The pooka comes out at night, sometimes as an eagle flinging a man on his back and flying to the moon.

Sometimes it's a black goat with wide wicked horns leaping on a mortal's shoulders and clinging with it's claws until the man drops dead or blesses himself three times. It is a bird, a bat, a donkey, a solitary nightmare shape.

Most often it appears as a terrible black horse, huge and sleek, breathing blue flames, with eyes of yellow fire, a snort like thunder, a smell like sulpher, a stride that clears mountains and a human voice deep as a cave.

Sometimes it follows the ships to sea. Often at night, as the black horse, the pooka will take a man for a ride clear around the country at breakneck speed until he loses his grip and flies headlong into a bog ditch.