Haunted Ireland (eBook)

An Atlas of Ghost Stories From Every County

Kieran Fanning (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Gill Books (Verlag)
978-1-80458-062-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Take a tour across Ireland with these ghost stories from every county ... Ireland is an ancient land of magic, superstition and belief in otherworldly things, so it is no surprise that it is also rich in ghost stories. These 32 terrifying tales have been handed down from generation to generation, carried from fireside to fireside by professional storytellers, or seanchaí, and are now collected and retold here for younger readers. From witches to banshees to poltergeists, there's a spooky story or site to discover, wherever you are in the country - but are you brave enough to start reading?

Kieran Fanning is a writer and primary school teacher from Navan, Co. Meath. He has a master's degree in children's literature and a fascination for legendary Irish tales, the spookier the better! His most recent book, Irish Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends, was published by Scholastic.

Textauszug

Lucinda Singleton was the wife of a small farmer near Tullow, in County Carlow. Shortly after her son, Thomas, was born, Lucinda’s husband died of consumption. Afterwards, life was difficult for her, but she worked hard, supplementing her income by selling butter in Carlow town.

When Thomas left home to become a police officer, Lucinda was lonely and wished she had someone to share her life with. Perhaps she should have been happy with her lot because when her wish came true, she got more than she bargained for. As her mother used to say, ‘A little fire that warms is better than a big fire that burns.’

The ‘big fire’ that came into her life was a farmer and horse dealer called Walter Sly. Initially, Lucinda was wary of the man because he had a reputation for drinking too much, but he assured her that his bad habit was behind him. She gave him a chance, and over the next few months they started stepping out together. During that time, Lucinda never saw Walter take more than a single drink, so she was convinced he’d changed his ways. Eventually, he proposed to her and asked her to move in to his farm at Oldleighlin.

But Lucinda was no fool; she knew that if the marriage didn’t work out she’d be left with nothing, so she agreed to marry Walter on condition that she could keep her own farm.

‘Fine,’ said Walter. ‘We’ll rent it out.’

Lucinda was happy with this but wanted to make the agreement legally binding, so they had an attorney draw up a document stating that Walter could not sell her farm. However, unbeknownst to her, Walter added a clause that the agreement would become null and void if Lucinda wasn’t a good wife to him.

In August 1831, the couple got married and Lucinda Singleton became Lucinda Sly. They were happy for a while but Walter soon went back to his old ways and started drinking again, which caused friction between him and his new wife. During one of his drinking sessions, Walter sold his wife’s house and farm to the owner of the pub, a man called Langstrom. Lucinda didn’t find out until she returned to Tullow to visit one of her old neighbours. On the way, she passed her old house and was surprised to see smoke coming from the chimney. It was supposed to be empty because she hadn’t gotten around to renting it out yet. Maybe her new husband had taken in a tenant but if so, why hadn’t he told her?

Determined to find out, she turned off the road, and though it felt strange, she knocked on her own front door. She was surprised to recognise the man that opened it.

‘You’re Langstrom, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘The owner of the tavern where my husband drinks?’

‘That’s right,’ he said, also recognising Lucinda. ‘And you’re the butter lady that married Walter Sly.’

‘Walter rented my farm to you?’ she asked, clearly disgusted, for she partly blamed Langstrom for her husband’s drinking.

The tavern owner shook his head and smiled. ‘Walter didn’t rent it to me. He sold it to me.’

Lucinda was furious and returned home to confront her husband. He told her about the clause that he had secretly added, which allowed him to sell her property if she was a bad wife.

‘But I am a good wife,’ she argued.

‘A good wife does not give her husband cheek!’ he shouted, hitting her so hard that she fell to the ground. Then he beat her with a horsewhip and threw her out of the house.

Lying battered and bruised in a bed of hay in the stable, Lucinda realised that marrying Walter had been the biggest mistake of her life. And now, with no property of her own to return to, she’d have to stay married to a man she hated.

From then on, Walter treated her like a slave and was drunk so often that Lucinda had to do all the farm work. It was too much for one woman, so Walter hired a young man called John Dempsey to help.

One evening, John witnessed a drunken Walter beating his wife. Stepping in to defend her, John punched Walter so hard that he knocked him unconscious. Walter had been so drunk that when he came to, he couldn’t even remember being punched.

After that, John and Lucinda grew close and soon became romantically involved behind Walter’s back. It wasn’t long before they had fallen in love. For the first time in years, Lucinda was happy and spent every moment with John when her husband was out at the pub or away at a fair.

On one of these occasions, a neighbour called Bridget Massey spotted the couple kissing. Rumours began to spread about Lucinda’s secret love affair. Even the women who sold butter alongside her in Carlow turned against her – at that time it was considered the greatest of sins for a woman to be unfaithful to her husband. They branded her ‘The Hag of the Butter’.

When Walter Sly got wind of the rumours, he smashed one of Lucinda’s favourite bowls in anger. His rage reached boiling point when he saw a wad of money among the shards of shattered pottery. Lucinda had been stashing some of her butter money away instead of handing it over to her husband, in case she ever needed to escape from him in a hurry. He grabbed the axe that hung on the wall and threatened to kill her.

‘Do your worst, you drunkard!’ Lucinda taunted.

Walter flung the axe aside and punched her instead. She fell, and when she got up, he hit her again. He was so focused on hitting her that he didn’t notice the little key fall from his pocket, but Lucinda noticed. With his wife bruised and bleeding on the floor, Walter left to attend a horse fair. When Lucinda found the energy to move, she crawled over to the key.

I think I know what this is for, she thought to herself.

In the bedroom, she pulled a box out from under the bed. Walter had never told her what was inside, and he always kept it locked. With a shaking hand, she twisted the key in the lock, and it opened with a satisfying click. Inside was a gun.

As she took the weapon out, a plan formed in her mind.

When John came in from the fields he was shocked at Lucinda’s bruised and bloody face.

‘I’ll kill him,’ he vowed.

Lucinda smiled and held up the gun. ‘No, John, we’ll kill him.’

‘I wasn’t being serious,’ said John.

Lucinda, however, was deadly serious. She told him of her plan to shoot Walter when he came home.

‘Then you’ll go to prison,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘No, we need to make it look like somebody else shot him.’

Lucinda thought for a moment. ‘We’ll say some angry horse trader followed Walter home and shot him outside in the haggard.’ She said this would be believable because Walter was always making enemies at these horse fairs. John agreed that this was a better plan, but neither of them had ever used a gun before and shooting a man outside in the dark would be difficult.

Lucinda’s eyes fell on the axe that Walter had threatened her with. ‘When he comes home drunk after a night out, he always falls asleep in his armchair. While he is asleep, we could knock him out with the axe and finish the job outside with the gun.’

John nodded.

That night, as they waited for Walter to come home, John started to have second thoughts about the plan. He was a young man and didn’t want to go to prison if they were caught. Lucinda, however, was convinced that the plan was her only way out of a violent marriage. She told John that if they were caught, she’d take the blame.

They turned off the lamp and waited in darkness, knowing that Walter would be suspicious if he saw a light on in the kitchen because Lucinda usually went to bed early. At twenty past ten, they heard the sound of horse’s hooves coming down the lane. Lucinda hid in the bedroom and John took the gun into the back kitchen where he usually slept.

As predicted, Walter staggered into the kitchen drunk and talking to himself. He fell into his armchair and, within seconds, was snoring. Lucinda crept out of her hiding place and took hold of the axe. In the dying light from the fire, John watched her raise it above her head but she couldn’t do it. Her hands trembled and her face was frozen in terror. To make matters worse, Walter was starting to wake up.

Quickly, John took the axe from Lucinda and swung it, landing a fierce blow on the side of Walter’s head. He fell to the floor, but he wasn’t dead or unconscious. He groaned and tried to stand up. In panic, John swapped the axe for the gun.

‘Not here!’ warned Lucinda, but it was too late.

John pulled the trigger and killed Walter Sly.

The couple stared in horror at what they’d done, but Lucinda swiftly snapped out of it. She knew the neighbours would have heard the gunshot. ‘Quickly, get him outside!’

They dragged the body out into the yard, where John fired another bullet into the wall to make it look like the shooting had happened there. Lucinda had another idea that might throw the police off the trail. She went through her husband’s pockets and took his money and pocket watch to make it look like a robbery. She handed them to John, who put them in his own pocket.

Hurriedly, they ran back inside. John cleaned the blood off the floor and the axe while Lucinda reloaded the gun and locked it...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.10.2024
• Illustrationen: Mark Hill
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch ► Kinderbücher bis 11 Jahre
• Schlagworte: Atlas • Cabra castle • Carlingford castle • Dunluce Castle • Girls Who Slay Monsters • glenade lake • Glencairn Abbey • Irish folklore • Irish Ghost Stories • Kilkea Castle • Kilkenny • Kiltrustan • Kinsale • Leamenah castle • Leap Castle • Loftus Hall • Lover's Leap • Seafield House • Shanahoe • stories from the counties of Ireland • the 32 counties • Treasury of ghost stories
• ISBN-10: 1-80458-062-7 / 1804580627
• ISBN-13: 978-1-80458-062-2 / 9781804580622