DUL-1 · The Night Rider of the North Road

DUL-1 The Night Rider of the North Road Headless rider, of the Irish sort — a collector, not a killer

Woodcut portrait: the Rider at the gallop, the head carried at his side, lit — The Rider, drawn from a safe distance. The head sat for the portrait separately.

Name: The Night Rider of the North Road. Older tongues say Dullahan.
Descent: Rode the old roads before there were roads to name. Carries his own head for a lantern; it sees further off the neck than on.
Present Trade: Rides the North Road between dusk and the third cockcrow. Speaks one name only — and whoever owns it is called. Gold turned in his path buys a night’s passage; the paper is here torn — there remains only “…and no false coin, for he weighs it by”.

Record of Incidents

Three nights absent from his round, the parish paper advertised his own head as lost property — a reward offered, the loser himself the advertiser. See the Mercury, No. MCDLXXVIII.
The matter was, in time, settled otherwise. See the picture, “A Matched Set”.

The Mercury advertisement concerning the Night Rider's lost head — His own notice in the publick paper; see the Mercury, No. MCDLXXVIII.

Here unfolds the sworn deposition of a carter, his name withheld, taken before the Clerk.

“I gave him the road and looked at my hands. You do not look at where the head should be. My father told me that, and his father told him, and none of us has ever been called.”

Entered in the Register the 3rd day of October, 1790. Examined & found true — Parish Clerk