By John Fitzgerald
Reminiscing on the people who lived in Callan years ago, the acclaimed newspaper correspondent Peter Roughan also commented on those who were supposed to be in it, but probably weren’t.
“Then again, there’s no smoke without fire”, he cautioned, and if smoke was ever seen rising from the back of the Moat, Peter suggested there might be no need to call for the Fire Engine. It could be the “little folk” boiling a drop of water for the tea.
Peter learned a lot about the fairies on the Moat (what Callan people call the old Normal Motte) from Annie Keating of Bridge Street. She had all the old stories and legends off by heart. She related the common belief held in past decades that the Moat “opened up” at night or at dawn to allow the little folk out on their wanderings, to the chant of “Open, open little hill, and let the King of the Fairies in.”
Callan people shunned the Moat during the hours of darkness; they believed the fairies would punish any intrusions on their mysterious nocturnal revelries. There were tales of unlucky locals who availed of moonlit nights to pick saddle grass and other herbs with curative properties on the Moat. Infuriated fairies chased them away.
In her childhood, Annie heard numerous claims from old people in the area concerning night time subterranean passages in the Grove that would disappear in the morning, and of fairy rings that stretched from the “Little Hill” at the back of the Moat to the “Little Bush”. The large ring of beaten grass was said to have been a dancing ground of the fairies.
Mushrooms and toadstools were always found in abundance around this fairy ring. In the days before electricity, Callan folk spun many a fireside tale about the much feared “fairy blast”, what Annie called “the wind that screeched through the pines and howled around the moat and was not good for man or beast.”
More down to earth locals heard the same blast around the Moat but referred to it as “The Roaring forties from Neary’s Inch.”
But not even the fairies could distract the Callan fishermen, who sat patiently along the riverbank on the darkest nights: Annie recalled: “nothing could divert their gaze from the ripple on the trout stream”.
The fairies, according to Annie, were also rumoured to have visited Kilbricken, where they apparently took a liking to Madigan’s field. Some people who were picking mushrooms out there in the summer heard a whistling noise, though there was not a gust of wind that day.
A sudden blast of wind swept up cocks of hay off the ground. “For a while, it seemed that the heavens were full of magic carpets”, Annie reflected. She opined that perhaps a few of the flying saucers allegedly spotted in the fifties might have been nothing more than Madigan’s “prime upland meadowing!”
Annie told Peter about the fairy music that used to be heard in Mickey Hello’s orchard on the Ballywalters road and in Butler’s field at the Minauns. Butler’s raheen was reputedly a favourite spot for the fairies on a moonlit night. But you had to be careful to keep an eye out for Col. Butler’s bull, or you could end up being “tossed in the foggy dew!”
Fairy cobblers were allegedly seen busily mending shoes in Downey’s field at Kilbricken. In the pubs of Callan, and at the firesides, people swore that there was a Leprechaun’s workshop in Kilbricken, though the lads at Mill Lane corner laughed at visitors from out of town who asked to be shown the way to this facility. Leprechauns are said to have made regular appearances at Crowraddie.
There was one who, it seems, enjoyed relaxing under a nut tree in Johnnie Downey’s field, though he might also be seen hammering nails into a fairy horse shoe on a little anvil, with rabbits standing to attention around him.
One evening, some rather credulous people who thought they heard fairy music discovered that it was not the Little Folk at all, but ‘Brian Boru’s March’ coming from Paddy McCormack’s wireless. Anyone can make a mistake!
Ghosts put in an appearance too in the Callan area. If you took a late night stroll among the trees of the Dark Walk (since cut down), you might hear loud moanings. Annie Keating recalled that it was a lonely stretch from Jim Canavan’s shed down to Dunne’s gate in the corner.
One night, Annie’s grandmother, Margaret Canavan was returning from a birth-she was a midwife-when she and the man who drove the ass and cart had a “close encounter” with the supernatural. They had just finished locking up the ass in the stable and were all set to walk the last few hundred yards home. Suddenly, they stopped in their tracks.
Though a plucky woman, Nurse Canavan was terrified by the ghostly form that appeared in front of them: A long white-gowned lady stood at Dunne’s gate, wailing like the mythical banshee. The nurse and her driver took to their heels and ran like the wind. When she got home, Mrs. Canavan had great difficulty convincing her two daughters, Babs (Annie’s mother) and Katie, that she had seen a ghost. They roared laughing at her story.
Peter Roughan was sceptical of ghost stories, but had a vivid memory of the principal alleged entities that roamed his native Callan:
He wrote:
“I wonder what’s happened to all the white ladies, tall men, and headless coaches that used to be seen around the town. There was one lady who was very fond of rambling around the Moat field, but no one could tell us if she was the same one who often sat on the wall at Mickey Hello’s orchard down the Buckaleen road.
“Of course the tall man that Will Brien used to meet below Tommy Heron’s back gate was the same chap that Tommy Byrne the baker used to see out near Betty’s Bridge. They both agreed he was the same fellow, though he always bid Tommy the time of the night but never spoke to Will. Then there was the headless coach that Ger Murphy used to see coming up from Westcourt. Ger always made out that the coachman was a better driver than Peter Kennedy ever was-he never bothered to open the lodge gates.
“We never believed the story about the lady who used to come down the Dark Walk with no shoes on. We knew no one could walk down there in daytime without stumbling over tree roots. The ghost that often paid a visit to Molloy’s old castle must have got fed up calling as the years went by.
“The new tombstones in the yard must have frightened him off, But Jack Cass used to tell us that this was the same fellow that used to ramble down the Blind Bosheen. And that must have been the same chap that Martin Grant used to meet above at Mikey Healy’s in Slade.
“There must have been a whole colony of them up in Grace’s old ‘spirit house’ in Coolalong, although Micky Power said it was all a cod, as he walked home to Kilbride at all hours of the night and never saw a thing.”
