Story of the Fanad ghost.
There is a farm in North-West Ulster where you will invariably find a white cock strutting about the yard in undisputed mastery, preening his wings and lifting his bill to crow defiance to all and sundry. Many farms possess white cocks: the queer thing is that for 160 years this farm has never been without one. And there is a reason.
Shortly before the rising of 1798 – so the story goes – the house was troubled by strange disturbances. The windows would rattle and sometimes break even when there was no wind; the delph would tumble out of the dresser; the turf sods would leap from the hearth across the kitchen floor; a heavy, bumping sound would be heard on the stairs as if a barrel were rolling down; the table would rise a foot or two into the air and move towards the servant girl.
The trouble lasted off and on for two years. Then one night the man of the house had a strange dream. He dreamt that if he crossed the bridge at Derry and rode out along the Glendermott Road he would find the man who could “lay the ghost.” He knew Derry but had never crossed the bridge.
He rose and awakened his mother to tell her of his dream, but she told him he was overwrought and advised him to go back to bed. Three times that night, however, he had the same dream; so at dawn he saddled his horse and, leaving a note for his mother, started for Derry.
Crossing the bridge, he reached the house of a man called Hyndman, the very house of the dream and began to explain his business. “Yes,” said Hyndman, “I know why you are here, but I’m sorry I can’t help you.” “Why not?” asked the crestfallen traveller. “I’m under a pledge not to.” The mistress, seeing the distress of the visitor, took pit on him. “Well,” she said to her husband, “you promised not to tell, but you surely didn’t promise not to write it down.” “I never thought of that,” he replied, and then and there he wrote down the names of two men, Craig of Inch and Lynch of Birdstown. “They’re the men that can lay the ghost,” he added.
In due course the Fanad man returned home, bringing with him Craig and Lynch. They had provided themselves for their strange task with remarkable equipment: a trio of cocks, a white cock, a red cock, and a black cock. The house was cleared, the black cock was thrown in and the door was shut. Instantly there arose a frightful squawking; the cock was fighting for his life. Then, after a few minutes, there was silence, and when they opened the door they found the black cock stretched on the floor, dead. Next they shut up the red cock in the house. The same kind of frantic squealing followed, then silence. They opened the door to find the red cock alive, but with a wing broken.
Finally, they turned in the white cock. Fierce as the other struggles had been, this one was fiercer still. The scurrying and squawking went on and on, rising and falling with the fortunes of the fight, but at last it ended. Then the white cock crowed loud and clear – the crow of victory – and when the door was thrown open he came strutting across the threshold and crowed again.
The evil thing, thus expelled from the house, had now to be driven from the premises. “They commanded it,” says one account, “into a bottle, corked it up and threw it into a moss hole.” From that day to this there have been no such disturbances in that place. A white cock is there guarding the peace, a descendent, no doubt, of the original deliverer. – A.R. Foster.
Belfast Telegraph, 14th December 1957.