1. There is a series of great standing stones along the once much travelled route west, running out past Rockchapel under the Mullahareirk hills. Back then this raised bog was solid enough for people from other realms to build a dwelling on. When standing at one stone, you could see the next stone along. Now one stone is missing. The lake underneath came back and swallowed it.x
2. The heron is the finest but also the most fanciful of the birds. The old people used to call her Maire Fada, or Long Mary.
3. Jack Curtis was a gentle man. He had a kind ear for every person and spoke ill of no person. He spent his days at markets selling paintings of his dogs and twenty-year-old pet cattle. He always told me that he had no living relatives.
4. Worrying is voluntary. Anyone is free to decide against it.
5. The rath is the last refuge of the Tuatha dé Danann. Since our kind vanquished them, those good little people can be touchy about any further encroachment. Very bad things can befall the uninvited visitor.
6. You should pay attention to the restless collie. Look in her eyes and you see the wolf looking back. She is a daughter of the country and well-attuned to everything that goes on in it.
7. You may know a person by the way he treats the defenceless.
8. Science calls her a stoat. The old people around here called her the Noble One, or Noble Lady. Either way, she is not a weasel.
9. Good people come in surprising shapes and sizes.
10. The pit was filled with water from the river. Then stones were reddened in a fire and rolled into it so as to slowly boil whatever sinewy old ram the gathering was about to share.
11. You can’t control what happens. But you can take hold of how you think about it.
12. Some say Joey’s unbalanced. The least interesting people are the balanced. I myself strive to avoid balance in all things.
13. There are those who believe that night time in this country was never conquered – once the blanket of darkness falls, the Mac Tíre and all the other old clans still own it and roam over it freely.