The ghosts of Islandeady remembered back in 1953
By Tom Gillespie
CHRISTMAS is usually a time when things other than cemeteries are on the lips of many, but our cemeteries, like the poor, are always with us. So stated an article in The Connaught Telegraph on January 3, 1953, which read as follows.
In Islandeady, for generations, our dead have been laid to rest ‘neath the grasses of that lonely hillside, and there lie many who gave their lives that Ireland might be free.
There, too, are others who worked themselves to death in the bad old days and who now occupy nameless graves in the churchyard.
How many have gazed on this hillside and sighed as memories of a loved one came drifting back?
The countless tears that were shed as coffins were lowered into graves.
Yes! It is easy to see again in memory the funerals of those we loved. May God have mercy on their souls.
The hillside which is now the old cemetery was once an island in Lough Lannagh.
On the south and north sides the lake was shallow, and at one time it was possible for a person to cross by one of the fords there.
Later boulders rolled into the lake and made a causeway and this was there for many years.
Some time later a rough road was made and the island became a peninsula, and although today (1953) the island is no longer an island, it is still called ‘island’.
Many claim that the parish got its name from the island. The Irish name for Bilberry Island was Oileann Tadgn, and the Irish version for Islandeady is Oileann Eadaigh.
Legend has it that at one time the islands were opened by a men called Tadgn and Eadaigh, and, although some writers hold otherwise, there seems to be little doubt that it was from the island that the parish got its name.
As one passes the old cemetery it can be noticed that the splendid cut-stone window surrounds bear marks. There are supposed to have been put there by British officers who, while boating on Lough Lannagh, used the church as a target.
Many of the slabs in the old churchyard are very old and time has worn away the lettering, by which, at one time, the names of those who lie beneath them might be learned.
One slab there still tells the observer that it is to the memory of a Very Rev. Fr. Henry who was parish priest of Islandeady and died in 1848.
Any Christmas would not be complete without its ghost stories, and that makes me think that my readers will surely be interested in the story of a wager that was made in this district long ago, when fairies and blarney were more spoken than they are today.
In a village ‘across the lake’ there lived a man who boasted that he feared neither ghost nor fellow-man.
At that time when there were all kinds of superstitions abounding in Ireland, such a boast was a rather big one, as ghosts were supposed to be in every dark corner and near every gentleman’s gate and under every big tree, and even strong men would seldom travel by unfrequented paths after dark set in.
This parish abounds with tales of haunted sandpits, crossroads and bridges, so our friend from 'across the lake’ must have been a very brave man indeed.
He made a bet that he would enter the cemetery at midnight and bring back one of a number of skulls that were left overground.
As he had no boat he had to walk around the lake by road and this was a journey of several miles.
Unknown to him, and after he had left, two of the men present when the wager was made crossed the lake by boat and, arrayed in white sheets, waited for his arrival in the graveyard.
When the brave man entered the graveyard he was surprised to see two white-robed figures standing beside him.
Without hesitation, he stopped and picked up a skull and was about to leave the graveyard when he was halted by the order: “Leave down that skull, it belongs to my people.”
He left it down, went a few yards and picked up another, but the second figure in white spoke: “Leave it down, it belongs to my people.”
He dropped that skull, but picked up another and was again given the same order. This performance was repeated several times with the same result.
He then went to the other side of the cemetery and picked up another skull, but again the figure in white told him to leave it down.
Looking at it for a minute the brave man answered: “All these cannot belong to your people. This one is certainly not. I looked at the others and there were no brains in them. I grant you that these belonged to your family, but this one was that of a brainy man and so it belongs to my family, and I’m taking him home to warm for the Christmas.”