[4] The Shee (or "Sidhe," as I should properly spell it if you were not so ignorant) were, as everybody knows, the regular, stand-pat, organization fairies of Erin. The Crowdie was their annual convention, at which they made melancholy sounds. The Itt and Himm were the irregular, or insurgent, fairies. They never got any offices or patronage. See MacAlester, Polity of the Sidhe of West Meath, page 985.
[5] The Barryhoo is an ancient Celtic bird about the size of a Mavis, with lavender eyes and a black-crape tail. It continually mourns its mate (Barrywhich, feminine form), which has an hereditary predisposition to an early and tragic demise and invariably dies first.
[6] Magraw, a Gaelic term of endearment, often heard on the baseball fields of Donnybrook.
[7] These last six words are all that tradition has preserved of the original incantation by means of which Irish rats were rhymed to death. Thereby hangs a good Celtic tale, which I should be glad to tell you in this note; but the publishers say that being prosed to death is as bad as being rhymed to death, and that the readers won't stand for any more.
LILIES
| Lilies, lilies, white lilies and yellow— Lilies, lilies, purple lilies and golden— Calla lilies, tiger lilies, lilies of the valley— Lilies, lilies, lilies— Bulb, bud and blossom— What made them lilies? If they were not lilies they would have to be something else, would they not? What was it that made them lilies instead of making them violets or roses or geraniums or petunias? What was it that made you yourself and me myself? What? Alas! I do not know! Don Marquis. |