ing colours, the largest and most conspicuous of which was a piece of bed-curtain, extending to its nether extremity, and on account of which he got the sobriquet of "Curtaintail," by which name, gentle reader, with your leave, we shall henceforth know him. Around this coat, by way of girdle, he had knotted a neatly plaited straw rope. His feet were stockingless, and the toes protruded from an aperture in the front of his shoes. Seeing an advertisement posted on a wall, his curiosity prompted him to read it; it was a farm of land to be let. He entered a public house, and after staring vacantly about him, was told by the good dame that, at that particular moment, she was in no mood for assisting mendicants; it was then he inquired about the landlord, who proposed to let the farm, and was told that he was just then sitting in an adjoining room. The gentleman of property eyeing the strange intruder with a look of sullen sternness, demanded what his business there was. "I see," " said our friend Curtaintail, a farm of land to be let, and being told that you are the owner, come to make you a proposal.” Begone," said the landlord, "I have too many of your class. I have no intention to give lands to such a fellow as you."

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Curtaintail said nothing, but, shutting the door, soon disappeared. After the lapse of a few moments he returned, knocked at the door, and being told to enter, presented himself a second time before the landlord.

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This gentleman grew irritated, and contracting his brows and raising his voice to stentorian pitch, shouted aloud, Begone, sir, have you not got your answer already.”

"I beg to be excused," replied Curtaintail, "it is not land I want; but could you tell me any one who would take £100 at interest ?"

"Be seated," said the landlord, mildly; tell me, have you seen this farm ?"

"I have not," said the other.

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Ringing the bell, he told the servant to kindly accompany this man to the bailiff's house, and to bear his orders to that functionary to show him the farm which was to be let, and," said he, addressing himself to our motley friend," after you have seen it come back again, and, probably, we will strike a bargain." Curtaintail did so, and the bargain was made on his return.

During the penal times, mass was celebrated in the parish of Moville, at Ballinacray, Carrickarory, Summerhill, and Drung.

The Rev. Henry O'Crilly became parish priest of Moville in 1721, and died on the 13th December, 1756, aged 78 years. He was, therefore, for 35 years P.P. of Moville; he is buried in Cooley. We have not been able to ascertain who his successor was. The Rev. Eugene O'Callaghan became parish priest . in 1771, and died on the 27th September, 1815, aged 75 years. He is buried in Cooley.

Dr. O'Callaghan was a native of the parish of Donagh. He was succeeded by the Rev. Gerald Doherty, who exchanged in 1823 for Culdaff, where he died in 1825; he is buried in the churchyard of Drung. In the same grave are also buried Friar M'Closkey, and the Rev. Mr. O'Kane. The grave occupies the spot where mass was celebrated before the chapel of Drung was built. He was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. O'Kane. Mr. O'Kane was succeeded by the Very Rev. Wm. M'Cafferty in 1829, who was transferred to Donagh in 1838, and was succeeded by the Right Rev. John M‘Laughlin, who selected it as his mensal parish. He was succeeded by the Rev. George Doherty, on whose death the Right Rev. Dr. Kelly selected it as his mensal parish.

CHAPTER XVII.-Iskaheen.

We have now arrived at what is known as the Muff Ecclesiastical District, which formerly belonged to the parish of Templemore. This district was erected in 1809, when thirteen townlands were separated from Templemore. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the patronage of the Dean of Derry, to whom the tithes go. The curate's income is £88 yearly. The church is a neat edifice, in the Gothic style of architecture, and was built by one of the Harts of Kilderry.

The district comprises 15,030 statute acres-about four-fifths of which are good land, under an excellent system of cultivation. The remainder is mountainous, but affords pasturage for

sheep. The population is 3,052.

In the Roman Catholic divisions, Muff Ecclesiastical district, to which 80 families of the parish of Upper Moville have been added, forms the parish of Iskaheen. Iskaheen, Burt, and Inch were separated from Templemore in 1811, and given to the late Rev. Wm. M'Laughlin, a priest remarkable for his great piety and energetic advocacy of the temperance cause,

Father M'Laughlin remained here as parish priest until the year 1836, and then left for Donagheady, where he lived for 11 years. After this he returned to Iskaheen, where he ministered till his death in 1856.

He generously bequeathed his house as a parochial residence for his successors. A memorial worthy of the great priest has been erected to his memory by the exertions of the Rev. Jas. M'Laughlin, of Carndonagh, then a young missionary priest and curate of Iskaheen, and who himself gave the munificent donation of £20 towards the cost of its erection. The monument is a mural tablet; it cost near £100, and was executed by Mr. Kell, of Derry. As a work of art it is supposed to be unequalled in the north of Ireland. The chapel of Iskaheen was built in 1782, by the ancestor of one of the leading Catholics of Derry.

The village of Muff, though small, has an air of neatness and cleanliness about it. Fairs are held on the 4th of May, 5th August, 25th October, and 11th of December. It has a

Penny Post-office, Constabulary Barrack, which belongs to Buncrana district, and a Dispensary. It was beside the old mill in this village that the late Thomas Doherty, Esq., was born. Near Muff is Kilderry, the property of Lieutenant Hart, descendant of the late General Hart, who at one time represented the County Donegal in Parliament.

Since these chapters have commenced I have occasionally taken the liberty of introducing some legends regarding fairies, the popular superstition of the ancient Irish. This superstition

is dying away, and properly so, in this age of progress. We have had others, or perhaps I should say we have still the lingering remains of others, such as witchcraft, blinking, or the evil eye; these are not Irish; they are Scottish importations. How often do we hear, from those who pretend to move in fashionable circles, the expression, "Oh, that is merely an Irish superstition," just as if the Irish, and they alone, were the superstitious of the earth; the fact is, however, that among the nations the Irish were really the least so, and the extent or character of their fairy delusions was neither dangerous nor alarming. It comes not within the scope of my design to enter at any length into the subject, yet I cannot forbear a passing glance at the evils which witchcraft has wrought among some of the neighbouring countries.

On reference to Chambers's "Information for the People,"

In

A

we find that about 1524 the execution of persons suspected of witchcraft was very great in Spain, France, and Northern Germany, and that in 1515 five hundred were burned in Geneva in three months, and in France many thousands. Germany this plague raged to a degree almost incredible. catalogue of the executions at Wurtzburg for two years and two months, from 1627 to 1629, is divided into twenty-nine burnings, and contains the names of 157 persons. The greater part of this catalogue consists of old women or foreign travellers, seized, as it would appear, as foreigners were at Paris during the days of Marat and Robespierre; it contains children of twelve, eleven, ten, and nine years of age; fourteen vicars of the cathedral; two boys of noble families, two little sons of the Senator Stolbzenburg; a strange boy; a blind girl; Gobel Babelin, the handsomest girl in Wurtzemburg, &c. From 1610 to 1660 was the great epoch of the witch trials, and so late as 1749 Maria Renata was executed at Wurtzburg for witchcraft. The number of victims who fell by these prosecutions exceeds 100,000.

In Scotland the statutes against witchcraft were carried out in their full integrity under James VI., "the Scottish Solomon," who considered himself an object of especial hatred to the witches, and who wrote a book on their alleged craft, styled "Daemonologie." From the removal of the sapient James to England, and particularly after his death, the witch prosecutions slackened considerably; but as the spirit of puritanism gained strength, which it did during the latter part of the reign of Charles I., the partially cleared horizon became again overcast. The number of victims, says Chambers, it would be difficult accurately to compute, but the black scroll would include, according to those who have most attentively inquired into the subject, upwards of four thousand persons!

But they were groping I. ascended the English duty to illuminate the An act of the first year

Witchcraft was denounced in England by formal and explicit statutes in the reign of Henry VIII. in the dark, as it were, till James throne. He conceived it to be his southerns on the subject of witchcraft. of his reign runs thus:-" Any one that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation of any evil or wicked spirit, or consult or covenant with, entertain, or employ, feed or reward, any evil or wicked spirit, to or for any purpose; or take up any dead man, &c., &c., such offenders, duly and lawfully convicted and

attainted, shall suffer death." Here witchcraft is made a capital crime, and soon we find the frenzy devastating every corner of England. We accordingly find such wholesale murders as the following:-1612, twelve persons condemned at Lancaster; 1622, six at York; 1634, seventeen in Lancashire; 1644, sixteen at Yarmouth; 1645, fifteen at Chelmsford; and in 1645 and 1646, sixty persons perished in Suffolk, and nearly an equal number at the same time in Huntingdon. The poor creatures who usually composed these ill-fated bands, are thus described by an able observer:-" An old woman, with a wrinkled face, a furred brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue, having a ragged coat on her back, a spindle in her hand, and a dog by her side a wretched, infirm, and impotent creature, pelted and persecuted by all the neighbours, because the farmer's cart had stuck in the gateway, or some idle boy had pretended to spit needles and pins for the sake of a holiday from school or work" —such were the poor unfortunates selected to undergo the last tests and tortures sanctioned by the laws, and which tests were of a nature so severe that no one would have dreamt of inflicting them on the vilest murderers.

Chief-Justices North and Holt were the first who set their faces against the continuance of these destructive delusions, and after their time some of the judges went a step farther in their course of improvement, and spared the accused in spite of condemnatory verdicts, as for instance Chief-Justice Powell, in 1711, who pardoned an old woman when she was found guilty by an "intelligent" jury for conversing with the devil in the shape of a cat. Barrington, in his observations on the statute of Henry VI., does not hesitate to estimate the numbers of those put to death in England on the charge of witchcraft at thirty thousand.

Having said so much to show that superstitions, and of a more dangerous type than our Irish ones, have existed elsewhere, I now proceed to give what will probably be my last fairy story:

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"Is the priest at home?" said an aged woman who presented herself at the back entrance of the good man's residence. "He is," said Nancy Patterson, the housekeeper; but is just now at dinner, you can see him presently." After the lapse of a few minutes the old man appeared. To judge from his looks he would seem to have seen near four score summers.

He was