Haunted Donegal

INTRODUCTION

DONEGAL (or ‘ Dún an nGall ’ in Irish, meaning ‘the fort of the stranger’) is the name given to the most northerly county in Ireland. Strange things have happened, and continue to happen, in this wild and beautiful place and ghost stories are part of the fabric of life here. If stones could only speak, they would have strange and illuminating things to tell us. Perhaps they could tell us how Donegal got its name. Was it from the Vikings who invaded Ireland in the ninth century or the Red Branch Knights of Conor MacNessa who appear in ‘The Grianan of Aileach Warriors’ story? Or was it from Scottish mercenaries called Gallowglasses (‘foreign warriors’) who helped Ireland in their battles against the Anglo-Norman invasion in the twelfth century?

In this book, I have included tales of the strangers. The most famous of these were the MacSweeney and O’Donnell clans, which feature in ‘The Tragic Lovers of Doe Castle’ and ‘The Piper’s Cave at Fanad’. I hope you will find the stories as interesting to read as they were to research and write.

Storytelling was an essential part of my childhood. During Sunday afternoon walks, my father spun many a tale about the places that we passed, who had lived there, what had happened in that house or farm, what battles had been fought there and many other things. Whether they were true or not wasn’t important. His philosophy was ‘why let the truth stand in the way of a good story?’

My mother was born in Donegal and our family spent many holidays in my great-aunt’s house in Donegal when we were young. There was something eerily seductive about listening to ghost stories around a wide hearth with the glow from a turf fire and the light of a Tilley lamp and then tiptoeing off into the ‘lower room’ with a candle in a saucer. With the bedclothes pulled up to the chins, our eyes would roam fearfully around the room as we expected a ghost to appear from the gloomy recesses. When the candle finally flickered and died, we whispered our prayers and eventually fell into a dream world akin to the kind of thing you would expect to see in a blockbuster movie.

On other occasions, my mother took us up into the hills or to the nearby beach for a picnic and told us wild and wonderful stories of the ‘olden days’ in the countryside. Mamore Gap was a favourite walk and we made the journey up to the holy well there so often that I believe I know every stone along the way. It is for this reason that I included ‘The Mamore Gap’s Ghostly Travellers’.

I miss those days and I was often reminded of how special they were when I interviewed people about their experiences, particularly in the remoter areas of the county.

I am sad that the oral tradition of storytelling is gradually disappearing as technology allows for more and more electronic communication. This book is an attempt to preserve some of the stories told in and about Donegal. Many are documented already and it has been a joy to research them. Others come ‘straight from the mouth’.

I hope that you enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed gathering them.

1

CASTLES AND MANORS

Castlereagh and the Goblin Child

The following tale was recorded by Sir Walter Scott’s biographer, John Gibson Lockhart. Scott himself had heard the tale from Lord Castlereagh who had told the story at one of his wife’s dinner parties in Paris in 1815.

Lord Castlereagh.

In 1793, Robert Stewart, son of Lord Castlereagh, was a young captain and a member of the Dublin parliament, was posted to the old and somewhat dilapidated barracks in Ballyshannon, where he commanded a militia regiment.

He did not allow his military duties to interfere with his great love of hunting. On one occasion, during the gaming season in November, he pursued game much farther than he had intended and lost his way. When the weather took a turn for the worse he put the idea of shooting pheasants out of his mind and looked for a place to ride out the storm.

He presented himself at the door of a gentleman’s house, sent in his card and requested shelter for the night. The hospitality of the Irish country gentry is proverbial; the master of the house received him warmly, explained that he could not make him so comfortable as he could have wished because his house was full of visitors already. In addition to his visitors, some strangers, fleeing the inclemency of the night, had already come to the door, seeking shelter.

The master called the butler and bade him do the best he could under the circumstances to provide a room for the captain. The room to which he was shown was very large. It did not contain much furniture and seemed cold and draughty. Captain Stewart requested that a fire of wood and turf be lit in the gaping, old-fashioned hearth in a vain attempt to heat the room. What happened next was an experience that haunted Robert Stewart.

‘I woke up in the middle of the night for some unaccountable reason. The fire at the far end of the room was but a gentle glow and as I lay watching the dying embers it suddenly blazed up.’

The brightest light emanated from the chimney itself and startled Stewart, but what happened next startled him even more.

‘From the embers stepped the glowing, radiant naked figure of a small boy and he walked towards me. I could not believe my eyes and wondered if I was dreaming but I pinched myself and knew that I was not.’

Initially, the young captain was paralysed with fear, and as the figure walked slowly towards him, it grew in stature at every step until, in the words of Scott’s biographer John Gibson Lockhart, ‘on coming within two or three paces of his bed, it had assumed the appearance of a ghastly giant, pale as death, with a bleeding wound on the brow, and eyes glaring with rage and despair’.

Captain Stewart jumped out of bed and faced the figure in an attitude of defiance, at which point it drew back, diminishing in size until eventually the childlike form vanished back into the embers.

The following morning, Stewart voiced his anger at the breakfast table, believing that the master or his guests had played some sort of prank, but they all denied this accusation.

Suddenly a thought seemed to strike the master. He called his butler.

‘Hamilton’, he said, ‘where did Captain Stewart sleep last night?’

‘Well, sir, you know that every room was filled last night so I gave him the boy’s room. But I was sure that the fire would keep him from coming out.’

His host admonished the butler and took the captain aside to clarify what he had seen. He explained that there was a tradition in his family that ‘whomever the Radiant Boy appeared to would rise to the summit of power but when he reached that he would die a violent death’.

When his father died, Robert Stewart inherited the title of Lord Castlereagh and he later became a senior government minister. He helped to defeat Napoleon and was key in the Congress of Vienna that led to peace in Europe for decades. He was blamed, however, for the Peterloo Massacre, when cavalry with drawn sabres charged a crowd who were demonstrating in Manchester for universal suffrage.

It was because of this massacre that the poet Shelley wrote, in his poem ‘The Masque of Anarchy’, ‘I met Murder on the way. He had a face like Castlereagh.’

Perhaps it was this scandal that led him to take his own life, but many, including Scott, believed that ‘The Goblin Child’ continued to haunt him and drove him to take that final violent step, of taking his own life, as prophesied.

The story inspired William Allingham, a poet who was born in the town of Ballyshannon, to write a poem called the ‘Goblin Child of Ballyshannon’:

This happened when our island still

Had nests of goblins left to fill,

Each mouldy nook and corner close

Like soldiers in an ancient house.

And this one read within the face

Intruding on its dwelling place

Lines of woe, despair and blood.

By spirits only understood;

As mortals now can read the same

In the letters to his name.

Who in that haunted chamber lay,

When we call him Castlereagh.

Mongevlin Castle

The most famous haunting of Mongevlin Castle is that the Ingean Dubh spectre, a dark-haired faceless woman garbed in white who prowls the castle and its grounds. But she is not the only ghost who resides in that dreary place. The castle’s history might shed some light on the identities of these spectres.

‘Mongevlin Castle is situated about one mile from the village of St. Johnston and seven miles from Derry.’ So wrote Captain Pynnar in 1619 when he mentioned its location in his ‘Survey of the Escheated Counties of Ulster’. He also reported that ‘Sir John Stewart hath three thousand acres, called Cashell, Hetin and Littergull. Upon this proportion there is built at Magelvin a very strong Castle with a flanker at each corner.’

The walls of the courtyard and gateway, erected between the River Foyle and the castle, were standing until a few years ago, according to the Dublin Penny Journal, published in the 1830s. A small stone flag with the following inscription of John Stewart’s ownership was built into the arch:

J.S

E.S.T

1619

This stone was lost but another one remains which might give some clue about the ghosts that haunted the castle. The inscription bore the words, ‘The Hon. Elizabeth Hamilton, daughter of John, Lord Culpepper and widow of Colonel James Hamilton (who lost his life at sea in Spain in the service of King and Country) purchased this manor and annexed it to the opposite estate of the family.’ The inscription went on the say that Elizabeth was very generous to her numerous offspring, settling them with money and estates. Her eldest son James, Earl of Abercorn and Viscount Strabane ‘caused this inscription to be placed here for the information of her posterity. Anno 1704.’

James II stopped at the castle for a short time during the Siege of Derry and from there sent proposals of surrender to the garrison through his host, Archdeacon Hamilton.

There was a young servant lad who worked in the castle in the eighteenth century. One winter night he visited a neighbouring farmhouse and confessed to his friend that he was frightened. He told him that some nights he saw strange forms rushing to and fro, especially in the upper rooms. James, for that was the young boy’s name, stammered out stories of fearful yelling and screaming. He told of what he had heard in the kitchen from the other servants about the frightening goings-on when the hour of midnight approached. He received no comfort from his friend, who said that the castle was indeed haunted but reminded him that he was lucky to be able to work there to help his family.

The lad walked back to the castle alone. As he approached the grounds, he heard a clock in the church tower strike midnight. Immediately he was overcome with a weak and shivery feeling, as if some malevolent thing was watching him. He tried to run but the weakness made his legs buckle beneath him and as he fell to the ground he heard a fearful screech. He fainted and the terrifying noise was lost in a silent blackness.

When he came to, he rose unsteadily and, as soon as he was able to, he took to his heels and ran,