This story was told to me by my great-grandmother, who heard it from her great-grandmother to whom it happened as a young girl, and I swear it is as true as any story ever told in the world.
It was long ago, before the Great Famine and the leaving of so many for Canada, America and Australia. Life was hard then for those like my many-greats grandmother’s family in their little village where they grew a few potatoes and kept a pig by the hearth, earning barely enough to pay the landlord and feed three young ones.