CONTENTS.

THE TROOPING FAIRIES—PAGE
The Fairies[3]
Frank Martin and the Fairies[5]
The Priest's Supper[9]
The Fairy Well of Lagnanay[13]
Teig O'Kane and the Corpse[16]
Paddy Corcoran's Wife[31]
Cusheen Loo[33]
The White Trout; A Legend of Cong[35]
The Fairy Thorn[38]
The Legend of Knockgrafton[40]
A Donegal Fairy[46]
Changelings—
The Brewery of Egg-shells[48]
The Fairy Nurse[51]
Jamie Freel and the Young Lady[52]
The Stolen Child[59]
The Merrow—
The Soul Cages[61]
Flory Cantillon's Funeral[75]
THE SOLITARY FAIRIES—
The Lepracaun; or, Fairy Shoemaker[81]
Master and Man[84]
Far Darrig in Donegal[90]
The Piper and the Puca[95]
Daniel O'Rourke[97]
The Kildare Pooka[105]
How Thomas Connolly met the Banshee[108]
A Lamentation for the Death of Sir Maurice Fitzgerald[112]
The Banshee of the MacCarthys[113]
GHOSTS—
A Dream[129]
Grace Connor[130]
A Legend of Tyrone[132]
The Black Lamb[134]
The Radiant Boy[136]
The Fate of Frank M'Kenna[139]
WITCHES, FAIRY DOCTORS—
Bewitched Butter (Donegal)[149]
A Queen's County Witch[151]
The Witch Hare[154]
Bewitched Butter (Queen's County)[155]
The Horned Women[165]
The Witches' Excursion[168]
The Confessions of Tom Bourke[170]
The Pudding Bewitched[185]
T'YEER-NA-N-OGE—
The Legend of O'Donoghue[201]
Rent-Day[203]
Loughleagh (Lake of Healing)[206]
Hy-Brasail.—The Isle of the Blest[212]
The Phantom Isle[213]
SAINTS, PRIESTS—
The Priest's Soul[215]
The Priest of Coloony[220]
The Story of the Little Bird[222]
Conversion of King Laoghaire's Daughters[224]
King O'Toole and his Goose[224]
THE DEVIL—
The Demon Cat[229]
The Long Spoon[231]
The Countess Kathleen O'Shea[232]
The Three Wishes[235]
GIANTS—
The Giant's Stairs[260]
A Legend of Knockmany[266]
KINGS, QUEENS, PRINCESSES, EARLS, ROBBERS—
The Twelve Wild Geese[280]
The Lazy Beauty and her Aunts[286]
The Haughty Princess[290]
The Enchantment of Gearoidh Iarla[294]
Munachar and Manachar[296]
Donald and his Neighbours[299]
The Jackdaw[303]
The Story of Conn-eda[306]
NOTES[319]

INTRODUCTION.

Dr. Corbett, Bishop of Oxford and Norwich, lamented long ago the departure of the English fairies. "In Queen Mary's time" he wrote—

"When Tom came home from labour,
Or Cis to milking rose,
Then merrily, merrily went their tabor,
And merrily went their toes."

But now, in the times of James, they had all gone, for "they were of the old profession," and "their songs were Ave Maries." In Ireland they are still extant, giving gifts to the kindly, and plaguing the surly. "Have you ever seen a fairy or such like?" I asked an old man in County Sligo. "Amn't I annoyed with them," was the answer. "Do the fishermen along here know anything of the mermaids?" I asked a woman of a village in County Dublin. "Indeed, they don't like to see them at all," she answered, "for they always bring bad weather." "Here is a man who believes in ghosts," said a foreign sea-captain, pointing to a pilot of my acquaintance. "In every house over there," said the pilot, pointing to his native village of Rosses, "there are several." Certainly that now old and much respected dogmatist, the Spirit of the Age, has in no manner made his voice heard down there. In a little while, for he has gotten a consumptive appearance of late, he will be covered over decently in his grave, and another will grow, old and much respected, in his place, and never be heard of down there, and after him another and another and another. Indeed, it is a question whether any of these personages will ever be heard of outside the newspaper offices and lecture-rooms and drawing-rooms and eel-pie houses of the cities, or if the Spirit of the Age is at any time more than a froth. At any rate, whole troops of their like will not change the Celt much. Giraldus Cambrensis found the people of the western islands a trifle paganish. "How many gods are there?" asked a priest, a little while ago, of a man from the Island of Innistor. "There is one on Innistor; but this seems a big place," said the man, and the priest held up his hands in horror, as Giraldus had, just seven centuries before. Remember, I am not blaming the man; it is very much better to believe in a number of gods than in none at all, or to think there is only one, but that he is a little sentimental and impracticable, and not constructed for the nineteenth century. The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much—indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are averse to sitting down to dine thirteen at table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, or seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tail. There are, of course, children of light who have set their faces against all this, though even a newspaper man, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for every one is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt is a visionary without scratching.

Yet, be it noticed, if you are a stranger, you will not readily get ghost and fairy legends, even in a western village. You must go adroitly to work, and make friends with the children, and the old men, with those who have not felt the pressure of mere daylight existence, and those with whom it is growing less, and will have altogether taken itself off one of these days. The old women are most learned, but will not so readily be got to talk, for the fairies are very secretive, and much resent being talked of; and are there not many stories of old women who were nearly pinched into their graves or numbed with fairy blasts?

At sea, when the nets are out and the pipes are lit, then will some ancient hoarder of tales become loquacious, telling his histories to the tune of the creaking of the boats. Holy-eve night, too, is a great time, and in old days many tales were to be heard at wakes. But the priests have set faces against wakes.