John Halpin tells me that his father often spoke to him about the night of the Big Wind. John himself is well over seventy now, and his father, he says, was ten or twelve years old the night of the Big Wind. That night the roof of Halpin's house was blown off, but despite all the people of the house remained in it until the wind abated. When the Halpins left the house in the moring not one of the outoffices was standing, the horses and cows were crowded into a sheltered corner of a field scared and nervous, walls were knocked, trees and bushes uprooted and the whole place was strewn with debris. The neighbouring village of Quin was strewn with the thatch of the houses, and roofs were blown off many of them. A peculiar thing happened two houses opposite each other. The roofs of both were blown off, but the roof of one in its flight lodged on the bare walls of the other. An old hag with fierce long grinning teeth was noticed to pass from one house to another with the wind.Rhiannon