In the time of the White-boys, I often heard my father say that no man of the name of Mullen, Moloney or Staunton was allowed to join or take the oath of the White-boys.

Roche stepped out of a bohreen with a sword in his hand and said, “I defy any two men single handed and no person will dare pass.”

"That", says Father Lyng to him, "is the headless coach and the devil driving it".

He wasn’t let into heaven and he wasn’t let into hell, so he is now travelling around the world with his wisp of straw, and that is the person we call ‘Will-o-the-Wisp’.

The rigid cultural bulwark of Japanese society is reminiscent of Irish-Ireland; a vision of revitalised Irish culture keeping at bay the influence of alien ideals.

To contextualise the importance of such tales and their reflective of Old Ireland’s homely belief system, Professor Cashmond discussed the idea that folklore and other traditional customs are in essence a vernacular social contract created by a community, and deeply personalised to the local level.

A few more years and a tradition where Seventeenth Century poets, Mediaeval storytellers, Fathers of the Church, even Neoplatonic philosophers have left their traces in the whole poems of fragmentary thoughts and isolated images will have vanished.

"I'll tell you how you'll find out whether it is a fairy changeling or not" says he "when you go home tell him that Gort na Pisha is ablaze".