School: Inis Céin

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1. The Highland Soldier and the Irishman

   

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   Away back in the fifteenth century when the English were at war with our own countrymen great numbers of men were slain on each side as a result of heavy fighting. On this particular day the English had on their side a Scotch Regiment called in those days "Petticoat Loose." On this same day this Scotch Regiment met the Irish in deadly combat and the Scotch were almost wiped out in the encounter. The Irish gave them a chance of taking their dead and wounded off the field; this they carried out to the best of their ability, but one Petticoat Loose was left behind in a clump of [?] [furze]. He struggled into it when wounded and he was found dead later on by a local farmer, who (on seeing him with his musket beside him) got a bad fright. He was buried by the Irish just inside the ditch of the old road convenient to where he died.
   Then for years after, the people of the locality were terrified at night by the apparition of the Petticoat Loose, walking up and down the road with his musket on his shoulder, convenient to the place where his body was buried a short while before. In a very short time the old road was hardly travelled at all by the local people, especially after dark as a result of the appearance of this dangerous looking spirit almost nightly and always at the same place.
   Now this old petticoat was the talk of the

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Séamus Ó Lordáin

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Enniskean, Co. Cork

   Informant

   Peter O' Neill

   Gender

   Male

   Age

   63

   Occupation

   Farmer

   Address

   Ardkitt West, Co. Cork