I think the close connection between Danes, Pechts, and fairies will be apparent to all, although the fairy has more supernatural characteristics, and in the banshee assumes a very weird form. Lady Fanshawe has described the apparition she saw when staying, in 1649, with the Lady Honora O'Brien, as a woman in white, with red hair and ghastly complexion, who thrice cried "Ahone!" and vanished with a sigh more like wind than breath. This was apparently the ghost of a murdered woman, who was said to appear when any of the family died, and that night a cousin of their hostess had passed away.[41] Similar stories, as we all know, exist at the present day.
Except in the case of the banshee, fairies rarely partake of the nature of ghosts, and I should note that in her description of the apparition Lady Fanshawe does not use the word "banshee." In many respects the fairies are akin to mortals—there are fairy men, fairy women, and fairy children. Fairies often live under bushes, and I was told in Co. Armagh that it would be a very serious matter to cut down a "lone" thorn-bush; those growing in rows were evidently less sacred. Did the thorn-bush hide the entrance to the subterranean dwelling?
The fairies are quick to revenge an injury or an encroachment on their territory. A fire which occurred at Dunree on Lough Swilly was attributed to the fairies, who were supposed to be angry because the military had carried the works of their modern fort too near the fairy rock. In some places the raths have been cultivated, but, as a rule, this is looked upon as very unlucky, and sure to bring dire misfortune on the man who attempts it. On the other hand, there appears to be no objection to growing crops on the top of a souterrain. Many are, it is true, afraid to enter these dark abodes, and others consider it unwise to carry anything out of them. I have never heard them spoken of as tombs, and the fairies are regarded, not as ghosts, but as fallen angels, to whom no Church holds out a hope of salvation. Only in one instance did a woman tell me that as fairies were good to the poor, she thought there would be hope for them hereafter. The Irish fairy remains a pagan; the ancient well of pre-Christian days may be consecrated to the Christian saint, and patterns held beside it, but no pious pilgrim prays on the rath or below the fairy rock.
We may now ask ourselves the meaning of these legends. The rath and souterrain are undoubtedly the work of primitive man, yet here we have the Sidh, inhabited by the fairy and the Tuatha de Danann. In the "Colloquy of the Ancients"[42] we are told it was out of a Sidh, Finn's chief musician, the dwarf Cnu deiriol came, and from another Sidh came Blathnait, whom the small man espoused. It was fairy music which Cnu taught to the musicians of the Fianna. It was out of a Sidh in the south that Cas corach, son of the Olave of the Tuatha de Danann, came to the King of Ulidia.[43]
In Derrick's "Image of Ireland," written in 1578, and published in 1581, the Olympian gods call upon certain little mountain gods, whom I should be inclined to identify with the fairies, to come to their aid:
"Let therefore little Mountain Gods
A troupe (as thei maie spare)
Of breechlesse men at all assaies,
Both leauvie and prepare
With mantelles down unto the shoe
To lappe them in by night;
With speares and swordes and little dartes
To shield them from despight."[44]
May I, in conclusion, express my belief that in the traditions of fairies, Danes, and Pechts the memory is preserved of an early race or races of short stature, but of considerable strength, who built underground dwellings, and had some skill in music and in other arts? They appear to have been spread over a great part of Europe. It is possible that, as larger races advanced, these small people were driven southwards to the mountains of Switzerland, westward towards the Atlantic, and northward to Lapland, where their descendants may still be found. No doubt there is a large supernatural element, especially in the stories of the fairies; but the same may be said of the tales of witches in the seventeenth century. The witch was undoubtedly human, yet she was believed, and sometimes believed herself, to possess superhuman powers, and to be in communication with unearthly beings. We must also remember the widespread belief in local spirits or gods, and a taller race of invaders might well fear the magic of an earlier people long settled in the country, even if the latter were inferior in bodily and mental characteristics.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Read before the Archæological Section of the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, February 12, 1908.
[32] Pp. 12-20. Several sections of this rath are given; also a view showing Greenmount in 1748, and a plan of the same date—both from Wright's "Louthiana," published in that year.