ColUctanca. 501
estates by the Westropps of Fortanne, as told in 1877, but the family papers there were burned.
To close my chronological series of tales I will tell, less fully than I have often heard it, a very horrible story of the period after 1700. A replica of Maura Rhue in the east of Clare used to dress as a man and rob and murder travellers on lonely roads through the woods and hills, sometimes shooting them from trees and throwing their bodies into a lake which was still pointed out by the peasantry some forty years ago. Her niece was suspected of admiring a handsome young Englishman who was their servant, and the family, fearing a love affair, consulted and, at the instiga- tion of the virago (who had had a personal experience in her youth), determined to send away the young man. The fiendish woman advocated stronger measures, and at last carried her point. All the other servants and retainers were allowed to go to the great "pattern" at Holy Island, and the stranger was set to pull down the middle of a turf rick. As he was stooping to remove the last few sods, the aunt shot him with a pistol, and he fell senseless. The conspirators proceeded to cover him with the peats, but he made a feeble struggle and thrust out his hand. His murderess, on seeking to cover the hand, saw upon it a ring which she had given long before to her own lover to place on their son's hand when he grew up. She knew then that she had killed her own son, and dropped unconscious upon his body. Her brain gave way, and she remained imbecile until upon her deathbed, when she cursed her abettors. A terrible destiny, with many an untimely death, has followed down to our own time the family, which has long since left its old abode. Local tradition said that the skeleton of the son was found "some generations after, a hundred years ago" (from 1870), when peat was scarce and the rick was used up,^^ Round TuUa, however, it was said that the family burned the rick to get rid of the corpse, but that a storm arose and blew away the white ashes, so that the unconsumed skull and the ring carved with the family shield were exposed.
'* See vol. xxi., p. 34S. Kicks often remained for a long lime, the upper part being replaced each season.
