Clippings From Ireland & Irish Forteana

Great find, Chris. The links are fascinating. This one goes deeper into the archaeological work. Current reports are very promising. Looking forward to a more recent update soon.

The dig log: http://www.abartaheritage.ie/hellfire-club-archaeological-project-week-one/

Some insights from either an interested reader or an authority on the site:
Helen Mason 10/10/2016 at 11:05 pm - Reply
A bit of History of the site.The remains of the prehistoric monument that originally stood at the summit can be seen to the rear of the Hell Fire Club building. Austin Cooper, on his visit in 1779, described it thus: “behind the house are still the remains of the cairn, the limits of which were composed of large stones set edgeways which made a sort of wall or boundary about 18 inches (46 centimetres) high and withinside these were the small stones heaped up. It is 34 yards (31 metres) diameter or 102 yards (93 metres) in circumference. In the very centre is a large stone 9 feet (2.7 metres) long and 6 feet (1.8 metres) broad and about 3 feet (0.91 metres) thick not raised upon large stones but lying low with the stones cleared away from about it. There are several other large stones lying upon the heap.”[43] It appears from this description that the central chamber of the monument – which was a passage grave[18] – survived intact even after Mount Pelier was constructed.[40] The historian Peter J. O’Keefe has suggested that many of the stones were taken away and used in the construction of the Military Road at the start of the nineteenth century.[11] Today, all that remains is a circular mound 15 metres (49 feet) in diameter and up to 2 metres (6.6 feet) high with a dip at the centre where the chamber was located.[18] The four large stones at the edge are all that survive of the kerbstones that formed the boundary of the monument.[44] In close proximity is a second mound, 1 metre (3.3 feet) high, on which an Ordnance Survey trig pillar stands.[18] Close to the monument is a fallen standing stone, a pointed rock 1 metre (3.3 feet) high.[45]
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It's a while since I visited Daev Walsh's Blather website but I'm glad to see it is still up, if not very active.

It's still a great resource for Irish lore and would once have been mentioned at the start of such a thread as this.

The Irish Hell Fire Club got some interesting coverage there; I'm surprised to find it's nearly twenty years ago!

No Smoke Without Fire.

Hellfire & Harlots.

:)
 
The Stable Demon

Diarmuid A. MacManus passes on the story of a terrible experience of his father's in his Irish Earth Folk:

My father told me not once but several times of an eerie and unpleasant experience he had when he was a boy of about fourteen and was home for the Christmas holidays from his English school. He was playing hide and seek with his elder brother, Arthur, but the game was confined to the large square of the stable buildings, including the cow byres, granaries, haylofts, and all the rest. It was late afternoon and not yet dark outside, when my father, tiptoeing stealthily along a granary, heard a noise of trampling, plunging, and snorting from one of the stables below. In those days there were two trap doors above the manger of each stable, one at each end, from which the men could throw down hay more easily.

Going quickly to one of the trap doors above the noisy stable, my father pulled it open suddenly, hoping to catch his brother, and thrust his head down through it before jumping down himself. But to his astonishment he saw the two horses in a mad panic of terror, trembling and snorting with fear as they tried to get as far away as they could from something in the manger at the far end from my father and, perhaps fortunately for him, right under the other trap door. Amazed, he looked across and saw, not twelve feet from his head, something that filled him with horror -- a sight that he never forgot all the days of his life. For there he saw a crouching figure of evil with blazing red, baleful eyes like glowing coals of fire. It was huddled in a compact ball, as a boy of his own size might look when squatting on his haunches. My father remembered only those awful eyes, the squatness of the body hunched in the dark corner of the manger, and one awful hand, a human hand, but how different! It gripped the edge of the manger and was a dirty grayish-brown. The fingers were all bone and sinew and ended not in human nails but in curved and pointed claws.

The boy's breath nearly stopped, and after staring at it in ghastly fascination, he hurled himself back into the granary again, slammed down the trap door, and raced for the house, calling to warn his brother first. Luckily, almost at his first shout his brother came and they both hurried back to the bedroom they shared, where my father told what he had seen.
 
I almost let St. Patrick's Day pass without adding something to this thread:

A young boy had a run-in with a strange, two-dimensional entity in Ireland, as described in Diarmuid MacManus' book Between Two Worlds.

"Mr. George Hallet, a prominent professional man in the old city of Limerick, had a very queer experience when he was a youngster," during a summer holiday at Mount Temple House, several miles outside that city. Twelve-year-old Hallet slept in a bedroom on the second floor, next to a room full of old furniture and junk. "There were no rugs, a point to be particularly noted."

Hallet had developed a habit of sleepwalking, but he always woke after only a few steps, whereupon he would scramble back into bed. One night he found himself at the opposite end of the narrow room. It was so dark he had to feel his way back.

He did not make it halfway before "one bare foot, put gingerly down as he felt his way, just touched something that was very soft and furry but by the feel of it flat like a rug." The boy froze, foot barely brushing the "rug", greatly disturbed because he knew there was no such item in the room. Then, to his horror, he lost his balance and planted his foot right in the middle of the "rug", which "let out a deafening, reverberating and blood-curdling scream and the fur, though still flat, seemed to come to life under his foot."

Hallet jumped into bed and pulled his blanket over his head. He waited long, agonizing hours until the light of morning [and a maid] came. He was in such a nervous state that a physician was summoned, and the doctor ordered him to stay in bed for two days. There is no mention whether or not it was the same bed in the same room. Adult members of the household searched the room but found nothing.

MacManus, Diarmuid A. Between Two Worlds (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1977), pp. 16-18.
 
Can't seem to find the reference now, but wasn't there a report of a Roman encampment on the banks of the River Barrow near Athy?

It was reported to be an earthen enclosure with wooden walls and clear signs of a military presence consistent with Julian era Roman activity.

The reports were from about 10-12 years ago.
 
amarok2005 said:
The Stable Demon

Diarmuid A. MacManus passes on the story of a terrible experience of his father's in his Irish Earth Folk:

My father told me not once but several times of an eerie and unpleasant experience he had when he was a boy of about fourteen and was home for the Christmas holidays from his English school. He was playing hide and seek with his elder brother, Arthur, but the game was confined to the large square of the stable buildings, including the cow byres, granaries, haylofts, and all the rest. It was late afternoon and not yet dark outside, when my father, tiptoeing stealthily along a granary, heard a noise of trampling, plunging, and snorting from one of the stables below. In those days there were two trap doors above the manger of each stable, one at each end, from which the men could throw down hay more easily.

Going quickly to one of the trap doors above the noisy stable, my father pulled it open suddenly, hoping to catch his brother, and thrust his head down through it before jumping down himself. But to his astonishment he saw the two horses in a mad panic of terror, trembling and snorting with fear as they tried to get as far away as they could from something in the manger at the far end from my father and, perhaps fortunately for him, right under the other trap door. Amazed, he looked across and saw, not twelve feet from his head, something that filled him with horror -- a sight that he never forgot all the days of his life. For there he saw a crouching figure of evil with blazing red, baleful eyes like glowing coals of fire. It was huddled in a compact ball, as a boy of his own size might look when squatting on his haunches. My father remembered only those awful eyes, the squatness of the body hunched in the dark corner of the manger, and one awful hand, a human hand, but how different! It gripped the edge of the manger and was a dirty grayish-brown. The fingers were all bone and sinew and ended not in human nails but in curved and pointed claws.

The boy's breath nearly stopped, and after staring at it in ghastly fascination, he hurled himself back into the granary again, slammed down the trap door, and raced for the house, calling to warn his brother first. Luckily, almost at his first shout his brother came and they both hurried back to the bedroom they shared, where my father told what he had seen.
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Have just discovered this thread; but, this post recalls memories of something read long ago in – it would seem -- the same book, by the same author, now re-titled: former title (when I knew it) The Middle Kingdom -- The Faerie World of Ireland. Contained much about same; including a small section on highly-evil Irish supernatural stuff – one item in which was, the above piece on the Stable Demon. Another piece in this section, which hugely creeped me out (can only go on memory here – verbatim reference not available) was titled The "thing" in the doctor's garden. Reminiscence from a witness who was a young girl about 100 years ago as from now, residing on Spike Island in Cork Harbour. A near neighbour there, was a doctor whose house had an extensive garden. The witness happened one day randomly to be on the opposite side of the wall separating from said garden; saw in there, over the wall, a hideous giant semi-humanoid-looking apparition, coloured yellow. She felt a strong intimation that this thing was profoundly evil; and perceived that it seemed to be slowly turning its head in her direction. A wordless message came mentally to her – to the effect that if it actually looked at her, she would die. She fled in terror – found refuge in the house of another neighbour, who comforted her, telling her “you aren’t the first one to see that thing; and you won’t be the last”.

This is probably a very lame paraphrasing, many decades after reading the original; but, for sure, said original scared the heck out of me at the time – more than any of the several other evil-and-frightening entries in the thus-dedicated section. Should I ever get an opportunity to visit Spike Island, I think that I’d decline...
 
amyasleigh said:
Another piece in this section, which hugely creeped me out (can only go on memory here – verbatim reference not available) was titled The "thing" in the doctor's garden. Reminiscence from a witness who was a young girl about 100 years ago as from now, residing on Spike Island in Cork Harbour. A near neighbour there, was a doctor whose house had an extensive garden. The witness happened one day randomly to be on the opposite side of the wall separating from said garden; saw in there, over the wall, a hideous giant semi-humanoid-looking apparition, coloured yellow. She felt a strong intimation that this thing was profoundly evil; and perceived that it seemed to be slowly turning its head in her direction. A wordless message came mentally to her – to the effect that if it actually looked at her, she would die. She fled in terror – found refuge in the house of another neighbour, who comforted her, telling her “you aren’t the first one to see that thing; and you won’t be the last”.

This is probably a very lame paraphrasing, many decades after reading the original; but, for sure, said original scared the heck out of me at the time – more than any of the several other evil-and-frightening entries in the thus-dedicated section. Should I ever get an opportunity to visit Spike Island, I think that I’d decline...
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Interesting! Especially as in 2008 I was on a cruise ship which called at Cobh, so we must have sailed past Spike Island both entering and leaving... :eek:
 
OneWingedBird said:
My favourite is the story about the worst driver in Ireland - Prawo Jazdy :D
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Can't be bothered to look it up, but is this the case where these words were taken from Polish driving licences by Irish police and assumed to be the driver's name?

(rynner trying to prove his memory is not completely gone!)
 
My favourite Irish story is only slightly Fortean but it is very short.

A man lost on the Emerald Isle pulls over to ask directions.

The native strokes his beard a while before announcing, "Weeell, I wouldn't start from here!" :)
 
The Lough Fadda monster.
In 1954 Miss Georgina Carberry – a librarian from Clifden- and three friends went on a trout fishing trip to Lough Fadda, a small lake in Connemara that lies in the Derrygimlagh-a bog some thirty miles square, dotted with small loughs connected via streams. What she and her friends saw there would stay with them for the rest of their lives.
They saw a thirty foot long creature emerge from behind an island. Carberry stated that it had a shark like mouth in a head held high out of the water. The body formed two loops or rings as it moved. She also saw a forked tail. She described the beast as ‘wormy’ with ‘movement all over the body’. As the black, coiling thing turned towards them the group fled back to their car and drove away.
Carberry was later interviewed by veteran monster hunter Ted Holliday. She told him that as she was driving away she found herself watching for the monster. She had the feeling that it had slithered out of the water and was perusing them. She suffered nightmares about the monster for weeks afterwards and one of the other witnesses had a mental breakdown. None of the group dared to go back to Lough Fadda for seven years afterwards. Even then they refused to go alone and would never go at night.
Think about this for a moment. It takes an abnormal amount of fear to affect four grown women in such a manner.
 
lordmongrove said:
The Lough Fadda monster.
In 1954 Miss Georgina Carberry – a librarian from Clifden- and three friends went on a trout fishing trip to Lough Fadda, a small lake in Connemara that lies in the Derrygimlagh-a bog some thirty miles square, dotted with small loughs connected via streams. What she and her friends saw there would stay with them for the rest of their lives.
They saw a thirty foot long creature emerge from behind an island. Carberry stated that it had a shark like mouth in a head held high out of the water. The body formed two loops or rings as it moved. She also saw a forked tail. She described the beast as ‘wormy’ with ‘movement all over the body’. As the black, coiling thing turned towards them the group fled back to their car and drove away.
Carberry was later interviewed by veteran monster hunter Ted Holliday. She told him that as she was driving away she found herself watching for the monster. She had the feeling that it had slithered out of the water and was perusing them. She suffered nightmares about the monster for weeks afterwards and one of the other witnesses had a mental breakdown. None of the group dared to go back to Lough Fadda for seven years afterwards. Even then they refused to go alone and would never go at night.
Think about this for a moment. It takes an abnormal amount of fear to affect four grown women in such a manner.
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Horse eel country.
 
Sounds like a freakishly large eel.
It's a relatively small lake for such a large creature. Puzzling.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Sounds like a freakishly large eel.
It's a relatively small lake for such a large creature. Puzzling.
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Horse-eels do seem to like the shallower stuff. It's one of the few Fortean crypto's I think might actually exist, we know nearly sod all about anguilla anguilla and they're quite common. Eels are very bold and in groups will tackle anything. A very large one would I suspect have little or no fear of man/woman.

If you get the chance I commend Jeremy Wade's New Zealand Long-Fin eel episode of 'River Monsters'. Thought provoking.
 
rynner2 said:
Interesting! Especially as in 2008 I was on a cruise ship which called at Cobh, so we must have sailed past Spike Island both entering and leaving... :eek:
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Pure coincidence; but I seem to recall reading in the works of Colonel P.H. Fawcett -- he who disappeared in South America in the course of lost-city-questing; altogether a fairly Fortean kind of chap -- a mention of his having spent a fair amount of time on Spike Island in the course of his military duties.
 
This 1908 newspaper article summarizes multiple Irish folkloric / ghostly / paranormal items.
Titusville Herald, Titusville, Pennsylvania 22 February 1908

THE HEADLESS COACH

A Warning Phantom That Roams the County Cork
QUEER IRISH SUPERSTITIONS
One Dreaded Apparition is the Fairy Horse, Whose Mission is one of Malice - The Lure of the Poukeen and the Song of the Fir-Darrig​

No wonder strange superstitions linger in the scattered hamlets by the sea or in the lonely cabins on the rocky islands around the Iron coast, for on winter nights when the mighty surges break thundering against the towering cliffs and the storm wind wails weirdly through the hollow caverns and ivied ruins, where the deserted fortresses of the powerful chieftans of bygone days look down on the foaming waves and the cry of the gulls and curlew echoes over rocks shores and across wide loughs and estuaries, one might well fancy that the sounds were the voice of giants or wizards doomed for their sins to wander forever ’round this coast, the mournful wail of the “Banshee” or of “the White Lady of the Cliffs”–a famous Munster apparition.

Women and children, crouching over the fire or driftwood, peat or furze branches flaming fitfully on the open hearth, cross themselves as a louder wail rings through the darkness or a rumbling sound is heard that to their ears seems to be the rolling of the wheels of “the headless coach” or “death coach,” so called in the County Cork because horses and driver are supposed to be headless. The coachman is the dullahan–that is, a dark or sullen person, a goblin of most malignant disposition.

The phantom is said to “follow” many old Munster families, the vehicle lumbering heavily up the avenue and stopping at the front door whenever a death is about to occur in the house. I know numbers of persons–and not by any means merely uneducated peasants–who are persuaded that they have heard the rumbling of the headless coach. Needless to say, the noise of a heavy cart at night along an unfrequented road is sufficient to terrify superstitious people into believing that they have heard the death coach. They take good care not to see it!

Another much dreaded apparition is the phooka, or fairy horse, a very malicious spirit that is said to appear in the shape of a beautiful coal black steed with fire darting from his eyes and nostrils.

Occasionally he adopts the form of a black bull or goat, and he appears as an awful compound of several black animals – horse, bull, goat and ram. In his equine form he is said to amuse himself by enticing solitary travelers whom he meets after dark into mounting him, and as he invariably looks like a “nate(?) cut of a horse,” such as every Irishman appreciates, he is said to succeed very frequently in his nefarious plan.

The instant the rider is on his back the elfin steed dashes off madly through stream, lake and bog hole, thicket and coppice, hedge and ditch, marsh and ravine, till the terrified mortal, drenched, torn and bruised shrieks for mercy or perhaps remembers to gasp out a prayer, when with a furious bound the phooka flings him off, preferably into a muddy pool or a furze brake, and darts away, leaving the unhappy rider to pick himself up, invariably finding that he is miles out of his way.

Sudden falls are attributed to this malignant sprite, and many a man who has lost his way or met with an accident coming home from fair or funeral on a dark night is convinced for the rest of his days that he has been led astray by the phooka, although his troubles were possibly due to a yet more potent spirit. Dangerous rocks and crags are often called “carrig-na-phooka” (rock of the phooka), just as deep pools or holes in a river or bog are poul-na-phooka. A beautiful waterful in Wicklow bears this name.

The “poukeen,” as he is sometimes called is also said to adopt the form of a great black bird or a bat. The latter is greatly favored by the country folks. In the bat form he is supposed to lure people into climbing ivied walls and towers, from which he throws them, an idea which seems to bear some relation to the vampire stories of eastern Europe. He is the pouke of Spensear, and from breaking the necks of the unwary to spoiling the blackberries on Michaelmas eve in order to vex the archangel, there are few enormities of which he is not guilty, according to popular belief.

“Puck, the household fairy,” of English legend finds his Irish counterpart in the fir-darrig, or red man, a merry goblin, very similar to the Scotch red cap*, or brownie. He is said to be dressed in scarlet. The attire of most of the Irish varieties is supposed to consist of a green suit, red shoes, long white stockings and red or black cap with an eagle’s feather. This little red-clad sprite is said to remarkable for the extreme beauty of its voice, which, according to the now fast disappearing race of story tellers, is “like the sound of the waves,” “the music of angels or the warbling of birds. A sweet voice is highly esteemed in Erin, where a girl possessing that “excellent thing in women” is said to be able to “coax the birds off the bushes.” - New Ireland Interview
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SALVAGED FROM THE WAYBACK MACHINE:
https://web.archive.org/web/2011053...lspenny.com/2010/09/some-irish-superstitions/
 
Fortean enough to cancel out any political content imho.

Replacement dentures, sanctions for a rogue fortune teller, and free Sky Sports TV — these are just some of the weird and whacky requests made of this year’s election hopefuls.

The public’s most outlandish asks have failed to put a dampener on the current crop of candidates' political ambitions. They have, at times, even proved amusing.

So says TD Mick Barry (People Before Profit-Solidarity alliance), who is running in the Cork North-Central constituency. He highlighted one particularly strange request from a disgruntled constituent.

“I had a guy who wanted me to advise him on how to make an official complaint because he had gone to a fortune teller and the fortune teller’s predictions had not come true. I’m not sure what he wanted. He figured that if this guy’s predictions weren’t coming true then he shouldn’t be in fortune telling. It wasn’t clear whether he wanted to make sure the fortune teller never worked again or he just wanted to get his money back. It takes all kinds to make a world I suppose.”

Fine Gael candidate for Cork North-West Cllr John Paul O’Shea has had his own fair share of odd propositions, more recently while out canvassing.

After being questioned about their most pressing issues, one homeowner didn’t hold back, telling Mr O’Shea he would get his vote in exchange for “free Sky”.

"What he really wanted was the sports channels and he wanted to get them free. He didn’t want to get them illegally. His hope was that I would ring up Sky myself and use my powers of persuasion to try to blag him some free channels. Of course, this wasn’t possible so I promised I would have the information sent out to him. At least that way he’d be able to see the price range and get a reasonable package. I was able to organise that much for him at least.” ...

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-41516735.html
 
@ramonmercado it just had to be Cork!

I would love love love to be involved in somehow mapping and finding all these incidents and finding out if there are hotspots. Or maybe being able to say that factors such as settlement size, population make up and so on give you a higher chance of an incident.

Obviously

* it depends what you mean by incident

* having a thriving media network definitely helps!
 
I ran across a made for TV movie about a Fairy Tree.

This is tree where fairies live and you can not cut the tree down, or bad luck will come your way.

So researching Fairly Tree, they are the Hawthorn or the Ash tree that grows in Ireland.

Supposedly to this day no one touches these trees in Ireland.
 
charliebrown said:
I ran across a made for TV movie about a Fairy Tree.

This is tree where fairies live and you can not cut the tree down, or bad luck will come your way.

So researching Fairly Tree, they are the Hawthorn or the Ash tree that grows in Ireland.

Supposedly to this day no one touches these trees in Ireland.
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Ireland and Scotland share many of these traditions. Here in Scotland the trees belong to The Gentry and you are punching up if you damage them.

The Gentry themselves have ownership of most of Scotland, should they choose to exercise it. They are fine folk and I won't have a word said against them!
 
charliebrown said:
I ran across a made for TV movie about a Fairy Tree.

This is tree where fairies live and you can not cut the tree down, or bad luck will come your way.

So researching Fairly Tree, they are the Hawthorn or the Ash tree that grows in Ireland.

Supposedly to this day no one touches these trees in Ireland.
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I wish that were true.

Alas, it's very much not.

While a fairy fort or ring might go untouched, which are usually neolithic burial mounds or cists anyway, the trees are very much not protected by the same deference.

I've seen entire hedgerows bulldozed to make fields larger, move boundaries and just generally make shit of the countryside.

Farmers are industrialists with crops. They don't give a flying f*ck about the environment here.
After years of reports about the declining quality of water courses due to run off from farm land and dumping of dairy excess and bi-products, the associations are lobbying hard for a derogation on the nitrate directives that are EU wide.
Even when presented by irrefutable evidence of the harm they are doing to the very water on which we all rely, they continue to take the piss for their own benefit.
 
BUCHANAN: Dublin Time Machine

@RobLooseCannon

Hanging out with the Dublin branch of the notorious ‘Hellfire Club’, at the
@NGIreland

. The London originating fraternity boasted many hedonistic bucks of the day. William Connolly, an Irish Parliamentary Speaker, founded the Montpelier Hill site as a lonely hunting lodge in 1725. Although they're associated with that accursed site, they frequently met in the Eagle Tavern on Cork Hill and in the 1780s, another generation met in Daleys Gambling Club in College Green. Makes you wonder where they hang out now

Image

Image

12:00 PM · Dec 28, 2024 from Fingal, Ireland
 
Interestingly, the Irish Hellfire Club, as opposed to the hunting lodge, was founded by the First Earl of Rosse, Richard Parsons, and James Worsdale.

The Earl of Rosse was also the first Grand Master of Irish Freemasonry, leading the Irish Grand Lodge at its first recorded meeting in 1725 and again in 1730.
 
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