not imagine, for you would never suppose
that antiquaries, archaeologists, and wee folk would care for the same
places.

I have no intention of interviewing the grander personages among the
Irish fairies, for they are known to be haughty, unapproachable, and
severe, as befits the descendants of the great Nature Gods and the
under-deities of flood and fell and angry sea. It is the lesser folk,
the gay, gracious, little men that I wish to meet; those who pipe and
dance on the fairy ring. The 'ring' is made, you know, by the tiny feet
that have tripped for ages and ages, flying, dancing, circling, over the
tender young grass. Rain cannot wash it away; you may walk over it; you
may even plough up the soil, and replant it ever so many times; the
next season the fairy ring shines in the grass just the same. It seems
strange that I am blind to it, when an ignorant, dirty spalpeen who
lives near the foot of Knockma has seen it and heard the fairy music
again and again. He took me to the very place where, last Lammas Eve,
he saw plainly--for there was a beautiful, white moon overhead--the
arch king and queen of the fairies, who appear only on state occasions,
together with a crowd of dancers, and more than a dozen pipers piping
melodious music. Not only that, but (lucky little beggar!) he heard
distinctly the fulparnee and the folpornee, the rap-lay-hoota and the
roolya-boolya--noises indicative of the very jolliest and wildest and
most uncommon form of fairy conviviality. Failing a glimpse of these
midsummer revels, my next choice would be to see the Elf Horseman
galloping round the shores of the Fairy Lough in the cool of the morn.

'Loughareema, Loughareema,
Stars come out and stars are hidin';
The wather whispers on the stones,
The flittherin' moths are free.
Onest before the mornin' light
The Horseman will come ridin'
Roun' an' roun' the Fairy Lough,
An' no one there to see.'

But there will be some one there, and that is the aforesaid Jamesy
Flanigan! Sometimes I think he is fibbing, but a glance at his soft,
dark, far-seeing eyes under their fringe of thick lashes convinces me to
the contrary. His field of vision is different from mine, that is all,
and he fears that if I accompany him to the shores of the Fairy Lough
the Horseman will not ride for him; so I am even taunted with undue
common-sense by a little Irish gossoon.

I tried to coax Benella to go with m