A Hunt for Irish Fairies

"I'LL niver forget wan gintleman that kem here from America. He'd been borrn here, but had gone to Chicago whin he was a lad, an' he had made a fortune.

"He had hundreds under him, an' he told me he had niver touched a drop of liquor. Oh, he was the kind man. He hired me car every day he was here, an' he said anny time I wanted to sind anny of me sons over, to sind them to him an' he'd take them on an' pay them good wages.

"Oh, he was the ginerous man, too ginerous in fact. He'd scatter his money like water whin he'd be in liquor——"

"Why, I thought you said he never touched a drop, Michael."

"Oh," with a toss of the head. "Sure that was in America. Bein' on a holiday here he tasted it, an' likin' the taste he kep' on.

"Sure he'd fling money out be the handfuls if I'd let him. I told him if he done that the news of it would spread an' some of the wilder ones would demand it of him, an' wance I refused to go anny further till he'd promise to stop throwin' money away—half soverigns, mind ye.

"Ah, but he was the kind man, drunk or sober. The day before he left—an' he was here two or three weeks huntin' for his birthplace—he said:

"'Michael, I've drank too much, but it tasted good. After to-day not a drop I touch, an' me goin' back to America.'

"Sure, I hope he didn't, for he had a fine business of manufactures of some sort, an' he says:

"'Sind them along, Mike, when they does be old enough an' I'll give them good jobs. Only they must l'ave liquor alone.'

"Ah, a kind man he was an' a true American. Wance I met Larrd Kinmare, an' I took off me hat to him. 'Who's that?' says he. 'Larrd Kinmare,' says I. 'Why do you take off your hat to him?' says he; 'he's only a man like yourself.' I'll never forget that. Only a man like meself."

I asked this same jarvey if he would like to see home rule.

"Sure, better wages would be better."

There are many like him in Ireland, men of the practical kind, who would rather see prosperity than home rule, and who evidently do not believe the two are synonymous terms.

Perhaps a little more of this jarvey's talk will not be uninteresting.

"What do you think of King Edward, Michael?"

He looked at me seriously. "He's not had a thri'l yit, but he seems a nice man. When he was Prince of Wales he was here to visit with his mother, the Queen of England, and he wint to a nunnery, an' him a Protestant, an' he kep' his hat off his head all the time he was in. An' him a Protestant, mind you. He seems a nice man, but he hasn't had a thri'l yit."

There's simplicity for you. One need not have the acknowledged tact of the best king in Europe to keep off his hat in a nunnery, but Michael had treasured the anecdote forty years as the measure of a ruler's merit.

But I am treading on dangerous ground and it would be better to venture on fairy ground.

One needs to live long among the Irish peasants to get at their folklore. They are invariably agreeable to strangers, as Michael has shown himself to have been to me, and are more than willing to talk about America and the sorrows of Ireland, but if the subject of fairy folk is broached they seem to be anxious to change the subject.

I was fortunate enough to get a little insight into their beliefs, but before I touch on the topic I would like to scatter a few thoughts on the subject of Irish wit.

Here I have set down a conversation of a typical Irishman, but you will notice that there is nothing witty in what he says. In books he is witty, and in Scotland the Scotchman is witty, as I had occasion to notice many times last year when I was there, but in Ireland (I record personal impression) the Irishman is not witty, as I met him in the peasant class.

I have conversed with dozens and scarcely a witty reply have I had. Humor often, but wit seldom. I sometimes think that it is because I have used the wrong tactics. Perhaps if I had bantered them they would have retaliated.

I fancy that their reputation for wit is largely of English manufacture, and that the Englishman calls it forth by his undoubted feeling of superiority. The wit is at his expense.

We were passing a little opening in the woods the day I rode with Michael and I said to him:

"That would be a fine place for fairies."

He quickly turned his head and looked at me.

"So it would," said he, "but they're all gone now. Whin I was a boy the old folks did be talkin' of them, but there's none of them now."

"I suppose so," said I sympathetically, "but a friend of mine in Connecticut, an Irishman, told me he'd been led by them into a bog with their false lights."

"Oh," said Michael, quick as a wink, "so have I. They'd lade you to folly the light, an' the first thing ye'd know ye'd be up to your waist in a bog. But there's none of them hereabouts now."

And that ended Michael's remarks about fairies. And that was further than most of them would go until I met an old woman on the west coast. She, after I had gained her confidence, talked quite freely.

I asked her if she had ever seen any of the red leprechauns (I am not sure of the spelling) that are so mischievous to housewives and are so fond of cream, and while she had not seen any herself a friend of hers had seen two of them.

"Wan had a red cap on an' the other was dressed all in green and they was wrestlin' in a field.

"An wance I looked out of the winder," she had grown absorbed in her own talk now—"an' I saw over there on the mountain side a fair green field that never was there before"—the mountain was bald and rocky and bleak—"an' in it was a lot of young lads and gerruls, all dressed gayly, the lads and the gerruls walking like this"—illustrating by undulatory motions—"and full of happiness.

"Oh, yes; I've seen the little folk, but I don't mind them at all. The sight of them comes to me when I'd not be thinking of it, and it's little I care."

She tossed her head in evident superiority, perhaps feeling that I might think it folly for a woman as old as she to see things so out of the ken of an ordinary mortal. But I showed an interest that was perfectly genuine, and she went further into her revelations.

"Wance I was lookin' out of this same winder, an' a queen of the air came out of the heavens ridin' on a cloud. Oh, she was the most beautifully made woman I ever saw, with a stride on her like a queen.

"She had a short skirt on her, and her calves were lovely, and around her waist was a sash with a loose knot in it for a dagger, an' the dagger raised in her right hand—an' a crown upon her head."

"And did she look angry?"

"Indeed she didn't. A beautiful face she had, an' she come straight for this winder, an' when she was almost before it I put up my hands to my eyes, for I thought that if she was coming out of the other space and I was the first she met here she might do harm to me, and 'twas well not to look at her—and when I opened my eyes again she was gone.

A Side Street, Wexford

"Oh, never will I see so finely made a woman again; the calves of her beautiful legs, and the arm raised high above her head like a queen."

Margaret stood looking out of the window at the mountain opposite, and I said nothing for fear she would stop talking. After a few moments she went on:

"Wan day I saw an elephant over on the mountain side an' him filling his trunk, with water for a long journey—Oh, it's manny the thing I see, but I don't mind if I never see them, only they come to me."

Filling one's trunk with water for a long journey would not appeal to a drummer, but this flippant thought I did not extend to Margaret. Perhaps she would not have understood, as drummers are bagmen on the other side. That is they are bagmen in books. In hotels they are commercial men.

Margaret was not yet through telling me the things she had seen. I was told that there were some people that she would not talk to on occult subjects, fearing their badinage, but her sincerity was so evident that I could not have joked with her on the subject if I had thought of doing so.

"Wance I saw the present King Edward, an' him about to be crowned, an' he was in the heavens lying on a bed, and his wife standing near, dressed in a dress with short sleeves an' point lace on them, an' I said to me master,"—Margaret was living in service,—"'Sure he'll not be crowned this time.'

"An' that very evening the news came that the King was ill, and he was not crowned that time at all. An' the pitchers in the papers afterward showed the Queen in point lace as I had seen her."

Afterward I talked to the gentleman for whom this ancient woman kept house, and he said there was no end to the queer things she had seen. He told me that once she saw in "the heavens" a funeral cortÉge issuing from a smallish house, with big black horses, plumed and draped, and drawing a hearse, and in it either the pope or the queen.

"Some one high up," Margaret said.

That evening came the news of the death of Queen Victoria.

Of course this is "merely" second sight, but if you don't believe in such things you don't feel like scoffing when people see visions that come true.

I was unfortunate enough not to meet a Galway woman, an ignorant peasant, who saw a vision that shaped itself around a ruined castle.

She said to my informant (one of the leaders in the Gaelic revival) that while she was looking at the castle one day a band of young gentlemen on horseback and strangely dressed came riding up to the castle, and in the windows of it were many handsome women, gayly dressed and with their hair brushed up from their foreheads, and they were laughing and talking.

And when the young horsemen came to the ditch that was around the castle a platform that was laid against the wall was let down by chains, and over the bridge thus made the gay young men rode and joined the chattering ladies.

This was a woman who would not have heard of moats and drawbridges, and but little of the castle remained save the four walls. She had seen a vision, so my informant, a woman of forceful intellect, told me—and I believed it then, and half believe it now. If one has visions why not see them? I wish I might myself.

But it is very hard for the traveler to get at these revelations. The natives are shy of strangers, who like as not do not believe in fairies—never having seen Tinker Bell—and they will not talk.

But for my part I hope the time will come when it will be proved beyond a doubt that there are fairies, and if the revelation ever does manifest itself at all, doubting Thomases and the rest, I am sure that their habitat will prove to be Ireland.

And when they are proved to exist, remember that I said I believed in them.