The folklore of the evil ghost known as Petticoat Loose and the positive view the Irish tradition takes of the spirits of children.
For folklorist Anne O’Connor the idea of experiencing ghosts or presences is universal in Ireland and part of human life. For Irish people in the past,
The supernatural was always very much inter blended if you like with the natural and a very good attitude was taken to it.
Ghosts, like the fairies, can be good or bad. A particular example of an evil ghost in the Irish tradition is a woman who has murdered a child. This ghost or spirit is known in Waterford and Tipperary as Petticoat Loose. In Cork she is called Moll Shaughnessy, while in Limerick she is Sprid na Bearnan.
Anne O’Connor tells the tale of Petticoat Loose haunting a man travelling on the road to a priest’s house at night time. It transpires Petticoat Loose is damned because she killed an unbaptised child. Petticoat Loose is banished to the Red Sea or in some tales, Bay Lough where she must make ropes of sand or carry out some other futile task for the rest of her days.
In the Irish tradition the spirits of dead children are usually related to the fairy rath. Their voices are heard crying or their footprints are seen on the fairy fort.
Anne O’Connor recounts the story of a priest who comes across three lights while he is on journey. The two brighter lights are the ghosts of baptised children. The duller light belongs to an unbaptised child.
Happily he baptises it on the spot and the child’s light becomes as bright as the others.
Anne O’Connor surmises,
In this way Irish tradition has a very positive view of the spirits of the children it’s for the woman who kills children that Irish tradition is very severe.
‘Of Night and Light and the Half Light’ is a series of six programmes in which Donncha Ó Dúlaing explores the world of folklore of fairies and of the other world in Ireland through the conversations of people who know about these things.
This episode of ‘Of Night and Light and the Half Light’ was broadcast on 21 July 1982. The presenter is Donncha Ó Dúlaing.
