‘Tell me more of that lovely poem, Mr. Blake,’ she said.
‘I am jangled and out of tune,’ said Blake wildly. ‘The Sassenach is my torture! Let me take your hand, it is cool as the hands of the foam-footed maidens of—of—what’s the name of the place?’
‘Was it Clonmell?’ asked Miss Macrae, letting him take her hand.
He pressed it against his burning brow.
‘Though you laugh at me,’ said Blake, ‘sometimes you are kind! I am upset—I hardly know myself.
What is yonder shape skirting the lawn? Is it the Daoine Sidh?’
‘Why do you call her “the downy she”? She is no more artful than other people. She is my maid, Elspeth Mackay,’ answered Miss Macrae, puzzled. They were alone, separated from the others by the breadth of the roof.
‘I said the Daoine Sidh,’ replied the poet, spelling the words. ‘It means the People of Peace.’
‘Quakers?’
‘No, the fairies,’ groaned the misunderstood bard. ‘Do you know nothing of your ancestral tongue? Do you call yourself a Gael?’