © Doreen McBride and Rachel Barlow, 2016

The right of Doreen McBride to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 8154 5

Original typesetting by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Ghosts of Lissan House

2 The Ghost of Lord Tyrone

3 Half-Hung McNaughton

4 White Ladies, Banshees and Ghostly Pipers

5 The Pudding Bewitched

6 The Leanhaun Shee

7 A Legend of Knockmany

8 Neal Malone

9 Matchmakers, Marriage and Mountainy Folk

10 The Red Hand of Ulster

11 Bessie Bell and Mary Gray

12 The Tailor and the Witch

13 The Creagán White Hare

14 Fairy Encounters

15 The Parish Priest Saves a Protestant Church

16 Lough Neagh

17 Flann O’Brien

18 Tyrone’s Customs, Beliefs and Cures

19 Dixon from Dungannon

20 Dealings with the Devil

21 Tales of Hunger

22 Sion Mills: Linen, Cricket and Hymns

23 Folk Tales Associated with Christmas

24 The Fintona Railway

25 Flinn’s Rock Near Newtownstewart

26 Ardboe

27 Fairy Lore

28 Woodrow Wilson and County Tyrone

29 Ulysses S. Grant and County Tyrone

30 Tyrone and Irish Coffee

31 The Hokey Cokey

32 James Buchanan and County Tyrone

33 Davy Crockett and Castlederg

Glossary

Bibliography

PREFACE

In May 2015 I led a bus tour of historic sites for the Queen’s University Women’s Common Room Club. Vicious showers had greeted us at our first stop, Castlecaulfield, but the sky began to clear as we stepped out into a modest car park off the Tullywiggan Road between Cookstown and Stewartstown. As we climbed up Tullyhogue Hill, we all seemed to realise that this is a special place, steeped in history. At the top is an Iron Age rath, an enclosed earthen fort surrounded by two great banks and two deep ditches. This was neither a dwelling place nor a place to be defended – except, very likely, from the assault of spirits from the other world. Once the capital of the Uí Tuirtre of Airgialla, this was for centuries the inauguration site of the O’Neills, the lords of Tír Eoghain. Here the Lord O’Cahan threw a golden shoe over the head of the O’Neill seated on Leac na Rí and then the Lord O’Hagan, custodian of Tullyhogue, picked up the shoe, placed it on one of O’Neill’s feet and handed him the rod of office. This was memorably sketched by Richard Bartlett, who also recorded the smashing of the inauguration stone by Lord Mountjoy as Hugh O’Neill’s rebellion was in its final stages in 1602.

After admiring the great trees and the last of the bluebells on the summit, my tour group looked out over an awe-inspiring panorama of a great sweep of Ulster. If they hadn’t realised it already, they learned then that Tyrone is a very beautiful county. They were particularly struck by the sight of the waters of Lough Neagh due east, the Antrim plateau beyond it, the volcanic plug of Slemish and, to the north, the rounded slopes of the Sperrins. Their eyes were on land that had been soaked in history and legend from the very earliest times.

Doreen McBride’s book draws on rich veins, the lore of peoples who have lived out their lives in County Tyrone for millennia. Could some of the stories of the supernatural she relates go back to the Bronze Age inhabitants who left extraordinary stone circles, cairns and alignments at Beaghmore? Or those who constructed and carved the Knockmany Passage Grave? Or those who crafted Ardboe Cross? Or Harry Avery’s mighty castle, erected by Henrí Aimhréidh Ó Néill in the fourteenth century? Or the Plantation castles at Benburb, Castlederg and Castlecaulfield? Or those who worshipped in secret at the Reaskmore Mass Rock? Or the privileged residents of Lissan House?

The tales recorded by Doreen – no matter how fanciful or outlandish – have been passed down by word of mouth, in some cases for generations. I am pleased to see the inclusion of four stories by William Carleton, born in Prillisk in 1794. He painted a vivid picture of life in pre-Famine Ulster. He delights in availing of local dialect and uses some of the words catalogued by Doreen. Many are new to me, including ‘elf-shot’ and ‘dilsy’. I am also glad that the genius of Flann O’Brien/Myles na gCopaleen is duly recognised. I recommend ‘Lough Neagh: The Source of Mystery and Legend’ and I mourn the extinction of the great lake’s arctic char (I blame run-off from eighteenth-century lint holes and nineteenth-century bleach works).

A great merit of Doreen McBride’s book is that it does not have to be methodically read from start to finish. The volume can be opened anywhere, by the fireside, in bed, wherever ... and why not read out snippets for the entertainment of family and friends? This is an entertaining and informative book. Enjoy.

Jonathan Bardon, 2016

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to my husband, George, who insisted on coming with me to do research, to ‘protect’ me because I ask ‘innocent strangers so many fool questions’ that somebody some day is bound to think I’m ‘away in the head’ and lock me up. He also uncovered a lot of interesting information.

On a more serious note, thanks are due to my cousin, Vernon Finlay, for reading the text and making very helpful comments.

Thanks are also due to Sally Skilling, assistant librarian at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum; the staff of the Irish and Local Studies Library in Armagh; the staff at Strabane Library; the staff at Omagh Library, especially Deidre Nugent; Christine Johnston, librarian at the Mellon Centre of Migration Studies, the Ulster American Folk Park; the Linen Hall Library; Banbridge Library; Dr Jonathan Bell, former Curator of Agriculture at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, for information about spades; and Dr Gordon McCoy and Richard Ryan for information about language.

I am grateful to Dr Eamon Phoenix, who is a fount of good stories, good craic and fascinating information; Dr Jonathan Bardon for information about sweat houses; Mark Cranwell, a ranger whose work includes Bellaghy Bawn, who told me about Susan, the ghost who haunts the bawn and introduced me to Peter and Mary Craig, who live in the bawn’s oldest house and shared their experiences; Evelyn Cardwell for information about mountainy folk; Graham Mawhinney for information about the life and work of Geordie Barnett; Dr Mary Wack, who gave me the story ‘Joseph McPherson and the Fairies’; Mark Greenstreet, Sheryl Dillon, George Beattie and Margaret Jones for information; Celia Ferguson for information about Sion Mills and folk cures and the late William Reid’s daughters Pamela and Margaret for permission to reproduce ‘Calypso Collapse’; the late Crawford Howard for permission ‘to do what I wanted’ with his work and to his executors for confirming that permission; and to Art O’Dailaigh for sharing the story about the sighting of a ghostly horse near Banbury.

Thanks must go, too, to the staff, especially Paula Ward and John Donaghy, of An Creagán Visitor Centre for arranging a night when local people shared their folklore around a beautiful fire, to Francis Clarke for letting me hear a tape of stories recorded more than twenty-five years ago, to Patrick J. Haughey, who told me some great yarns, and to Cormac McAleer, who aided and abetted the others and added some of his own stories.

I am also grateful to Nick Kennedy for information about Brian O’Nolan, alias Flann O’Brien, to Johnny Dooher and his wife Gabrielle for information about ghosts in Strabane and to Angela O’Connor from Ranfurly Arts Centre for information about the O’Neills. I wish to acknowledge, too, the custodians of the Ulysses Simpson Grant Ancestral Homestead and the late Hannah Simpson, who gave me information about the president and the Mellon banking family. I met her in the 1970s when she lived in the ancestral cottage. Dr Neil Watt provided information about Lissan House, Charlene Mullan and Pat Grimes provided information about Ardboe and Lough Neagh. Richard Knox gave me information about W.F. Marshall and the Marshall family kindly gave me permission to print ‘Me and Me Da’.

Finally, my thanks go to Rachel Barlow for drawing the illustration on page 114.

INTRODUCTION

The name ‘Tyrone’ came from Tír Eoghain, meaning Eoghain’s land. During Celtic times it was referred to as ‘Tyrone among the bushes’. Its people are reputed to have ‘open hearts and a desire to please’ and their folk tales are as varied as their landscape and speech. I found it a fascinating, haunted place with roots stretching back into antiquity.

The late W.F. Marshall, who was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1942 in recognition of his work on language, said local Ulster dialects preserve much of the grammar, style, vocabulary and word order of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and so the dialects spoken in County Tyrone are not a corruption of English; they are the roots of something much older, which forms a museum of language.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were troubled times in Ireland because the Catholic Philippe of Spain believed he was the rightful owner of the English throne. He believed the English throne should have passed to him on the death of his wife, Queen Mary I, not to her sister, Elizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth disagreed, realised Ireland was a back door through which her country could be attacked and waged a war in Ireland the likes of which had never been seen. She won, but that didn’t do her much good because she was dead when the news reached her! The news of her death didn’t reach her generals until after they’d enforced a harsh peace settlement on the Earls of Ulster, causing them to flee, an act which became known as ‘The Flight of the Earls’. This left Ulster, the last Irish province to be captured by the English, without leaders and open to the Plantation of Ulster. Tyrone and Fermanagh were the only two counties to be planted and their history is reflected in their folk tales.

I was amazed by the differences I found between Fermanagh folk tales and Tyrone folk tales. They are adjacent counties and both were planted, so I expected their stories to be similar. I could not have been more wrong. I found the occasional ghost story in Fermanagh, but Tyrone is full of ghosts! I suspect it’s the most haunted county in Ireland, but fortunately most of the ghosts are benign and don’t do any harm. Another thing that surprised me was the close link Tyrone appears to have with Donegal, which although it is part of the province of Ulster, is situated in another country, namely the Republic of Ireland, not the United Kingdom.

Tyrone is the largest county in Ulster. I feel I entered four different worlds during the time I was doing research. Each one was as enchanting as the last and I’m very grateful to the many ‘innocent bystanders’, as my husband called them, for the pleasant, friendly way in which they helped me.

TYRONE AMONG THE BUSHES

The following poem, ‘Tyrone Among the Bushes’ by Edith Wheeler, was published in The Sacred Heart Review, Volume 30, No. 21, 21 November 1903.

I’m weary of the city ways, the hurry, din and bustle,

I’m weary of the scorchin’ heat, the crowds that gape and hustle;

I’m longing for a bit of green, the quiet evening hushes

In my own land, my homeland, Tyrone among the Bushes.

I hate the groomed-up city swells, the way they have of talkin’;

I hate the look of city belles, their flouncy style of walkin’;

I’d like to hear the colleens speak with tongues as sweet as threshes,

With modest eyes and quiet mien in Tyrone among the Bushes.

I’d give my soul to sit again beside the fire at even’,

And see the neighbors gather round, their fancy tales of weavin’;

Ye’d wonder for to see them here, with balls and spreads and crushes,

We’ll learn them what’s Society in Tyrone among the Bushes.

Edith Wheeler

1

THE GHOSTS OF LISSAN HOUSE

County Tyrone is undoubtedly beautiful, with a varied landscape and a strange haunting atmosphere. One can almost feel the presence of the souls of the dead who have lived, and loved, there in the past. Many respectable people have, over the ages, reported seeing ghosts in circumstances that cannot simply be dismissed.

Thanks are due to Dr Neil Watt, for the following tales about the ghosts who haunt Lissan House.

Lissan House dates back to the early seventeenth century. It was owned by the Staples family, who were planters. It is in the heart of an ancient area called Glenkonkyne, a densely wooded district thought to have been used for religious ceremonial purposes in the past. It was once ruled by the O’Neills, who were the Kings of Ulster and as a result it embraces the cultures of both planter and Gael.

One of the owners of the house, Sir Robert Ponsonby Staples, was a well-known painter. Many of his drawings and sketches may still be seen in the property.

Sir Robert was an eccentric who believed many of the ills of his generation were caused by wearing shoes. He thought they interfered with ‘healing magnetism’ coming up from the earth and insisted people walk about the house in their bare feet.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Sir Thomas Staples inherited Lissan House. He had a very beautiful wife, Lady Katherine Staples, known as handsome Kitty Staples. She loved music, spending money and entertaining but unfortunately she was unable to have children. Her husband died years before she did and the heir to the property was a nephew of her husband, Nathaniel Staples, who lived in India. When dilsy Lady Katherine and Nathaniel Staples met, it was hate at first sight! They simply could not stand each other so when she moved out of the house she took all the furniture, light fittings and doors with her. Her nephew was left with nothing but a worthless, empty shell. She’s not a happy ghost because her action annoyed the other spirits haunting the house. They loved their old home and were furious with her. It is said her action led to a reversal in the fortunes of the Staples family. They lost a lot of money and no longer have the high place in society they once held.

A well-known artist painted a portrait of handsome Kitty Staples in her prime. When she died it was given to her god-daughter and eventually ended up in an auction. The Lissan House Trust bought it and hung it up on the drawing room wall. The minute it was put in place Nathaniel’s portrait fell off the wall. There was no reason for this as it was hung on secure wires and the hooks on the wall were intact. The dislike they had for each other on earth must be continuing through eternity!

Hazel Radclyffe Dolling, the last member of the Staples family to live in the house, died, aged 82, in 2006 and had many strange tales to tell about the ghostly goings-on in her home. Certain parts of the house suddenly become cold, the heavy footsteps of an invisible man or a small child’s sobs might be heard and sometimes it is possible to smell lavender and rose petals. One house guest saw a group of noisy children playing in the hall. She wondered who they were and walked towards them to ask, but they skipped off down the hall and then vanished into thin air.

Dr Neil Watt, the present manager of Lissan House, insists he did not believe in ghosts until he went to work in the house in 2013. He has since changed his mind because of his experiences! The first was when he was working during the first Christmas after which he’d been appointed as curator. He’d gone into the garden and collected holly and ivy to be used as decorations. He’d been working for a long time and became very hungry so he phoned his sister and asked if she’d bring him a Chinese takeaway. She is a medical doctor, a very sensible, down-to-earth, practical person. She agreed, bought a takeaway, drove up the drive and parked her car in front of a drawing room window. She entered the house, looked at Neil and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had company? I’d have bought two takeaways.’

When Neil said he was alone she replied, ‘You’re joking! I saw a podgy young man, dressed in tweeds, standing beside the piano, chatting away to you.’ There was nobody there!

Once when Neil was working in the ballroom he heard a dog barking at his feet, a distinct ‘Woof! Woof!’, the type of bark a dog gives when it wants to be taken for a walk. He was intrigued and did something he thought he’d never do. He asked a medium to come in. She looked at Neil and said, ‘You’re fond of dogs, aren’t you?’

‘How did you know?’ he asked.

‘Because two dogs, a red setter and a terrier, are running around your feet!’ she replied.

One of the ghosts in Lissan House caused a bad atmosphere around Lady Staples’s bedroom. Both Neil and the chairman of Lissan House felt an unreasonable urge to get out whenever they went into that room! One night the burglar alarm sounded. The chairman came to turn it off and check the premises. As he approached Lady Staples’s bedroom, he was suddenly tossed to the ground and hit the skirting board, so Neil and he decided to ask a medium to visit to find out what was happening. She said Alexander Staples, the founder member of the family, loved his old home and was protecting it. He was taking especially good care of Lady Staples’s bedroom and was standing, shouting obscene language them. She said, ‘The best way to deal with a ghost is to face it. Whenever you feel Alexander’s presence talk to him. Tell him you are only looking after the house, you love it too and it needs attention. You’re not going to do anything harmful.’ Now when Neil goes into Lady Staples’s bedroom to carry out basic maintenance he talks to the ghost and feels a right eejit while doing so! But it works!

The last owner of the house, Mrs Dolling, used Lady Staples’s bedroom as a guest room. Women who slept in there often reported hearing footsteps. Sometimes a lady, dressed in a gold dress, wearing boots and carrying a doll and a candle, came into the room and tried to set Lady Staples’s bed on fire! Perhaps that’s why the ghost of Alexander Staples protects it?

Photographers and people walking in the garden often see a little girl, aged between 11 and 12 years old, looking out one of the windows on the top floor. Photographs have been taken of what must be a ghost because there’s nobody there! That little girl is very shy. She has never appeared for a medium, although she has often been spotted peeping round corners or hanging over the bannister.

One night when Neil and one of the trustees were setting up a piano in the ballroom they heard two ladies laughing. Neil went on an errand to the far end of the house and, while he was away, the trustee heard chit-chat behind him, yet there was nobody there.

‘Be off, or I’ll kick you down the stairs!’

2

THE GHOST OF LORD TYRONE

When I first went to teach in Dromore High School, County Down, some of my pupils asked me if I believed in ghosts. I said, ‘Yes. I once lived in a haunted house in Belfast. I never saw the ghost but my mother did. It wasn’t an unfriendly presence, just the harmless spirit of a woman who wandered around the house. It was a happy home with a beautiful garden and my family loved it. My parents sold it when it became too big for them after my sister and I married.’

My pupils asked me if I’d like to hear a horrific tale about how the ghost Lord Tyrone appeared to his old friend, Lady Beverage, who was visiting Gilhall, a local stately home said to be the most haunted house in Ireland. It burnt down in 1966.

This is an unusual story because the ghost not only predicted the future accurately, including the age at which Lady Beresford would die, but it left a mark on her wrist, which she kept hidden under a black ribbon. That mark was clearly visible after her death and the story is preserved in the Blacker family papers.

During the latter part of the seventeenth century, Nicola Sophia Hamilton and her cousin John Le Poer were orphaned. They were very young and put into the care of a guardian, who believed in deism, a religious school of thought that holds that the earth was made by God and then left to its own devices to administer itself by natural laws. Deism acknowledges the importance of moral behaviour but rejects any belief in the supernatural and says there is no life after death.

Nicola and John became close friends. At 14 years of age, they suffered another upset when their guardian died. The early teen years are a time when young people are both sensitive and vulnerable. Nicola and John had already supported each other through the pain caused by the death of their parents and now they had another tragedy to contend with. It drew them even closer together.

They were very confused because their new guardian, a sincere Christian, attempted to change what he considered their pagan beliefs. They didn’t become Christians but their belief in deism was shaken. Nicola and John, like all teenagers, took life very seriously. They worried about the differences in the religious beliefs taught by each of two well-loved guardians and eventually made a pact. They promised each other that whoever should die first would, if at all possible, come back to earth and tell the other one which was the true religion and if there was life after death.

Nicola married Sir Tristram Beresford of Coleraine in February 1688 and became Lady Beresford while John Le Poer became Lord Tyrone when his father died. He also got married and the two families enjoyed a warm friendship, often spending several weeks in each other’s company.

A short time after Lord Tyrone and his family had visited Lady Beresford, she went with her husband to visit her sister, Arabella, who was married to Sir John Magill and lived in Gilhall, near Dromore in County Down. After spending a night there, Lady Beresford came down to breakfast looking pale and exhausted. She was wearing a black band around her wrist. Lord Beresford was a loving husband and felt concerned by his wife’s appearance.

‘Darling, what’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘You look ill and why are you wearing that black ribbon round your wrist?’

‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t sleep very well. And please promise you won’t ask any more questions about my black ribbon. I don’t want to talk about it.’

Lord Beresford was puzzled by her behaviour. She kept wondering if the post had arrived yet. Eventually he asked, ‘Why are you so concerned about today’s post? Are you expecting a letter?’ He was shaken to the core by her reply. ‘Yes! One that’ll tell me John died unexpectedly last Tuesday afternoon.’

‘When I asked you do come back and tell me if there’s life after death I didn’t mean it!’

Later that day the couple were horrified to receive a letter, tied up in a black ribbon, saying that Lord Tyrone had died the previous Tuesday afternoon. Lady Beresford was devastated and clung to her husband saying, ‘Dearest, John’s ghost came and visited me last night. I thought I was dreaming. He told me we’re going to have a son who’ll grow up and marry the daughter of Lord Tyrone.’ However, she didn’t tell him the whole story of how she had awoken during the night to find the ghost of Lord Tyrone sitting on her bed or about the prediction of her husband’s and her own deaths or how she’d thought the ghost actually was Lord Tyrone.

‘What are you doing here at this hour of the night?’ she’d asked.

‘I am dead,’ he had replied. ‘I died last Tuesday. Do you remember that solemn promise we made to each other when we were very young? I’ve been allowed to keep it and can tell you deism is not the true religion. There is definitely life after death.’

‘Stop joking! You’re not dead. You look very much alive to me!’

‘I’m telling you I’m dead. You’ll get a letter tomorrow to tell you.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘Well, I’ll show you!’ he said, and with that the apparition started to move objects around the room. Then he pulled one of the curtains round her four-poster bed up through a loop. (It took several men a considerable amount of time to put it back into its rightful position the next day. It was a difficult job.)

Lady Beresford still didn’t believe what she was hearing, so Lord Tyrone’s ghost said, ‘I repeat, you’ll get a letter telling you of my death tomorrow. Shortly after that you’ll have a son. Four years later your husband will die and some time after that you’ll marry again. Your second marriage will be a big mistake. You’ll be very unhappy. You’ll have another son and die on your forty-seventh birthday.’

‘You can’t know all that! I don’t believe you. You always were a bit of a joker!’

‘I’ll make you believe me,’ snarled the ghost. He stood up and touched her wrist. He didn’t hurt her but the next day the skin appeared burnt and the muscles and ligaments shrivelled, leaving a nasty scar.

‘All right! All right!’ she gasped. ‘I believe you. You’re dead. Now tell me, how can I keep from dying when I’m 47?’

‘Don’t marry again. You’ll die shortly after giving birth to another son if you do.’

Lord Tyrone’s ghost touched the top of a chest of drawers, then disappeared. The next day, Lady Beresford was horrified to find his fingerprints had burnt into the polished wood.

Lord Beresford died, as predicted, four years later, on 16 June 1701, leaving his wife as a single parent with one son and one daughter. Lady Beresford withdrew from society and led a very quiet life for several years. She didn’t see anyone except a clergyman and his wife, who were close friends. The clergyman had a son, Lieutenant Colonel, later Lieutenant General, Gorges of Kilbrew, who fell in love with her. He was attentive and charming. At first she resisted his advances but he was very persuasive and eventually she agreed to marry him in April 1704. It was, as the ghost of Lord Tyrone had predicted, a big mistake. Her new husband treated her very badly and she was very unhappy. The couple separated for some time then he promised to mend his ways and they were reunited. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son.

The clergyman who had christened her and was a close family friend came to see her after the baby’s birth. He found her in great form. She was delighted with her little son and said, ‘It’s my birthday! I’m 48 years of age today! That means I don’t have to worry about dying on my forty-seventh birthday because now I’m 48! That’s a relief! I’m older than the age at which Lord Tyrone’s ghost said I’d die.’

‘I’m afraid you’re wrong!’ said the clergyman. ‘Your mother and I had an argument about your age. She thought you were 48 but I know you’re only 47. I went and checked. You were born in 1666. That means I’m right! Today’s your forty-seventh birthday!’

Lady Beresford went very white. ‘Are you sure?’ she quavered.

‘Yes! Quite sure.’

‘In that case, please leave me. You’ve signed my death warrant and I have things I must do.’ She immediately sent for her son, Marcus, and her close friend, Lady Betty Cobb. She told them how Lord Tyrone had visited her after his death and what he’d done to convince her he really was a ghost. They didn’t really believe her extraordinary story and left her alone to rest as she suddenly appeared very tired. When they came back after a few hours they found she was dead. When they unwrapped the black ribbon tied around her wrist they found it was as she described. The skin appeared burnt while the muscles and sinews were shrivelled and wasted.

Marcus did marry Lord Tyrone’s daughter as the ghost had foretold. Lady Betty told the Blacker family what had happened and the story was preserved in their papers. During the following years, all sorts of manifestations appeared in the house, which developed the reputation of being the most haunted place in Ireland.

3

HALF-HUNG MCNAUGHTON

Thanks are due to Celia Ferguson (née Herdman) for telling me about how one of her ancestors was robbed by a highwayman and to Gabrielle Dooher for giving me information about Half-Hung McNaughton.

Half-Hung McNaughton belonged to a wealthy family. He had a good job working for the government as a tax collector but he also had an addiction to gambling. He lost all his own money and started gambling with the government’s money. He lost £800 of his employer’s cash (the equivalent of about £500,000 today) before disappearing from respectable society to become a highwayman and escape justice.

McNaughton had a very good friend, Andrew Knox, who owned Prehen House in Derry/Londonderry and had a beautiful, 15-year-old daughter called Mary Ann. She became besotted with McNaughton and wanted to marry him. Andrew Knox was very annoyed and forbade the match. He felt that there was too big an age gap between the couple (Mary Ann was only 15 while McNaughton was 39) and that McNaughton’s main motivation was to get his hands on her money so he could clear his debts and continue gambling. He decided the best thing he could do was take Mary Ann away and hope she’d forget about her lover. Unfortunately, the girl managed to contact McNaughton by leaving and receiving notes at a tree and he arranged to kidnap her.

McNaughton dressed in his highwayman gear and met the coach in which Mary Ann and her father were travelling. There was a fracas during which McNaughton accidentally shot and killed her. Both he and her father were wounded. He managed to escape but was eventually captured and incarcerated in Lifford jail before being tried. He was sentenced to death ‘by hanging on the great road between Strabane and Lifford’. He mounted the gallows and the hangman placed the rope around his neck and attempted to drop him to his death. The rope broke and McNaughton fell to the ground, unhurt. Anyone who survived hanging automatically received a pardon. He could have walked away a free man, but he did no such thing. He picked himself up, climbed back up onto the gallows and shouted, ‘I don’t want to be pardoned. I don’t want to be known as “Half-Hung McNaughton”. I don’t want to live without Mary Ann. I demand to be hung!’ He insisted the hangman’s rope be placed around his neck again and jumped off the gallows with such vigour that his neck was broken and he died instantly. His body was buried in St Patrick’s old graveyard in Strabane. His ghost is said to haunts the graveyard and the road between Strabane and Derry/Londonderry.

Half-hung McNaughton was an unusual highwayman because nobody appeared to have any respect for him. In the past, taxes and rents were high, much higher than in England. Farmers existed on a knife edge. If they couldn’t pay their rent, they were evicted. Most highwaymen robbed from the rich and gave to the poor in the tradition of Robin Hood. They were regarded as folk heroes, protected by the local population. But McNaughton did not share his ill-gotten gains; he kept them. After his death the population split into two camps: those who felt sorry for him and believed he really did love Mary Ann Knox and committed suicide because he couldn’t bear to live without her and those who felt he committed suicide to avoid ending up in a debtors’ prison, which could have been regarded as a fate worse than death.

Celia Ferguson (née Herdman) told me about how one of her ancestors, a doctor called John Herdman, was robbed by a highwayman. One night when he was coming home after visiting a patient, he was attacked and stripped of everything except his shirt! Poor John Herdman was very embarrassed by his state of undress and went to the home of a local parson for help. The parson thought he was a ‘rogue and a vagabond’ and refused to let him in. John managed to prove he was an educated gentleman man by speaking in Latin. When the highwayman was caught and sentenced to death several years later he confessed on the gallows and apologised for treating John Herdman so badly.

4

WHITE LADIES, BANSHEES AND GHOSTLY PIPERS

Some years ago I went on an outing arranged by the Ulster Federation of Local Studies to Derry/Londonderry. As we travelled along the Londonderry Road towards Strabane I asked our guide (unfortunately I can’t remember his name) if he knew of any ghosts haunting the area. He laughed and told me about the ghost who was in Altnagelvin Hospital with fourteen stitches in his head!

The Altnagelvin ghost was inspired by ‘a woman’, dressed in white, who appeared when a new roundabout was being constructed on the motorway near Toomebridge. She ran along beside the traffic during the twilight hour and waved at the occupants of cars. She caused a sensation! Traffic increased at dusk. The situation became dangerous, with cars full of people driving round and round, hoping to see the ghost. It was obvious there was going to be a serious accident. The ghost’s appearance was good for business because people who hoped to see her invariably ended up in a local pub!