Blair Collection > Beside the fire

LEEAM O'ROONEY'S BURIAL. 103
" Why did you think I was dead ? " said Leeam.
** Doesn't everybody in the parish know you're dead r "
said the wife.
"Your body from the devil," said Leeam, "you're
humbugging me long enough, and get me something
to eat."
The poor woman was greatly afraid, and she dressed
him some meat, and when she saw him eating and
drinking, she said : " It's a miracle,"
Then Leeam told her his story from first to last, and
she told him each thing that happened, and then he said :
" I'll go to the grave to-morrow, till I see the behoonuch
ye buried in my place."
The day on the morrow Leeam brought a lot of men
with him to the churchyard, and they dug open the
grave, and were lifting up the coffin, when a big black
dog jumped out of it, and made off, and Leeam and the
men after it. They were following it till they saw it
going into the house in which Leeam had been asleep,
and then the ground opened, and the house went down,
and nobody ever saw it from that out ; but the big hole
is to be seen till this day.
When Leeam and the men went home, they told every-
thing to the priest of the parish, and he dissolved the
marriage that was between Leeam's wife and the servant
boy.
Leeam lived for years after that, and he left great
wealth behind him, and they remember him in Clare-
Galway still, and will remember him if this story goes
down from the old people to the young.