In Ireland we hear but little of the darker powers,[FN#4] and e across any who have seen them even more rarely, for the imagination of the people dwells rather upon the fantastid capricious, and fantasy and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life, were they to uhem either with evil or with good. Ahe wise are of opinion that wherever man is, the dark powers who would feed his rapacities are there too, han the bright beings who store their honey in the cells of his heart, and the twilight beings who flit hither and thither, and that they enpass him with a passionate and melanultitude. They hold, too, that he who by long desire or through act of birth possesses the power of pierg into their hidden abode see them there, those who were once men or women full of a terrible vehemence, and those who have never lived upon the earth, moving slowly and with a subtler malice. The dark powers g about us, it is said, day and night, like bats upon an old tree; and that we do not hear more of them is merely because the darker kinds of magic have been but little practised. I have indeed e across very few persons in Ireland who try to unicate with evil powers, and the few I have met keep their purpose and practice wholly hidden from those among whom they live. They are mainly small clerks and the like, a for the purpose of their art in a room hung with black hangings. They would not admit me into this room, but findi altogether ignorant of the are sce, showed gladly elsewhere what they would do. 「e to us,」 said their leader, a clerk in a large flour-mill, 「and we will show you spirits who will talk to you face to face, and in shapes as solid and heavy as our own.」
[FN#4] I know better now. We have the dark powers much more than I thought, but not as much as the Scottish, a I think the imagination of the people does dwell chiefly upon the fantastid capricious.
I had been talking of the power of unig in states of trah the angelical and faery beings,--the children of the day and of the twilight—and he had been tending that we should only believe in what we see and feel when in our ordinary everyday state of mind. 「Yes,」 I said, 「I will e to you,」 or some such words; 「but I will not permit myself to bee entranced, and will therefore know whether these shapes you talk of are any the more to be touched a by the ordinary sehahose I talk of.」 I was not denying the power of other beings to take upon themselves a clothing of mortal substance, but only that simple invocations, such as he spoke of, seemed uo do more than cast the mind into trance, and thereby bring it into the presence of the powers of day, twilight, and darkness.
「But,」 he said, 「we have seen them move the furniture hither and thither, and they go at our bidding, and help or harm people who know nothing of them.」 I am not giving the exact words, but as accurately as I the substance of our talk.
On the night arranged I turned up about eight, and found the leader sitting alone in almost total darkness in a small ba. He was dressed in a black gown, like an inquisitor』s dress in an old drawing, that left nothing of him visible: except his eyes, which peered out through two small round holes. Upoable in front of him was a brass dish of burning herbs, a large bowl, a skull covered with painted symbols, two crossed daggers, aain implements shaped like quern stones, which were used to trol the elemental powers in some fashion I did not discover. I also