UGH 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"

* * * * *

"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
Chapter V.; the changeling story which Mrs. O'Brien tells, in Chapter
VI.; and the most of the story of Oisin, in Chapter IX., besides part
of the story of the fairies' tune, in Chapter VII. Wi