Ireland

Many tales are told in the lonely houses of Rathfarnham to this day of the "Death Coach" which noiselessly moved about on secret errands. No one seemed to know whence it came or where it went, but all agreed that a dead body was its load and headless its horseman and sack-muffled feet on the steeds of death.

unpaywalled in comments

Everyone thinks Bram Stoker in 1897 was the Irishman who brought vampires out of Romanian folklore into the mainstream, but Le Fanu scooped him by 25 years.

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First up is the Roscommon SFC quarter-final between local rivals Padraig Pearses and St Brigid’s at 2pm. That will be followed at 4pm by the meeting of Kilmallock and Patrickswell in Round 4 of the Limerick SHC.

A local archaeologist has said that the find, which is estimated to weigh between 22kg and 25kg, could be the “one of the biggest” of its kind ever recorded in Ireland.

Bog butter is an ancient form of preserved dairy or animal fat and can be found in the cool, oxygen-poor depths of Ireland’s peat bogs. Finds are common in both Scotland and Ireland. The practice of storing butter in bogs dates as far back as the Iron Age and is recorded as taking place as recently as the 16th and 19th century.

Archaeologist Paula Harvey, who visited the site of the discovery, said that local man Alan Moore was digging a drain when Micheal “spotted this big slab of something that didn’t look normal, didn’t look natural”.

Bogs, sometimes referred to as Ireland’s first fridges, did the trick preserving butter for centuries as Ms Harvey can verify having tried a “sliver” of this most recent find.