stration: Initial: "About the Fairies"]

The Oriental luxuriance of the Irish mythology is nowhere more
conspicuously displayed than when dealing with the history, habits,
characteristics and pranks of the "good people." According to the most
reliable of the rural "fairy-men," a race now nearly extinct, the fairies
were once angels, so numerous as to have formed a large part of the
population of heaven. When Satan sinned and drew throngs of the heavenly
host with him into open rebellion, a large number of the less warlike
spirits stood aloof from the contest that followed, fearing the
consequences, and not caring to take sides till the issue of the conflict
was determined. Upon the defeat and expulsion of the rebellious angels,
those who had remained neutral were punished by banishment from heaven,
but their offence being only one of omission, they were not consigned to
the pit with Satan and his followers, but were sent to earth where they
still remain, not without hope that on the last day they may be pardoned
and readmitted to Paradise. They are thus on their good behavior, but
having power to do infinite harm, they are much feared, and spoken of,
either in a whisper or aloud, as the "good people."

Unlike Leprechawns, who are not considered fit associates for reputable
fairies, the good people are not solitary, but quite sociable, and always
live in large societies, the members of which pursue the cooeperative plan
of labor and enjoyment, owning all their property, the kind and amount of
which are somewhat indefinite, in common, and uniting their efforts to
accomplish any desired object, whether of work or play. They travel in
large bands, and although their parties are never seen in the daytime,
there is little difficulty in ascertaining their line of march, for, "sure
they make the terriblest little cloud o' dust iver raised, an' not a bit
o' wind in it at all," so that a fairy migration is sometimes the talk of
the county. "Though, be nacher, they're not the length av yer finger, they
can make thimselves the bigness av a tower when it plazes thim, an' av
that ugliness that ye'd faint wid the looks o' thim, as knowin' they can
shtrike ye dead on the shpot or change ye into a dog, or a pig, or a
unicorn, or anny other dirthy baste they plaze."

As a matter of fact, however, the fairies are by no means so numerous at
present as they were formerly, a recent historian remarking that the
National Schools and societies