Speaker 1: You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the best
in paranormal talk radio in the UK and around the world.
Scary Era Era is the Irish or Gaelic word for Ireland.
Paranormal means all the things that are impossible to explain
by non natural forces or by science, and Ireland is
steep and lower ghosts, blood, sweat, tears, sacrifice, hunger, desperation
and charm. Oh and the paranormal. Welcome to Scary Era,
Mark Manning, I surrender, dear, oh, do put that away.
You'll have someone's eye at Hello and welcome to this
edition all Scary Era. We've just had a big storm
in Ireland and I've heard it called storm Own, storm
aon whatever it was, Big January twenty fourth, just gone.
Shortly we'll be getting on the telephone to discuss with
a man originally from Birmingham, England, the aftermath of aforementioned storm.
Speaker 2: Look for me too.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you that later on we'll be
discussing no tittering in the cheap seats, the Big Wind
of eighteen thirty nine, Ireland's most dramatic and explosive storm
stroke hurricane of all time. You're gonna love it now.
If you are listening to scary era, I would like
your participation please. I'm like a lonely child waiting by
the phone. In the words of Juran Duran Well email
to be precise. If you've got a ghostly tale, email
it to me Paranormal Island at ProtonMail dot com. Again,
paramormal Island at ProtonMail dot com. Right, where's me phone,
den Well?
Speaker 3: They make.
Speaker 1: Nigel? How long ago is it now, Nigel? Since you
and your good lady settled in County Mayo.
Speaker 2: Ireland thirty years this shirt at the end of this year.
Speaker 1: And did you ever experience a storm as devastating as
this one?
Speaker 2: As devastating? No, but as bad In nineteen ninety eight
I think it was Sint Stephen's Day. It was bad
down as well. I just remember being outing it and
it was really bad.
Speaker 1: And were there any similar stormy travesties back in your
time in England?
Speaker 2: Na, We never got storms like that in the Middlands.
Speaker 1: Now it was as serious as a heart attack this
time around, because you had a red warning. Well, Nigel,
were you making plans it was coming?
Speaker 2: This time? Where about twenty five years ago we didn't
know it was coming, but at this time we did
and we just loo. You just move everything that can
blow around out of the way, and you close everything down,
and you shut all the doors and the gates, and
you do things like that help for the best.
Speaker 1: For those that don't know, County Mayo is a rugged, raw,
manly piece of the west of Ireland. I eat an
onion for breakfast kind of place. I know I'm being
a bit dramatic, but describe the terrain for people.
Speaker 2: It's mountaineer and cialy and about two miles away from
the sea, so it's wild and.
Speaker 1: Rugged with a wild, unpredictable Atlantic get your doorstep. It's
quite remote, really, yeah, it is quite remote. But the
scenery is spectacular though, isn't it. It ranges from verdant to
desert like, and of course you've got those constant rocky cliffs.
You're spoiled, really, aren't you.
Speaker 2: It's nice on a sunny day, pretty on a wet,
windy day. You just don't want to be a you know,
if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And so you had twenty four hours or so waiting
for the storm to come crashing.
Speaker 3: Did.
Speaker 2: You now? It started like you get the quiet before
the storm. The wind drops, there's no windows all at first,
and then it slowly builds up. And it did that
in the evening time, and then it started to get
gusty in the early hours. And I think it peaked
about seven or eight o'clock in the morning, you say,
just as it was getting light. But it's very noisy,
and you know, the wind's rolling across the roof like thunder,
and you can hear things banging around, you know that's
come loose or something like that. And I just got
up when it got light and I went out to
see how bad it was. I was being blown about.
It's all out of the place and there was just
trees smashed and down all over the place everywhere on
my neighbour's land, you know. But there was no structural
damage to our house, but he lost a few tiles.
Speaker 1: And you're a farmer as well, aren't you, Nigel. Hopefully
those lovely animals of yours were safe and sound.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean, I know when the storm's coming,
so they moved to a quiet place to the wind,
and the usually they're okay. You know, you don't hear
about animals getting hurt.
Speaker 4: The nest.
Speaker 2: They're kept in a small field, but usually you put
them somewhere safe. It's manual sheep around there. Sheep could
hide behind a rock or ifing. But if they were
if a sheep got caught in the middle of it
in a field in that kind of wind, it would
have been blown away, like you know, it would have
soon disappeared and got hurt. But they're quite clever. There's
no such thing as a dumb animal, as I say.
Speaker 1: And electricity wise, how did you fare in Nigel? Because
the outages were widespread.
Speaker 2: We had no power from the Thursday nights till Tuesday morning.
We had a generator so we were okay, so we
could keep warm and have the freezer was kept okay
and we had warm drinks and meals. A lot of
people didn't so I had to move out of their
homes it was too cold, and they went into the
towns and stopped in hotels because there was no services.
There was no internet and there was no power and
no telephone and no water. We have no water up day.
The hotels and the businesses which were open would only
accept cash, so if you had a card or a
phone to pay, you were turned away. Because there was
just now why they could stick a payment. You see,
so cashless.
Speaker 1: King and the irony as you hear so much about,
you know, the cashless society, and here we are back
to basics. Wouldn't surprise me if those difficulties with electric
vehicles as.
Speaker 2: Well, because how would you charge the electric vehicle? You're stuck. Look,
if we've got petrol diesel, we can drive anywhere to
try and find food or water or safety. People who
electric vehicles, you've only got so much power stored on
it and you can't charge it back up. Also, an
electric power tool is completely useless because you can't charge that.
So a petrol chain saw can cut a tree out
of the way which is blocking your driveable blocking the road,
but an electric one won't do that. It'll go flat
and then it becomes totally useless. The proof is in
the pudding. All this talk about going electric and going
you know, all digital, it's total rubbish and this storm
proves that it.
Speaker 1: Well, thankfully old, Well that ends well, so hopefully you
and the missus are okay, yeah looughly so yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we've only got the crowns back today
after I don't know how many days. But the powers
back now, the water's back and the internet's working again.
So we were going to bed at seven at seven
o'clock in the evening because we're just sitting there looking
at teacher, have nothing to watch or do, you see.
So that's what we were doing.
Speaker 1: Well. On the plus side, Nigel, you're not going to
be short to firewood for some time. You were also
telling me you had something like twenty trees blown down
around you, and some of them pretty old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were some really old oats about two hundred
years old. We lost two of those at least. There's
lots of other trees do come down as well and
smashed to pieces that you know, branches get torn off
and one tree falls on top of another and all
that kind of thing. You see.
Speaker 1: Oh, Sony, you've really been through the wars. You are
going to be in lumberjack mode for some time. You're
going to be chopping and chopping. Well. Nigel, congratulations for
weathering the storm in County Mail on Island's west coast.
Please give my best to your good lady as well,
and thank you for joining us here on scary era.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, A couple of things over the years but
I've learned, well I don't. I suppose it's not learned.
I've just become accustomed to it. And I think it's
kind of it's maybe it's another sense or something. But
often when you go into places, you will get a
feeling for the place and you'll get a feeling of
whether or not it's comfortable. And whatever cause is that,
who knows what causes that. But we have an intuition.
We have an inbuilt intuition. I can't describe what it
is or where it comes from, or the physics of
it or the chemistry of it, but it's there, and
anybody will will tell you to stick with your intuition.
If you think something doesn't feel right, then don't hang around.
Speaker 3: Superb advice from regular contributor to Scary Era David McGlynn
aka the Squire, And don't hang around either.
Speaker 1: If you've got an Irish.
Speaker 3: Paranormal tale to tell, simply email Paranormal Island at Proton
Male dot com and it'll be read out for you
before you get to teletone yourself. That's Paranormal Island at
Protonmale dot com.
Speaker 1: Earlier this year, I reached out to the exotically named
Turtle Bunbury. He's an Irish historian and author. And I said, Turtle,
I said to him, my mother, my late mother, used
to tell me her grandparents related a story to her.
It was like a hurricane, a huge, big storm that
happened in Ireland years and years and years ago. Do
you remember anything about it? And unlike his name, Turtle
was very quick on the uptake. He said to me Mark,
I've just a thing for you. You can read all
about it on Turtlebunbury dot com. And that's exactly what
I'm going to be doing for you, folks. So gather
round the campfire, get your.
Speaker 4: Marshmellows or else a dirty, great lump of taust on
the end of his stick, because here we go. Oh,
it doesn't have to be all ghosts and ghoulies and
leprechauns to be scary. You know, the elements are just
as terrifying. In dear old Ireland town. The Night of
the Big Wind was the most devastating storm in recorded
Irish history. The hurricane of sixth to seventh of January
eighteen thirty nine made more people homeless in a single
night than all the Surry decades of eviction that followed it.
The calm before the big wind struck was particularly eerie.
Most of the eight million people living in Ireland at
the time were preparing for Little Christmas, the feast of
the Epiphany. The previous day had seen the first snowfall
of the year, heavy enough for some to build snow men.
By contrast, Sunday morning was unusually warm, almost clammy, and
yet the air was so still that along the West Coast,
voices could be heard floating on the air between houses
more than a mile apart. Notwithstanding the snow, the day
was not cold, recalled Tomas o' nail Roseil Thomas O'Neill Russell,
who was on his family farm near Moat, County, Westmead
when the storm blew in. There was not even a
breath of wind. But there was something awful in the
dark stillness of that winter day, for there was no
sunlight coming through the thick, motionless clouds that hung over
the earth. At approximately three p m, the rain began
to fall and the wind picked up. Nobody could have
predicted that those first soft rain drops signified an advance
assault from the most terrifying hurricane in human memory. By
six p m The winds had become strong and the
rain drops were heavier, sleep like, with occasional bursts of hail.
Farmers grimaced as their hay ricks and thatched roofs took
a pounding. In the towns and villages, fires flickered and
doors slammed, church bells chimed, and dogs began to whine.
Fishermen turned their ears west. A distant, increasingly loud rumble
could be heard upon the frothy horizon at Glen O'sheen
in County Limerick. A well to do German farmer called
Jacob Stuffel began to weep. At Moidrum Castle in County Westmeath,
seventy eight year old Lord Castlemaine decided to turn in
early and go to bed. In the Wicklow Mountains, a
team of geographic surveyors headed up by John O'Donovan, finally
made it to their hotel in Glendaloche. They had been
walking all day, often knee deep in snow, sailing upon
the Irish Sea. Captain Smith of the Pennsylvania studied his
instruments and tried to make sense of the fluctuating pressures
rounding the north coast of Ireland. In the schooner Venus.
Astor MacPhee decided his best course of action would be
to drop anchor in Rathmullen rather than risk his cargo
of whiskey and chugar. All going to plan, he could
complete the voyage from Glasgow to Sligo in the morrow.
Speaker 1: By ten p m. Ireland was in the throes of
a ferocious cyclone that would continue on a bit it
through the night for at least eight hours. The hurricane
had soared across three thousand miles of unbroken island free
Atlantic Ocean, gathering momentum every second. It hit islands west
coast with such power that the waves are said to
have broken over the top of the cliffs of Moger.
Reading contemporary accounts, the impression is that if Ireland did
not have such magnificent cliffs forming a barrier along our
west coast, the entire country would simply have been engulfed
by water. The noise of the sea crashing against the
rocks could be heard for miles inland above the roar
and din of the storm itself. The earth trembled under
the assault. The ocean tossed huge boulders onto the cliff
tops of the Arron Islands. Perhaps the most distressing aspect
was that all this took place in utter darkness. People
cannot have known what was going on. The wind churned
its way across the land, extinguishing every candle and lantern
it encountered. The black night was only relieved by the
lightning streaks that accompanied the storm, and the occasional blood
red flicker of the Aurora borealis burning in the northern sky.
All across Ireland, hundreds of thousands of people were attuned
to the sound of the furious tempest, their windows shattered
by hailstones, their brick walls rattling, their rain sudden, thatched
roofs sinking fast. The most terrible thing I have ever
heard was the roaring of the wind on that awful night,
stated t O Russell. I can never forget it, nor
can anyone who heard it ever forget it. A horrible sound,
something between a howl and a roar, of unutterable awfulness.
It was hardly to be wondered at that. Almost everyone
thought the end of the world had come. Those who
had probably never felt fear in all their previous lives
were like babies, and wept like them as the wind
grew stronger, it began to rip the roofs of how
chimney pots, broken slates, sheets of lead and shards of
glass were hurtled to the ground. Rather astonishingly, someone later
produced as statistic that four thousand, eight hundred and forty
six chimneys were knocked off their purchase during the night
of the Big Wind. Many of those who died that
night were killed by falling masonry. Norman tower houses and
old churches collapsed. Factories and barracks were destroyed. Fires erupted
in the streets of Castle, bar Athlone, Loch ray Kels, Kilkenny,
Mote and Dublin. The wind blew all the water out
of the canal near Tuam. It knocked a pinnacle off
Carlo Cathedral and the solitary remaining chimney off Carlo Castle.
The north gable collapsed on the keep at Trim Castle.
The gable also tumbled from the bishop's palace on the
rock of Castle. Its remains can be seen on the
great Lawn. It stripped the earth alongside the River Boyne,
exposing the bones of soldiers killed in the famous battle
one hundred and fifty years earlier. Fish were lifted from
the lake at Farnham County Cavern and scattered across the
fields of Farnham Estate. Hundreds of fish were likewise reported
to have been blown out of Loch Ree and died
upon its shore. Others were washed ashore at Warren Point.
Stories would later be told of sea fish found in
the sleeved blooms. A stormy petrel sea bird was blown
so far off course it was found that the Twett
family estate near Sonna, Westmeath. At four o'clock in the morning,
Astor MacPhee of the Venus stood horrified on board his
ship as it was dragged from its anchorage in Rathmullen
and pulled towards the Inch Bar, a notorious sand bank
at the mouth of Lochswillie. The ship struck the bank
with such force that she immediately killed with water and
fell on her beamends. In desperation, MacFee and his crew
clung to the main rigging and waited in the village
of Castle Dawson, near the northwestern shore of Lockney. The
wind seemingly toppled a sixty foot obelisk erected by the
celebrated Earl Bishop of Derry in seventeen ninety five, to
commemorate the virtues and benevolence of the descendants of Joshua Dawson,
the Spymaster and Chief Secretary for Ireland. In the reign
of Queen Anne. Roads in every parish became impassable. All
along the Grand Canal. Trees were pulled up by the
roots and hurled across the water to the opposite bank.
Thousands of timber cabins were destroyed. The wind blew under
the half doors and swept the burning embers up from
their fireplaces through the chimney to the thatched roofs, spreading
the fire to neighboring thatch. If there was any surviving
inhabitants had no choice but to flee into the pitch
black night in clothes that were presumably soon wholly drenched
by the intense rains and snows that accompanied the cruel
piercing wind, and he sought shelter amid the hollows and
hedges of the land. People in the Midlands found themselves
drenched in sudden torrents of salt water, water that must
have been carried on the tempest from the ocean. Farmers
were hit particularly hard. A ricks in the fields across
Ireland were blown to pieces. Wooden fences and dry stone
walls collapsed, allowing terrified livestock to run away. Sheep were
blown off mountains or killed by tumbling rocks. Mister Powell
of County Claire lost one hundred and seventy sheep that night.
Cattle were reported to have simply frozen to death in
the fields. The next morning, one of Jacob Stuffel's neighbors
recalled seeing the distraught Germans standing high up on a hillock,
looking with dismay at his haggard farm, his stacks having
been swept out of existence. Suddenly he raised his two hands,
palms open, high over his head, and looking up at
the sky, he roared in a voice that was heard
far and wide, Oh God Almighty, what did I ever
do to you? And you should creem me in that way.
Stoffel was not the only man who believed that the
hurricane occurring on the night of the Epiphany was of
divine origin any sort, as a warning that the day
of judgment would soon be upon them. Some believed the
Freemasons had unleashed the devil from the gates of Hell.
Others maintained that English fairies had invaded Ireland and forced
the indigenous little people to disappear amid a ferocious whirlwind.
Irish fairies, of course, are wingless, and can only fly
by calling up the Sia delcora, the magic whirlwinds. The
well to do did not escape any mansions had their
roofs stripped off. Lord Castlemaine was fastening his bedroom windows
when the storm blew them open and hurled him so
violently upon his back that he instantly expired. His brother
in law, the Earl of Clancarty, later reported the loss
of nearly twenty thousand trees on his estate at Balanislowe.
Similar figures came in from the other landed estates. Henry
Bruin of oak Park in Carlow declared that his woods
were now as bold as the palm of my hand.
At the Seaford estate in County Down, an estimated sixty
thousand trees were felled. The Marquess of Cunningham lost a
third of his woods at Slain. The Lord Bishop of
Mead's domain at ard Bracken House was likewise devastated. In
County Monaghan, the beautiful plantation at glass Lock now castles,
and at nearby Castle Shane had severely felt the force
of the storm. The Lefroy family had just completed the
Carryglass Manor in County Longford. All of the trees around
the house fell down utterly, altering the architectural perspectives, although
the estate carpenters working on site did manage to craft
a fine dining room sideboard from a fallen oak on
sixth of January eighteen thirty nine. Timper was a valuable commodity.
Twenty four hours later, so many trees had fallen that
it was virtually worthless on imagined numbers of wild birds
were killed, their nesting places smashed, and there was little
birds on that spring. On a road near Athlone, thousands
of dead crows were found alongside a screen of trees.
Crows all but vanished from Irish skies for several years afterwards.
Jack DAWs also seemed on the verge of extinction. In
his hotel room in Glendelock, John O'Donovan was fortunate not
to share Lord Castlemaine's fate. He was struggling with the
shutters when a squall mighty as a thunderbolt propelled him
across the room. When he viewed the damage next morning.
He described it as if the entire country had been
swept clean by some gigantic broom in NAIs the destruction
as awful, reported the newy Examiner. Scarcely a house has
escaped demolition. This report from the archives of the Dublin
Metropolitan Police following the night of the Big Wind January sixth,
eighteen thirty nine. Parson's killed, two Parson's injured, eighteen Hales
has blown down, thirty eight Hels's Park blown down, one
hundred and nineteen houses completely unroofed, two hundred and forty
three houses partly unroofed four thousand, eight one hundred and
forty six chimneys blown down, fifteen hundred and twenty seven
windows blown in, eleven hundred and forty three panes of
glass as are twined to be broken thirty thousand, three
hundred and fifty eight out. This is about to be
considerably less than the actual damage. Valuable tree is blown
down two thousand, five hundred and twenty four miscellaneous damage
not included in the above. Total amount of damage in
monetary terms sixty four thousand and forty five pounds.
Speaker 2: Worse.
Speaker 1: Dublin resembled a sacked city. The whirlwind of desolation spared
neither building, tree nor shrub. The liffy rose by several
feet and overflowed the key walls. The elms that graced
the main thoroughfare of the Phoenix Park were completely leveled,
as were the elms at the Royal Hospital Kilmaenum. At
the Viceregal Lodge now or So Noucton, a tree crashed
through the roof of the guardroom, where soldiers had been
conversing just moments earlier. The trees on Leinster Lawn outside
the present day dall Ahern the Irish Parliament were uprooted
and scattered like prostrate giants on their mother earth. The
back wall of the Guinness Brewery collapsed, killing nine fine horses.
A witness next morning described how the noble animals were
stretched everywhere as if sleeping, but with every boy crushed
by the ponderous weight of the wall. Military sentry boxes
were blown off their stands and scattered like atoms. A
glass shop on Nassau Street became a heap of ruins.
On Claire Street, a chimney collapsed on a woman who
had just got into her bed, killing her instantly, Police
stations and churches opened their doors for thousands of frightened
citizens who brought their young and frail in for protection.
Even churches could not be trusted. On this night of Lucifer.
The steeple of Irish Town Chapel caved in, and the
bell from the spire of Saint Patrick's Cathedral came down
like a meteorite. Mercifully, nobody died in either instance. Bibbsborough
Road was a bomb sight of exploded windows and fallen chimneys,
as if by shot and shell. One of the forty
female inmates at the Bethiste penitention on Dublin's north side
took the opportunity to light a fire that destroyed the
building as well as the surrounding houses, schoolhouse and chapel.
Two fire men died trying to extinguish the flames. The
hurricane did not stop in Dublin. It pounded its way
across the Irish Sea, killing hundreds of luckless souls caught
at sea. It killed nearly one hundred fishermen off the
coast of Skerries. It killed Captain Smith and the thirty
people on board the packet ship Pennsylvania ships Ail along
the west coast of England were wrecked. Dead bodies continued
to wash up on shore for weeks afterwards. At Everton,
the same wind on roof to cotton factory that whitened
all the space for miles around, as if there had
been a heavy fall of snow. Estimates as to how
many died that night vary from three hundred to eight hundred,
a remarkably low figure given the ferocity of the storm,
and he must have succumbed to pneumonia, frostbite or depression
in its wake. Those bankrupted by the disaster included hundreds
who had stashed their life savings up chimneys and in
the thatched roofs that disappeared in the night. Even in
those days, it was an ill wind that turned none
to good, and among those to benefit were the builders, carpenters,
slaters and thatchers who subsequently rebuilt the fallen buildings. The
big wind also inspired the Reverend Romney Robinson of the
Armagh Observatory to invent the Robinson cup, anemometer, which was
to be the standard instrument for caging wind speed for
the rest of the nineteenth century. Tremendous tales of heroism too.
As daylight began to break across Lockswillie, Lieutenant John Holland,
the head coast guard at Rathmodden, became aware of the
faith of the stricken schooner Venus, whose master and crew
were still clinging to the rigging for dead life. He
rounded up six brave men and put out in a boat,
reaching the ship at about nine o'clock in the morning.
They managed to rescue all nine men, for which Lieutenant
Holland was awarded as Silver Medal. Perhaps the most unlikely
beneficiaries of the Night of the Big Wind were those
old enough to remember it when the Old Age Pensions
Act was enacted in January nineteen o nine, seventy years
after the event. The act, which offered the first ever
weekly pension to those over the age of seventy, was
likened to the opening of a new factory on the
outskirts of every town and village in Britain and Ireland.
By March nineteen o nine, over eighty thousand British pensioners
were registered, of whom seventy thousand were i Irish. When
a committee was sent to investigate this imbalance, it transpired
that few berths in Ireland were registered before eighteen sixty five.
As such, the Irish Pensions Committee decreed that if someone's
age had gone astray on them, they would be eligible
for a pension if they could state that they were
fine and hearty on the night of the Big Wind,
or the ihan a guiha mura, as it's called in Irish.
One such applicant was Tim Joyce of County Limerick. I
always taught I was sixty, he explained, But me friends
came to me and told me there were certainly sure
I was seventy, and if there were three or four
of them against me, the evidence was too strong for me.
I put in for the pension and got it. But
we're not finished with a storm just yet. For the
North of Ireland suffered just as badly. This extract from
the Late Storm from the Northern Standard, dated Saturday January
twenty eighteen thirty nine, read by David McGlynn aka the Squire.
Speaker 5: On the night of Sunday last the severe storm which
ravaged the Kingdom was felt severely in the town of Monahan.
About half past eleven o'clock, the gale, which had been
gradually increasing for some time, swelled into a most terrific
hurricane at about three am on Monday morning. The power
of air rushing from the southwest bore everything before it
with resistless force. The slates and roofing of several houses
were borne upon the raging element as if they were
leaves upon the breeze, and the cowering and terrified inhabitants
looked under devastation, with arms palsied with fear and in
trembling awe looked to the Almighty dispenser of all things
for an abatement of the fury of the winds. Of Ever,
a fire burst forth from the chimney of mister John
Murray's Church Square, and the sparks and flame were dashed
upon the roofs of several thatched houses which occupy one
side of the diamond. For upwards of one hour. The flu,
which we believe had not been swept for a length
time through fourth masses of fire, which were hurled by
the tempest to a great distance. An occasion much additional alarm,
but thank god, no more evil result followed. The fire
burnt itself out on the roofs of the houses on
which the sparks had fallen, were so saturated with wet
from the rain and snow which had fallen on the
previous days, that they were immediately extinguished. However, several dwellings
present that view a frightful wreck. Many chimneys were wrecked,
and we regret to say that three of the small
spires which ornamented our beautiful church were thrown from their
bases and broken to pieces. The amount of damage done
in the neighborhood is enormous. The farmyards are a melancholy spectacle. Hay, straw, oats,
wheat and barley have been, in almost every instance heaped
together in dreadful confusion. Turf riggs have been tossed to
a distance scarcely credible, and much of the fine old
timber which graced the domains of the nobility and gentry
of the neighborhood had been torn up by the roots.
The beautiful plantation in the domain of Missus Leslie of
Glasslock had suffered to a great extent, and the residence
of mister Edward Lucas, Esquire of Castle Shine, m B.
Has severely felt the force of the storm. The memory
of the oldest inhabitants of this country cannot furnish us
an instance of such devastation in so limited a period,
and not to storm alone are many of the injuries attributed.
Fire has in sundry places lent its aid to the
terrible destruction. In Glasslach, a small town within five miles
of Monah, eight houses were burned to the ground and
their inhabitants driven houseless into the streets. But it affords
no pleasure amidst the recital of such calamity to be
able to state that no human being was deprived in life.
In Kililis, between Glasslach and Armagh, great havoc has been
committed by the combined elements of destruction. The town of Clonus,
from its elevated position, felt the full force of the tempest,
and bally Bay, Castle Blaney and Carrick Macross have had
many houses rendered untenantable. Several carts laden with pork et cetera,
coming from the direction of Clers to our market on Monday,
were compelled to return in consequence of the numerous impediments
of the roads caused by fallen trees.
Speaker 1: And again my sincere thanks to Turtle Bunbury, that most
accomplished Irish historian and author, for his help on that
piece not paranormal. Mong Manning is real. Now, that's a
scary sort. Now, if you don't know about the Rendalshum
Forest incident in nineteen eighty in England, where on a
US air base apparently UFOs appeared, this is all well documented, folks.
If you don't know about that, don't consider yourself part
of the paranoral community. But I'm sure you do. What
I was amazed to find out recently, as I was
now raising a documentary on Rendelsham Forest, was that allegedly
there were heroglyphics on the side of the UFO. I
don't know if they photographed them or what, but years
later they were analyzed and apparently they represented two coordinates.
One was for the Pyramids of Giza and another for
a lesser known place called High Brasil or High Brazil,
off the northwest coast of Ireland. It's a mythical, shrouded mystery.
It is supposedly a kind of an atlantis that sunk
under the waves and used to reappear every I don't know,
seven years something like that. David McGlynn, aka the Squire,
is now going to relate a story all about it,
and your children might like to listen in on this one.
Speaker 5: The god of the sea, Mananon Maclear, rode his horse
enbar across the ocean. The scales on the god's skin
rippled over his taut muscles, his hair flowing behind him
like a cape, and his sword Answerer hanging by his side.
He smiled at the sight of a cloud of far ahead.
To the unsuspecting human eye, this was nothing unusual, but
Mananan knew one of his phantom islands lay hidden inside.
Unlike his other secret abodes, this one was dangerously close
to land, and if discovered by humans, would be ruined forever. Luckily,
it was always cloaked in fog, except for one day
every seven years, when it became visible to human eyes,
and that day was getting close. That's why he'd been
summoned to the island. Now he emerged through the fog
onto a golden beach, behind which the spires of a
magnificent city rose into the clouds. Some of the other
gods were waiting for him on the sand, their faces
grim with concern. If gods can't be happy, laughed Mananan,
jumping off his horse. What hope is there for mere mortals?
It is the mere mortals we are worried about, said
the Dagda, god of weather, crops, and the seasons. When
he planted his staff in the sand, a crow landed
on it. What do you mean, asked Mananan. The Dogta
looked at the bird, Tell him, my love. The crow
hopped down on to the sand, instantly transforming into a woman,
the Morrigan, goddess of war. The humans know when our
island will appear, she said. They wait in their ships.
We must stop them. The Dagda put his hand on
his wife's shoulder. We cannot expose ourselves. Well, we must
do something, she said angrily. The gods all look to
Mananan because he was the only one who moved easily
between the world of gods and the world of men.
Leave it to me, he said, leading enbar across the
sand to his palace. Inside, he swapped his godly robes
for human clothes, and, closing his eyes, he transformed his
body too. His opalescent scales fell away to reveal human skin.
The gills on the either side of his neck sealed
themselves shut, and the webbed skin between his fingers and
toes disappeared. He had entered his palace as a God
and left it as a human, his alter ego Orbson Macalid.
Mounting his horse, he rode off across the waves and
soon arrived at Mainland, Ireland, where as the Morrigan had said,
a fleet of ships waited for the island to show itself.
Using his magic, Mananon failed himself in fog and landed
unseen on the Human's beach, where a large crowd had gathered.
As he approached, the people parted to make way for him,
even the king's soldiers, who knew by the rider's horse
and clothing that he was a man of some importance.
Arriving before the human king, Mananon dismounted his horse, got
down on one knee, and introduced himself as Orbson Macalid, merchant,
trader and nobleman. I am Bressel, said the king. How
can I help you? Mananon smiled. I think you will
find that his eye who can help you? Bressel arched
his eyebrows. I believe you are waiting to conquer the
ghostly island known as the Isle of the Blessed, continued Mananan.
The king nodded with interest, for it wasn't often he
met some one who knew anything about the mysterious island.
You know, the island only appears for one day, said Mananon.
A day is all it will take to seize it,
said the King. Mananon shook his head in disagreement. By nightfall,
the island will have sunk beneath the waves, and you
will all be drowned. That is not what I have heard,
Orbs and maclid. I have heard that if we land there,
we will live forever in a realm of plenty among
the gods. The thought of an army of humans on
his precious island paradise made Mananon's human skin crawl. He
could tell the King wasn't going to be put off
his quest, though, so Mananon came up with another plan
to prevent an invasion. There is one way to stop
the island from submerging beneath the water, he said. Oh really,
said the king.
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 5: Each of its four corners must be pinned down with
a metal spear, said Mananan. If this is done before midnight,
the island will remain solid for you to conquer and stay.
That sounds easy, said Brazil. Not so, replied Mananan. You
have but one day to reach all four corners. The
king thought about this for a moment, and then ordered
his men to prepare four spears and send for the
four fastest runners in his city of the tribes. It
was night by the time they returned with three athletes,
two men and a woman. The first was Manus, the
finest hunter in the land. It was said that he
couldn't pass a deal without bringing it down. The second
was Macta, a musician who collected songs from all over Ireland.
The third was Sealer, a woman whose speed was only
surpassed by her knowledge and love of nature, particularly flowers.
But that is only three, said the king. We couldn't
find a fourth, said one of his soldiers. I will go,
said a lone voice from the crowd. Everybody turned to
see the king's daughter, Gahlia, step forward. King Brads grasped
her hands and shook its head. I cannot let you go,
my dear princess, it is too dangerous. I want to
go farther, she replied. I'm a fast runner and I
want to claim this island in your name. As always,
the princess got what she wanted, and in the end
her father agreed. The four runners were given metal spears
and put aboard a boat manned by twenty rowers to
wait for the island to appear. As the first rays
of morning sun splashed orange across the dark horizon, the
phantom island started to appear through the mist like a
mirage on the water. Distant hilltops and city spires materialized
before the waiting rowers eyes, spurring them into action, their
muscled arms moving in unison to cut their boat through
the waves. As soon as the craft made landfall on
the elusive island, the four runners took off, sprinting in
different directions, their spears perfectly balanced by their sides. Manus
bounded across the soft sand and cleared the grassy dunes
in a few strides to enter a forest on the
other side. He raced through the trees, treading so lightly
that he barely broke a twig. At midday, he stopped
to rest and drink from a small brook. As he
was catching his breath, he noticed movement in the trees
and squinted his eyes to see more clearly. In the gloom,
a magnificent stag ambled through the trees, unaware of his presence.
Manus had taken down many a stag in his days,
but never one of this size or species. He knew
we shouldn't let himself get distracted from his task, but
he couldn't resist the thrill of the hunt. It'll only
delay me a few moments, he thought, raising his spear
above his shoulder. He began to tiptoe towards his prey,
but the stag seemed to have better senses than the
deer he usually hunted, because alerted to his presence, the
animal took off at speed. Manuscaped chase, following the creature
out of the forest, across hillsides and over gurgling streams.
Whenever he accelerated to get closer, the deer increased its
pace and never allowed Manus to get close enough to
throw his spear. He knew he should abandon his pursuit,
but he couldn't, and as the evening sky started to darken,
he knew he had failed the king. Meanwhile, Macta was
gaining good ground across grassland full of grazing cattle, the
likes of which he had never seen before. There were
twice the size of normal cows and were weighed down
with others, each full enough to feed a small village.
As he was crossing a ditch from one field to
the next, he heard the most magical music. Now Macta
knew almost every tune in Ireland, but he'd never heard
anything like this before. It seemed to be played by
some alien instrument, and though he knew he shouldn't get
distracted from his mission, he couldn't resist the spell binding melody.
He followed it from field to field and towards mountains
that rose out of the horizon like shards of broken flint.
He knew he should abandon his foolish diversion, but every
step seemed to bring him closer and closer to the music.
By the time he reached the foothills of the mountains,
the tune was so loud in his ears that it
seemed inevitable that he would reach it so and yet
he never did. Sheila had almost arrived at her corner
of the island when she came across a garden of
flowers so exotic and mesberizing that she had to stop.
Though she considered herself an expert in the field of botany,
she couldn't identify any of the flowers in this garden.
She soon lost track of time, moving from species to species,
marveling at their opulencent sense and vibrant colors. Only when
it became too dark to see did she stop, realizing
then that she had failed in her errand for the king.
It was as if the island had put the garden
in her path to distract her. Gallia, the King's daughter,
was not sidetracked by wild animals, enchanted chuns, or outlandish flowers,
for there was only one thing. She loved, her father, Brazil,
and she was determined to do him proud. She ran
all day without stopping, and reached the furthest most corner
of the island as the evening sun sank in the sky.
Taking a ragged breath, she planted the spear deep into
the ground before collapsing in exhaustion, hoping her fellow runners
had succeeded too. As darkness descended, Gallia fell into a
deep sleep, dreaming of welcoming her father to these hallowed
shores in the morning. She didn't know that Manna, Smagda
and Sheila had failed to pin down their corners of
the island, and now it was sinking slowly into the sea,
not to return for another seven years. Beech grassland cows
forest city, and eventually mountains descended beneath the waves. Poor
Galia didn't even wake as the water lapped around her,
taking her into its cold embrace, for she was dreaming
she was in paradise, and in a way she was.
It just wasn't the island paradise her father dreamed of,
but one where her soul would join those of her
ancestors in a land of gods. King Brazil and his
people waited on the mainland for the morning to arrive,
but the sun's first beams didn't illuminate the fabled island
as they had hoped, but only the wide, empty sea, vast,
cold and heartless. As always, the king cried for what
he had lost, and it wasn't an island. Sadden too
at the loss of four young lives orbson, Macalid slipped
quietly away to find his horse to return to his island,
which was safe for another few years at least. Some
people say the island was later named Island of Brazil
after the king who tried to capture it. They got
shortened to Ebrasil in Old Irish, he is sometimes written
as High, so the name eventually became High Brazil. The
island of Brazil. The city of the Tribes was named
after his daughter, Gallia, which is the Irish word for Galway,
and Loch Crib, whose river flows through the city, was
called Loch Orbson, after Manonon Maclear's pseudonym. Over time, the
lake became known as Loch Arab and eventually Loch Corib
as we know it today. For a long time, High
Brazil was believed who have been a real place. It
is included on countless maps of Ireland from as early
as thirteen twenty five to as recently as eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: Certainly hoped you enjoyed hearing all about High Brazil children,
And that was an excerpt from Kiron Fannings Haunted Ireland,
an atlas for every county in Ireland of ghost stories,
and indeed Kiron joined us here a few weeks back
as well. Oh you'll get it in all good bookstores
and online as well. Mark Manning, Oh, that would be
me going out with a bang, don't you know. So listen,
like and subscribe, do whatever you can to stay in touch.
I'd really love to hear from you. If you have
any Irish related ghost stories, let's be having them indeed
they don't have to be, because we do welcome a
little international interlude right here on Scary Era all the time.
So send me those stories to Paranormal Ireland at proton
mail dot com. That's it. Take care because I care.
Speaker 4: Scary Era is a mark manning media production and associating
the Paranormal Radio UK