Those that see the people of faery most often, and so have the most of their wisdom, are often very poor, but often, too, they are thought to have a strength beyond that of man, as though one came, when one has passed the threshold of trao those sweet waters where Maeldun saw the dishevelled eagles bathe and bee young again.
There was an old Martin Roland, who lived near a bog a little out of Gort, who saw them often from his young days, and always towards the end of his life, though I would hardly call him their friend. He told me a few months before his death that 「they」 would not let him sleep at night with g things at him in Irish, and with playing their pipes. He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend had told him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or to play on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and he did, and they always went out into the field when he began to play. He showed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he did not know how to play; and then he showed me where he had pulled his ey down, because one of them used to sit up on it and play on the pipes. A friend of his and mio see him a little time ago, for she heard that 「three of them」 had told him he was to die. He said they had gone away after warning him, and that the children (children they had 「taken,」 I suppose) who used to e with them, and play about the house with them, had 「goo some other place,」
because 「they found the house too cold for them, maybe」; and he died a week after he had said these things.
His neighbours were not certain that he really saw anything in his old age, but they were all certain that he saw things when he was a young man. His brother said, 「Old he is, and it』s all in his braihings he sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him.」 But he was improvident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, 「The poor man, they say they are mostly in his head now, but sure he was a fine fresh may years ago the night he saw them linked in two lots, like young slips of girls walking together. It was the night they took away Fallon』s little girl.」
And she told how Fallon』s little girl had met a woman 「with red hair that was as bright as silver,」
who took her away. Another neighbour, who was herself 「clouted over the ear」 by one of them foing into a fort where they were, said, 「I believe it』s mostly in his head they are; and wheood in the door last night I said, 『The wind does be always in my ears, and the sound of it ops,』 to make him think it was the same with him; but he says, 『I hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of them is after bringing out a little flute, and it』s on it he』s playing to them.』 And this I know, that when he pulled down the ey where he said the piper used to be sitting and playing, he lifted up stones, and he an old man, that I could not have lifted when I was young and strong.」
A friend has sent me from Ulster an at of one who was on terms of true friendship with the people of faery. It has been taken down accurately, for my friend, who had heard the old woman』s story some time before I heard of it, got her to tell it ain, and wrote it out at once. She began by telling the old woman that she did not like being in the house alone because of the ghosts and fairies; and the old woman said, 「There』s nothing to be frightened about in faeries, miss. Many』s the time I talked to a