Tailor & The Hare-Woman

Grabbing his clothes, which lay in a heap beside the tub, the tailor made a run across the kitchen and up the stairs. He looked back as he did so and saw that the witch-woman had also changed back into her own shape and was coming after him, letting out terrible yells. There was a knife Iying on the kitchen table and she grabbed that and came on, waving it threateningly.

The tailor got to his bedroom and managed to shut and secure the door after him. He held it closed while the witch-woman hammered on it and screamed awful threats and oaths against him. Gathering together his bits and pieces, he opened the small window in the gable-end of the room and let himself through it, dropping down into the yard below as quick as he could. And all the while, he could hear the witch-woman beating and breaking at the door.

He ran and ran across the countryside and never stopped until he was on the outskirts of Sligo town itself. He had left his thimble and several pieces of stuff behind him, but nothing in God's own creation would make him go back for them. He took up tailoring again but he never struck out on the road towards Coole. He never knew what became of the witch-woman, nor did he want to find out, for those that traffic in the dark sciences are best left alone.

However, some time after, he was working in a country house, doing some sewing by the light of a lamp, and he had to bend over the cloth that he was mending so that he could see it better. One of the children who was playing about the floor looked queerly at him and, climbing up beside him, said: 'What is that on the back of your neck, sir?'

The tailor put up his hand and felt along the back of his neck. To his great horror, there was a ring of coarse fur, the same as you would find around the neck of a hare! It was a part of him that the enchanted water hadn't touched when he was in his hare form and which hadn't been transformed back. That ring of fur stayed with him until the day that he died and he had to wear a scarf, even on a warm day, to keep curious folk from staring at it or asking him about it.

So if you ever see a woman taking a bath in a wooden tub before the first light of morning or a tailor with a scarf about his shoulders on a hot summer's day, then you'll know for certain that my story is true."

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From Beasts, Banshees and Brides from the Sea by Bob Curran