Observations placeholder
Isle of Man - Ridden like a horse when out of body
Identifier
014001
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, [1911]
MANX TALES IN A SNOW-BOUND FARM-HOUSE
Mrs. Leece directed me to her son's farm-house, where her husband, Mr. Samuel Leece, then happened to be; and going there through the snow-drifts, I found him with his son and the family within. The day was just the right sort to stir Manx memories, and it was not long before the best of stories about the 'little people' were being told in the most natural way, and to the great delight of the children. The grandfather, who is eighty-six years of age, sat by the open fire smoking; and he prepared the way for the stories by telling about a ghost seen by himself and his father, and by the announcement that 'the fairies are thought to be spirits'.
Under 'Fairy' Control.--'About fifty years ago,' said Mr. T. Leece, the son, 'Paul Taggart, my wife's uncle, a tailor by trade, had for an apprentice, Humphrey Keggan, a young man eighteen or nineteen years of age; and it often happened that while the two of them would be returning home at nightfall, the apprentice would suddenly disappear from the side of the tailor, and even in the midst of a conversation, as soon as they had crossed .the burn in the field down there (indicating an adjoining field). And Taggart could not see nor hear Humphrey go.
The next morning Humphrey would come back, but so worn out that he could not work, and he always declared that little men had come to him in crowds, and used him as a horse, and that with them he had travelled all night across fields and over hedges.' The wife of the narrator substantiated this strange psychological story by adding:--'This is true, because I know my Uncle Paul too well to doubt what he says.'