‘There, neither turmoil nor silence....

‘Though fair the sight of Erin’s plains, hardly will they seem so after you have known the Great Plain....

‘A wonder of a land the land of which I speak; no youth there grows to old age....

‘We behold and are not beheld.’—The God Midir, in Tochmarc Etaine.


INTRODUCTION

‘I have told what I have seen, what I have thought, and what I have learned by inquiry.’—Herodotus.

I. The Religious Nature of the Fairy-Faith