The Irish peasantry entertain a superstition that whenever a strong storm of wind, without rain, arises, it has been occasioned by the necromantic spell of some guilty sorcerer, who, first having sold himself to the devil, afterwards raises him for some wicked purpose; and nothing but the sacrifice of a black dog or a black cock--the one without a white hair, and the other without a white feather--can prevent him from carrying away, body and soul, the individual who called him up, accompanied by such terrors.

In fact the night, independently of the terrible accessory of the fire, was indescribably awful.

Thatch portions of the ribs and roofs of houses were whirled along through the air; and the sweeping blast, in addition to its own howlings, was burdened with the loud screamings of women and children, and the stronger shoutings of men, as they attempted to make each other audible, amidst the roaring of the tempest.
This was terrible indeed; but on such a night, what must not the conflagration have been, fed by such pabulum--as Sir Robert himself would have said--as that on which it glutted its fiery and consuming appetite.

We have said that the offices and dwelling-house ran parallel with each other, and such was the fact.

What appeared singular, and not without the possibility of some dark supernatural causes, according to the impressions of the people, was, that the wind, on the night in question, started, as it were, along with the fire; but the truth is, it had been gamboling in its gigantic play before the fire commenced at all.