Drumcliff and Rosses were, are, and ever shall be, please Heaven! places of uhly resort. I have lived near by them and iime after time, and have gathered thus many a crumb of faery lore. Drumcliff is a wide green valley, lying at the foot of Ben Bulben, the mountain in whose side the square white door swings open at nightfall to loose the faery riders on the world.
The great St. ba himself, the builder of many of the old ruins in the valley, climbed the mountains oable day to get near heaven with his prayers. Rosses is a little sea-dividing, sandy plain, covered with shrass, like a green tablecloth, and lying in the foam midway between the round -headed Knoarea and 「Ben Bulben, famous for hawks」: But for Benbulben and Knoarea Many a poor sailor』d be cast away, as the rhyme goes.
At the northern er of Rosses is a little promontory of sand and rocks and grass: a mournful, haunted plao wise peasant would fall asleep us low cliff, for he who sleeps here may wake 「silly,」 the 「good people」 having carried off his soul. There is no more ready shortcut to the dim kingdom than this plovery headland, for, covered and smothered now from sight by mounds of sand, a long cave goes thither 「full of gold and silver, and the most beautiful parlours and drawing-rooms.」 Once, before the sand covered it, a dog strayed in, and was heard yelping helplessly deep underground in a fort far inland. These forts or raths, made before modern history had begun, cover all Rosses and all kille. The one where the dog yelped has, like most others, an underground beehive chamber in the midst. Once when I oking about there, an unusually intelligent and 「reading」 peasant who had e with me, and waited outside, k down by the opening, and whispered in a timid voice, 「Are you all right, sir?」 I had been some little while underground, and he feared I had been carried off like the dog.
No wonder he was afraid, for the fort has long been circled by ill-boding rumours. It is on the ridge of a small hill, on whose northern slope lie a few stray cottages. One night a farmer』s young son came from one of them and saw the fort all flaming, and ran towards it, but the 「glamour」 fell on him, and he sprang on to a fence, cross-legged, and enced beating it with a stick, for he imagihe fence was a horse, and that all night long he went on the most wonderful ride through the try. In the m he was still beating his fence, and they carried him home, where he remained a simpleton for three years before he came to himself again. A little later a farmer tried to level the fort. His cows and horses died, and an manner of trouble overtook him, and finally he himself was led home, a useless with 「his head on his knees by the fire to the day of his death.」
A few hundred yards southwards of the northern angle of Rosses is anle having also its cave, though this one is not covered with sand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three or four fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the darkness. At midnight they saw sitting on a sto the cave』s mouth two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might.
The men fled. A great crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the fiddlers, but the creatures had gone.
To the wise peasant the green hills and woods round him are full of never-fading mystery. When the aged trywoman stands at her door in the evening, and, in her own words, 「looks at the mountains and thinks of the goodn