An Chónra sa Spéir
Seán Joyce, July, 27th, 1944.
Coffin in the Sky
Seán Joyce, July, 27th, 1944.
—rough translation transcribed from Heinrich Becker’s notebooks
I don’t know what his name was but (that) I hear a man saying that he was in the same house with this woman.
A farmer who was over in Co. Clare and there was a big paddock around the house. (grasland)
Well the amount of hay that they used to grow on the paddock, the hay was always eaten. and he used to not see anything on the grasland.
He himself and his servant boy went then at night watching the paddock so that they would know what was comming in it.
Late at night at 12 o clock they saw a big black cloud comming over (from the west)
in the air over them.
When it came over them, they fired a shot at it, and what fell down to them but a coffin They took the lid off the coffin and there was a woman in the coffin and she was asleep.
They took her up then and she awoke.
Well he took her to his own house, the farmer, to his own house, Well the husband
of the woman then, at the end of a year he was dreaming that his wife was in this particular house to the farmer (himself, he and her for himself)
A horse, which the man had, was gone (fetching, asking) for the priest to anoint her Well with the disturbence (noise) and the woman dying he forgot to put the horse in the stable. and he did not take bit or saddle off her.
Well, in the dream then it was told to him that the horse was in the paddock beside a house where the woman was.
but he came into the house and they welcomed him. and he sat down on the chair and it was short he was sitting when a woman came over out of the room down and back into the other room. The minute he saw her, he recognised her The man then told the farmer where she came from
Well said the farmer, that is the woman now, said he, and, said the farmer, a good working woman she is, since I got her.
The farmer told him then when he fired the shot that the coffin was thrown down to him.
But, said the farmer, I have no information about your horse, said he.
Well, said the man who came seeking the woman, said he, in the dream it was told to me that my horse was under a clump of bushes at the back of the house.
Well, said the farmer, I am every day going past that clump and there is no horse in it, said he but even though, let us go out to look at it.
When they went out, the man of the horse he saw the horse under the bushes and the bit and the saddle on her. Well, said the farmer, I did not ever see that horse in it.
He came home then himself and his wife and the horse.
The woman’s husband, that told the story to the man who told it to me, and the woman up on the floor and she spinning.
It is how she was laughing she was a year dead, she was a year gone from him.
Heinrich Becker’s phonetic transcription of An Chónra sa Spéir.
All images and versions of this scéal are from the Dr. Heinrich Becker archive.