The Serpent in the Churchyard

Transcription of narrative from the Schools Collection XIX.

Written by Nora Joyce, Oughterard, c. 1937.

“In the churchyard near Oughterard the people say that every time a corpse was buried a serpent used come at night and eat it. This serpent had a beaten path up from Lough Corrib.

It happened at this time that a woman died in a village called Glann. She was taken to the graveyard to be buried. After the burial her three sons drew lots to see which of them would watch the mothers grave and keep away the serpent. The lot fell on the married son but the youngest of them would not let him go. So he stayed himself. At about midnight he heard the whistling of the serpent coming up from Lough Corrib. It came to the grave and put down its head and was about to take up the corpse when the man hit him with his sword and nearly killed it. Then the serpent who was already dead said “hit me again”. The man then said “once is enough to hit you” for he knew that if he hit him again he would get alive again and by leaving him that way he would die.

The man then got his horse and went home by a short cut to Glann. When he was at the Puca’s Bridge a little white woman got up behind him on the horse and stayed there until he was nearly at home and this is why the bridge got its name. When the man went home he tied up his horse and went to bed. This man or the horse never again saw the daylight because they both dies that night.

Until about three years ago the blood of the serpent was to be seen on a stone on one of the windows of St. Cummin’s Church. The stone is not there now and it is said that it must have been taken to Dublin.”