CHAPTER II
IN THE FAIRY RATH
“Oh, Mary Ellen, it’s the fairy rath,” said Kathleen under her breath, and she clasped her father’s hand more tightly.
Grandmother Barry, who talked often in Gaelic about the fairies with Great-grandmother Connell, had told the children many times not to play too near the fairy rath.
“There be many such mounds scattered over the hills and glens of ould Ireland,” she said. “The good people live in them and may do harm to childer that make too bold with their haunts.”
“They must be bad people if they would do harm to little Mary Ellen,” Kathleen replied.
“Hush, child!” her grandmother reproved her. “They are like all men and women, liker to do good if they be called good.”
Now, as they drew near the fairy rath, Kathleen tiptoed over the rocky path, thinking every moment to see a fairy slip behind a pebble or a blade of grass. She felt sure that when they stepped within the rocky ring, a door would open in the grassy mound and show to her eager eyes long rooms glittering with jewelled walls, leading one after another into the depths of the earth.
What was her surprise then, when they entered the enclosure, to find, not a magic door leading to fairyland but a single tiny room dug out of the mound, sheltered from wind and rain by sods and stones, with just room enough for a man to work at his bench, and no more.
Her father pointed out to the child’s disappointed eyes a leather pouch lying among the tools on the work-bench.