Many of the tales in this book were told me by one Paddy Flynn, a little bright-eyed old man, who lived in a leaky and one-roomed in the village of Ballisodare, which is, he was wont to say, 「the most gentle」—whereby he meant faery—「pla the whole of ty Sligo.」 Others hold it, however, but sed to Drumcliff and Drumahair. The first time I saw him he was cooking mushrooms for himself; the ime he was asleep under a hedge, smiling in his sleep. He was indeed always cheerful, though I thought I could see in his eyes (swift as the eyes of a rabbit, when they peered out of their wrinkled holes) a melancholy which was well-nigh a portion of their joy; the visionary melancholy of purely instinctive natures and of all animals.
Ahere was mu his life to depress him, for iriple solitude of age, etricity, and deafness, he went about much pestered by children. It was for this very reason perhaps that he ever reended mirth and hopefulness. He was fond, for instance, of telling how cille cheered up his mother. 「How are you to-day, mother?」 said the saint. 「Worse,」 replied the mother. 「May you be worse to-morrow,」 said the saint. The day cille came again, aly the same versation took place, but the third day the mother said, 「Better, thank God.」 And the saint replied, 「May you be better to-morrow.」 He was fond too of telling how the Judge smiles at the last day alike when he rewards the good and ns the lost to unceasing flames. He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him sad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, 「Am I not annoyed with them?」 I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. 「I have seen it,」 he said, 「down there by the water, batting the river with its hands.」
I have copied this at of Paddy Flynn, with a few verbal alterations, from a note-book which I almost filled with his tales and sayings, shortly after seeing him. I look now at the note-bretfully, for the blank pages at the end will never be filled up. Paddy Flynn is dead; a friend of mine gave him a large bottle of whiskey, and though a sober man at most times, the sight of so much liquor filled him with a great enthusiasm, and he lived upon it for some days and then died.
His body, worn out with old age and hard times, could not bear the drink as in his young days. He was a great teller of tales, and unlike our on romancers, knew how to empty heaven, hell, and purgatory, faeryland ah, to people his stories. He did not live in a shrunken world, but knew of no less ample circumstahan did Homer himself. Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by his like bring back again the a simplicity and amplitude of imagination. What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and i? And are there not moods whieed heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, han this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no expression uhere be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everythis, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.