There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an iion got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go 「trapsin about the earth」 at their own free will; 「but there are faeries,」 she added, 「and little lepres, and water-horses, and fallen angels.」 I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, 「they stand to reason.」
Even the official mind does not escape this faith.
A little girl who was at servi the village e, close uhe seaward slopes of Ben Bulben, suddenly disappeared one night about three years ago. There was at once great excitement in the neighbourhood, because it was rumoured that the faeries had taken her. A villager was said to have long struggled to hold her from them, but at last they prevailed, and he found nothing in his hands but a broomstick. The local stable lied to, a onstituted a house-to-house search, and at the same time advised the people to burn all the bucalauns (ragweed) on the field she vanished from, because bucalauns are sacred to the faeries. They spent the whole night burning them, the stable repeating spells the while. In the m the little girl was found, the stoes, wandering in the field. She said the faeries had taken her away a great distance, riding on a faery horse. At last she saw a big river, and the man who had tried to keep her from being carried off was drifting down it—such are the topsy-turvydoms of faery glamour—in a cockleshell. On the way her panions had mentiohe names of several people who were about to die shortly in the village.
Perhaps the stable was right. It is better doubtless to believe mureason and a little truth than to deny for denial』s sake truth and unreason alike, for when we do this we have not even a rush dle to guide our steps, not even a poor sowlth to dance before us on the marsh, and must needs fumble our way into the great emptiness where dwell the mis-shapen dhouls. And after all, we e to so great evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths and in our souls, and wele with open hand whatever of excellent e to warm itself, whether it be man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the dhouls themselves, 「Be ye gone」? When all is said and done, how do we not know but that our own unreason may be better than another』s truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey. e into the world again, wild bees, wild bees!