The Raths, or “fairy forts,” of Killarney have hitherto seldom been explored. They are circular grassy mounds enclosing a field, generally small. Underneath are found stone chambers, their beehive roofs and walls made of unmortared stone. It is supposed that here the ancient Celts fortified themselves and their cattle, retreating in winter into the stone chambers. Be this as it may, for centuries the Irish have believed them to be tenanted by a fairy race, whose palaces are here, and who guard hidden treasure.

These are the Sidhe, or people of the hill, the noblest among these mysterious folk. Some say they are the spirits of the Tuatha de Danan, that strange race which occupied Ireland till the Milesians came, when, conquered by a greater magic than their own, they disappeared. Strange to say, no mortal descendant of these people has ever been traced in any Irish family.

But there is another race, and these are the fairies proper, very human in their traits, tricky and malicious if slighted or offended, but good friends if treated properly. I cannot resist quoting a story (“Hanafin and his Cows”) told in a late Kerry ArchÆological Magazine by Lady Gordon—a tale of the fairies, originally collected in Kerry by Mr. J. Curtin.

“Hanafin was a farmer owning a large herd of cows, which were driven up every morning to be milked in front of his house. For several days the tub into which the milk was poured was mysteriously overturned and the milk spilled. Hanafin’s wife was naturally excessively indignant, but, in spite of every precaution, the milk continued to be upset. One morning, however, as Hanafin was walking past a fairy fort, he heard a child crying inside it, and a woman’s voice saying: ‘Be quiet awhile! Hanafin’s cows are going home; we’ll soon have milk in plenty.’ Hanafin went home and personally supervised the milking, and on the usual overturning stopped his wife from scolding, telling her this time it was no fault of the girls, who had been pushed by one of the cows against the tub. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said; ‘I’ll try and manage the business.’

“The following morning, on hearing the child cry again in the fort, Hanafin, ‘like the brave man he was,’ went inside. He saw no one, but he said, ‘A child is crying for milk. A cow of mine will calve to-morrow. I’ll let no one milk that cow; you can do what you like with her milk.’

“The tub was never overturned again, and for two years Hanafin prospered in every way, taking good care of the cow, and never letting her be milked.

“Unfortunately, however, Hanafin, being soft-hearted, went security for some of his neighbours who had got into trouble, with the result that their creditors came down on him, and the bailiffs arrived one day to drive off his cattle. Hanafin repaired to the fort, and said: ‘I’m going to lose all my cattle, but I’ll try and keep the cow I gave you, and feed her still, so that the child may have the milk.’

“Three bailiffs came and went down to the pasture across the field, but when they drove the cows up as far as the fairy fort ‘each bailiff was caught and thrown hither and over by people he couldn’t see. One moment he was at one side of the ditch, the next at the other. They were so roughly handled and bruised that they were hardly alive, and they not seeing who or what was doing it! The cattle, raising their tails, bawled and ran off to the pasture.’

“The following morning ten policemen and bailiffs went to take Hanafin’s cattle, with exactly the same results, so that the men ‘barely left the place alive.’ Never again did police or bailiff meddle with Hanafin’s cattle, and the creditors never collected their money.”

These are the familiar fairies who stole children out of their cradles, young matrons from their husbands, and girls from their lovers; who bewitched cows and blighted potatoes, but who “did you many a good turn too.” The peasant will not lightly lose faith in them, nor will the fairies lightly forsake the land of beauty, of sunshine, and of shadow. Quickly as events march and ideas change in this wonderful age, hurrying we know not where, and though here and there someone may be found to dare—or say he will—enter a fairy fort or cut down a fairy thorn, I think that with the boldest of these unbelievers it is a case of the man who denied the power of the priest to turn him into a rat, but who, saying “It’s as well to make sure,” took the precaution of shutting up the cat at night. “Taking it all round,” writes Lady Gordon, “it would be a drab world if there were no fairies in it, no supernatural region in which nothing is too preposterous to occur.... Earth-bound humanity, seeking to escape from earth cares, still dreams in one form or other of a land of strange happenings.”

How much remains still to be said about Killarney, its varied interests, its shifting, matchless scenery! The lover of beauty and romance, the historian, the archÆologist, the antiquary—it is a field for each. It has begun to dawn on the mind of many explorers what great questions hinge on Celtic antiquities, what light they may shed upon the ancient history of Europe, while students of the Irish language say it will yet prove the key to ancient ones which are puzzling philologists. Killarney is rich in Ogham inscriptions, in curious old remains and relics (utilized hitherto by mason and builder). Such as are not hopelessly lost are gradually being unearthed by the ardent seekers of to-day.

Whatever changes may be in the future, Killarney must ever remain a land of enchantment. Perhaps a few recent words of Alfred Austin may fitly close this attempt to sketch the principal features of this fair land.

“The tender grace of wood and water is set in a framework of hills, now stern, now ineffably gentle, now dimpling with smiles, now frowning and rugged with impending storm, now muffled and mysterious with mist, only to meet you again with brilliant sunshine. Here the trout leaps, there the eagle soars, and there beyond the wild deer dash through the arbutus covert, through which they have come to the margin of the lake to drink, and, scared by your footstep or your oar, are away back to bracken or heather-covered moorland. But the first, the final, the deepest and most enduring impression of Killarney is that of beauty unspeakably tender, which puts on at times a garb of grandeur and a look of awe, only to heighten by contrast its soft loveliness. How the missel thrushes sing, as well they may! How the streams and runnels leap and laugh! For the sound of journeying water is never out of your ears, the feeling of the moist, the fresh, the vernal is never out of your heart.”

No, never! True words are these with which reluctantly to say farewell to beautiful Killarney.