building a house for his wife, for he brought her first to his
father's, up at the house by the Lough. My father and us were living
nigh hand to where the new house was to be built, to overlook the men
at their work. My father was a weaver, and brought his looms and all
there into a cottage that was close by. The foundations were marked
out, and the building stones lying about, but the masons had not come
yet; and one day I was standing with my mother foment the house, when
we sees a smart wee woman coming up the field over the burn to us. I
was a bit of a girl at the time, playing about and sporting myself, but
I mind her as well as if I saw her there now!" My friend asked how the
woman was dressed, and the old woman said, "It was a gray cloak she had
on, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied round
her head, like the country women did use to wear in them times." My
friend asked, "How wee was she?" And the old woman said, "Well now, she
wasn't wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the Wee
Woman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you would
say. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round in the
face. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother's sister, and Betty was
like none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any of them. She
was round and fresh in the face, and she never was married, and she
never would take any man; and we used to say that the Wee Woman--her
being like Betty--was, maybe, one of their own people that had been
took off before she grew to her full height, and for that she was
always following us and warning and foretelling. This time she walks
straight over to where my mother was standing. 'Go over to the Lough
this minute!'--ordering her like that--'Go over to the Lough, and tell
Joseph that he must change the foundation of this house to where I'll
show you fornent the thornbush. That is where it is to be built, if he
is to have luck and prosperity, so do what I'm telling ye this minute.'
The house was being built on 'the path' I suppose--the path used by the