Riding a Bull (Ulster)

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riding bull

A Lough Neagh fisherman told me another story about fairy horsemen. One evening his uncle was walking along the lough shore near the Battery when he saw a band of fairies moving about among the ragweeds which they were turning into tiny horses. He shouted ‘Pick one for me, too!’ and the fairy-captain called out that there were no more horses, but that they had a bull which he could ride if he liked. The man said he would try and he climbed on the bull’s back and set off with the fairies. The captain warned him that on no account must he speak, no matter what he saw or heard. The fairy horsemen travelled right round the lough shore and all was well until they reached the Ballinderry River. The fairies put their horses at it and they cleared it like a flights of swallows. The bull cleared it, too, and when came down on the other side, the man remarked approvingly, ‘That was a damned good leap for a bull!’ In that second, fairies, horses, and bull vanished, and the man found himself standing alone on the banks of the Ballinderry. Since then that part of the river has been called ‘the Bull-hole’. (Foster, Ulster, 75-76)

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