As we saw him vanish slowly up the road, ragged himself, the car and harness almost ready to drop to pieces, the mare, I am sure, in the last week of her existence, we were glad that he had his Celtic fancy to enliven his life a bit,—that fancy which seems a providential reaction against the cruel despotisms of fact.
Chapter XXV. The wee folk.
'There sings a bonnie linnet
Up the heather glen;
The voice has magic in it
Too sweet for mortal men!
Sing O, the blooming heather,
O, the heather glen!
Where fairest fairies gather
To lure in mortal men.'
Carrig-a-fooka Inn, near Knockma,
On the shores of Lough Corrib.
A modern Irish poet [*] says something that Francesca has quoted to Ronald in her letter to-day, and we await from Scotland his confirmation or denial. He accuses the Scots of having discovered the fairies to be pagan and wicked, and of denouncing them from the pulpits, whereas Irish priests discuss with them the state of their souls; or at least they did, until it was decided that they had none, but would dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day. It was more in sadness than in anger that the priests announced this fiat; for Irish sprites and goblins do gay, graceful, and humorous things, for the most part, tricksy sins, not deserving annihilation, whereas Scottish fays are sometimes malevolent,—or so says the Irish poet.
* W. B. Yeats.
This is very sad, no doubt, but it does not begin to be as sad as having no fairies at all. There must have been a few in England in Shakespeare's time, or he could never have written The Tempest or the Midsummer Night's Dream; but where have they vanished?
As for us in America, I fear that we never have had any 'wee folk.' The Indians had their woodland spirits, spirits of rocks, trees, mountains, star and moon maidens; the negroes had their enchanted animals and conjure men; but as for real wee folk, either they were not indigenous to the soil or else we unconsciously drove them away. Yet we had facilities to offer! The columbines, harebells, and fringed gentians would have been just as cosy and secluded places to live in as the Irish foxgloves, which are simply running over with fairies. Perhaps they wouldn't have liked our cold winters; still it must have been something more than climate, and I am afraid I know the reason well—we are too sensible; and if there is anything a fairy detests, it is common-sense. We are too rich, also; and a second thing that a fairy abhors is the chink of dollars. Perhaps, when I am again enjoying the advantages brought about by sound money, commercial prosperity, and a magnificent system of public education, I shall feel differently about it; but for the moment I am just a bit embarrassed and crestfallen to belong to a nation absolutely shunned by the fairies. If they had only settled among us like other colonists, shaped us to their ends as far as they could, and, when they couldn't, conformed themselves to ours, there might have been, by this time, fairy trusts stretching out benign arms all over the continent.
Of course it is an age of incredulity, but Salemina, Francesca, and I have not come to Ireland to scoff, and whatever we do we shall not go to the length of doubting the fairies; for, as Barney O'Mara says, 'they stand to raison.'
Glen Ailna is a 'gentle' place near Carrig-a-fooka Inn—that is, one beloved by the sheehogues; and though you may be never so much interested, I may not tell you its exact whereabouts, since no one can ever find it unless he is himself under the glamour. Perhaps you might be a doubter, with no eyes for the 'dim kingdom'; perhaps you might gaze for ever, and never be able to see a red-capped fiddler, fiddling under a blossoming sloe bush. You might even see him, and then indulge yourself in a fit of common-sense or doubt of your own eyes, in which case the wee dancers would never flock to the sound of the fiddle or gather on the fairy ring. This is the reason that I shall never take you to Knockma, to Glen Ailna, or especially to the hyacinth wood, which is a little plantation near the ruin of a fort. Just why the fairies are so fond of an old rath or lis I cannot imagine, for you would never suppose that antiquaries, archaeologists, and wee folk would care for the same places.