Sidh_, because they are
seen, as it were, to come out of the beautiful hills to infest men,
and hence the vulgar belief that they reside in certain subterranean
habitations: and sometimes the hills themselves are called, by the
Irish, _Sidhe_ or _Siodha_."

No doubt, when the princesses spoke of the gods of the earth,
reference was made to such pagan deities as Beal; Dagda the great or
the good god; Aine, the Moon, goddess of the water and of wisdom;
Manannan macLir, the Irish Neptune; Crom, the Irish Ceres; and
Iphinn, the benevolent, whose relations to the Irish Oirfidh
resembled those of Apollo towards Orpheus; and to the allegiance they
owed to the Elements, the Wind, and the Stars. But besides these
pagan divinities and powers, and quite apart from them, the early
Irish believed in two classes of fairies: in the first place, a
hierarchy of fairy beings, well and ill disposed, not differing in
appearance, to any great degree at any rate, from human beings--good
spirits and demons, rarely visible during the daytime; and, in the
second place, there was the magic race of the De Danann, who, after
conquest by the Milesians, transformed themselves into fairies, and
in that guise continued to inhabit the underworld of the Irish hills,
and to issue thence in support of Irish heroes, or to give their aid
against other fairy adversaries.

There is another theory to account for the fairy race. It is that
they are angels who revolted with Satan and were excluded from heaven
for their unworthiness, but were not found evil enough for hell, and
therefore were allowed to occupy that intermediate space which has
been called "the Other World." It is still a moot point with the
Irish peasantry, as it was with the Irish saints of old, whether,
after being compelled to dwell without death among rocks and hills,
lakes and seas, bushes and forest, till the day of judgment, the
fairies then have the chance of salvation. Indeed, the fairies are
themselves believed to have great doubts of a future existence,
though, like many men, entertaining undefined hopes of happiness; and
hence the enmity which some of them have for mankind, who, they
acknowledge, will live eternally. Thus their actions are balanced
between generosity and vindictiveness towards the human race.

Mr. W.Y. Evans Wentz, A.M., of Leland Stanford University,
California, and Jesus College, Oxford, has received an honorary
degree from the latter university for his thesis,