Chapter I: Front Matter

FAIRIES AND FOLK

OF IRELAND

BY

WILLIAM HENRY FROST

ILLUSTRATED BY SYDNEY RICHMOND BURLEIGH

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1900

COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

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To

Jane Grey Allen and Elizabeth Allen

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CONTENTS

I. O'DONOGHUE

II. THE BIG POOR PEOPLE

III. THE LITTLE GOOD PEOPLE

IV. THE CLEVERNESS OF MORTALS

V. THE TIME FOR NAGGENEEN'S PLAN

VI. LITTLE KATHLEEN AND LITTLE TERENCE

VII. A CHAPTER THAT YOU CAN SKIP

VIII. THE STARS IN THE WATER

IX. A YEAR AND A DAY

X. THE IRON CRUCIFIX

XI. THE OLD KING COMES BACK

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"'IS IT TIME?' THE WARRIOR SAID" _Frontispiece_

"THROUGH THE FLYING WATER I SAW THE OLD KING"

"'BLESSED DAYS THERE WERE.' SHE SAID"

"THEY WERE CHANGED INTO FOUR BEAUTIFUL WHITE SWANS"

"WILL YOU HAVE A LIGHT FOR YOUR PIPE, YOUR MAJESTY?"

"I WAS SITTIN' THERE, WID A SPIGGOT OVER ME SHOULDER"

"THE HORSE WAS NOTHING BUT THE BEAM OF A PLOUGH"

"WHERE ARE YOU BOUND IN THAT SHIP?"

"HERE'S THE POPE'S BULL FOR THAT SAME"

"SHE KNEW THAT THERE WERE GOOD PEOPLE HERE"

"'PAT,' SAYS HE, 'BRING ME A PIPE'"

"PLUMP DOWN HE FELL THROUGH THE QUILT"

"AND THEN DONALD WENT HOME"

"THERE'S A BLESSING ON THIS SAME SACK"

"THERE WAS A WOMAN LYING ON A GOLD COUCH"

"HE FORGOT THE PSALM THAT HE HAD BEEN READING"

"HOLD THE SPEAR STRAIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU"

"THE NET WAS PULLED AWAY FROM HIM"

"HE SAYS THAT I AM NEVER TO BE AFRAID OF THEM"

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"SHOULD YOU ASK ME, WHENCE THESE STORIES?"

The story which runs through and makes up the bulk of this book is my own. The intention has been, however, to make it conform to the laws governing certain beings commonly regarded in this country as mythical, as those laws are revealed in the folk-lore of many peoples, and particularly of the Irish people. Almost every incident in which the fairies are concerned might occur, and very many of them do actually occur, in Irish folk-lore. But in a real folk-tale there are usually only two or three, or, at any rate, only a few, of the characteristic incidents, while this story attempts to combine many of them.

The shorter stories wherewith the main story is interspersed are all, to the best of my information and belief, genuine Irish folk-tales. I have told them in my own way, of course. I have sometimes condensed and sometimes elaborated them, but I have seldom, if ever, I think, materially changed their substance. I have never had the opportunity to collect such stories as these for myself, and if I had, I should probably find that I had not the ability. I have therefore had to turn for the substance of these tales to collections made by others--men whose patient and affectionate care and labor have preserved a great mass of the beautiful Irish legends, which, without them, might have died.

It seems hardly right to give to any one of these collectors a preference over the others by naming him first. But when I count up my indebtedness, I find that the book to which I owe more stories than to any other is Patrick Kennedy's "Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts." From this book I have borrowed, as to their substance, the story of Earl Gerald, in Chapter II. of my own book; the story of the children of Lir, in the same chapter; the account of the changeling who was tempted by the bagpipes, which Naggeneen tells of himself, in