Many years ago the owner of Ballaleece lost his wife. She had not died; the fairies had taken her. After a while he married again.
Then one night his first wife appeared to him. She told him she was held among the fairies, and that they would come riding through the farm on a certain night. If he wanted her back, he must sweep the barn perfectly clean, and when the fairy riders came through, he must seize the bridle of her horse and hold on. She would be riding behind one of her fairy sisters on a small horse.
He did exactly as she said, and swept the barn. But his second wife had overheard, and she did not want the first one back. She hid a little straw under a bushel measure in the barn. When the fairies came riding through, the husband caught at the bridle and could not hold it, and his first wife was carried away with them for good. Cashen's version, collected in the west of the island, tells it the same way.
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