She shows us Druid rods that change mortals into birds; of Druid mists that envelop armies and let the ancient heroes win; of Druid sleep that lasts sometimes for years; of the screaming stone; of kisses that turn into birds, some of them saying, “Come! Come!” and others “I go! I go!”; of invisible walls that shield one from sight; of magic that makes armies from stalks of grass; of wells of healing that cure every wound.
Oscar Wilde, in his fairy stories and symbolic allegories, tells of magic, whereby the Happy Prince, high on the pedestal on the square, has a heart of lead because he sees the misery of the people, and sends a swallow as his messenger to pick out his jeweled eyes and take them to the suffering ones. He speaks of the wonder by which the bodies of the mermaid and the fisherman who lost his soul for love of her, when they are buried in unconsecrated ground, send forth strange flowers that are placed on the sacred altar.
The dark enchantment appears in the poetry as often as in the prose, from Coleridge’s Christabel to the present. Gordon Bottomley’s The Crier by Night is a story of an evil presence that lurks in a pool, coming out to steal the souls of those it can lure into its waters. The woman, desperate from jealousy, who invokes its aid, says:
“For I can use this body worn to a soul
To barter with the Crier of hidden things
That if he tangle him in his chill hair
Then I will follow and follow and follow and follow
Past where the ringed stars ebb past the light
And turn to water under the dark world!”
The fairy has always been a favorite being with poets, dramatists, and romancers, from Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton to the present time. There is no figure more firmly established in folk-literature, none more difficult to dislodge despite their delicacy and ethereal qualities than the Little People. The belief in fairies is firmly established in Gaelic-speaking sections and the Celtic peasant would as soon give up his religion as his belief in the Sidhe. W. B. Yeats, in Celtic Twilight, tells of an Irish woman of daring unbelief in hell, or in ghosts who, she held, would not be permitted to go trapsin’ about the earth at their own free will, but who asserted, “There are fairies, and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels.” Everybody among the peasantry believes in fairies, “for they stand to reason.” And there are not wanting others more learned that believe in the small folk, as W. Y. E. Wentz, who in his volume Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries puts up a loyal argument for the existence of the Sidhe. He says:
Fairies exist, because in all essentials they appear to be the same as the intelligent forces now recognized by psychological researchers, be they thus collective units of consciousness like what William James calls soul-stuff or more individual units like veridical apparitions.
If it were left to me, I’d as soon not believe in fairies as have to think of them as veridical units! Mr. Wentz has never seen any fairies himself, but he tells a number of stories to substantiate his faith in them.
The volumes of fairy stories are by no means all for juvenile consumption, since the modern adult dearly loves the type himself. Many, or most, of the stories of fairies told frankly for children are adaptations or variants of continental folk-legends. The more literary side of fairy-literature has come from the Celtic lore, for the Dim People are dearest of all supernatural beings to the Celtic soul. The Irish, more innately poetic than most races, cling more fondly to the beings of beauty and gather round them delicate, undying stories. W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Lady Wilde, Oscar Wilde, John Singe, and Fiona McLeod have given in poetry and lyric prose the Celtic fairy-lore, and have made us know the same wild, sweet thrill that the peasants feel. The poetic thought of the primitive races peoples everything in nature, every bird and blossom and tree, with its own fairy personality.
Thackeray has written a fairy pantomime for great and small children, as he says, in which the adventures of Prince Giglio and Prince Bulbo are recounted. Eugene Field has a charming story of the Fairies of Pesth, and Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies enriched the imagination of most of us in youthful or adult years with its charming nonsense of beings possible and impossible. J. M. Barrie in Peter Pan won the doubtful world over to a confessed faith in the fairy-folk, for did we not see the marvels before our eyes? In The Little White Bird Barrie tells us how fairies came to be,—that they have their origin in the first laugh of the first baby that broke into a million bits and went skipping about, each one a fairy. He shows us the wee folk in Kensington Gardens, where by the ignorant they are mistaken for flowers, but children and those with the poet heart can see the flashing faces and green garments of the fairies among the pansy beds.
W. B. Yeats is a favorite with the fairies, for they have given him the dower of magic vision, to glimpse the unseen things, to hear the faint, musical voices of fairy pipes and song. He tells us many stories of the Dim People, in his tales and dramas. The Land of Heart’s Desire, the story of the struggle between the divine and mortal forces and the powers of the Sidhe to claim the soul of the young wife and of the triumph of the fairies, by which the girl’s body falls lifeless by the hearth while her spirit speeds away to live forever in the land “where nobody gets old or sorry or poor,” has a poignant pathos, a wild, dreamy beauty that touches the heart. Yeats tells of the Imperishable Rose of Beauty, of fantastic doings of the fairy-folk who steal mortals away, especially new-born babies or new-wed brides, of evil fairies who slay men in malice, and of the dances by moonlit hillside when mortals are asleep.