High in the Comeragh Mountains, the Mauma Road has long been associated with a local ghost story centred on a figure known as the Tailor of Mauma. According to tradition, the road is haunted by the spirit of a tailor who was violently killed nearby and is still said to cross the roadway at night.

The event behind the legend is usually placed in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, a period when political divisions in Ireland often ran deep, even in rural communities. Local tradition holds that the tailor became involved in a heated argument over politics – a pastime not uncommon in public houses and at fairs – and that the dispute escalated beyond words. His opponents, said to belong to a rival political faction, are believed to have attacked and killed him in a nearby field that later became known as “The Tailor’s Field,” which lies close to the Mauma Road.

In folklore, the tailor did not rest easily. He is said to appear as a solitary figure crossing the road, sometimes described as carrying tools of his trade or walking with purpose as though still bound to his final journey. The apparition is usually reported in poor weather or fading light, conditions that already make the mountain pass an eerie and isolated place.

No contemporary court records or burial registers have been firmly linked to the incident, and the story survives primarily through local oral tradition rather than documented history. Nevertheless, the tale of the slain tailor has endured for generations and remains one of the best-known ghost legends associated with the Comeragh Mountains — a reminder of how political violence and personal tragedy could echo long after death in rural folklore.