And this brings to mind the chap-books. They are to be found brown with turf smoke on cottage shelves, and are, or were, sold on every hand by the pedlars, but cannot be found in any library of this city of the Sassanach. "The Royal Fairy Tales," *'The Hibernian Tales," and "The Legends of the Fairies" are the fairy literature of the people.

Several specimens of our fairy poetry are given. It is more like the fairy poetry of Scotland than of England. The personages of English fairy literature are merely, in most cases, mortals beautifully masquerading. Nobody ever believed in such fairies. They are romantic bubbles from Provence. Nobody ever laid new milk on their doorstep for them.

As to my own part in this book, [ have tried to make it representative, as far as so few pages would allow, of every kind of Irish folk-faith. The reader will perhaps wonder that in all my notes I have not rationalised a single hobgobUn. I seek for shelter to the words of Socrates.*

" Fhcedrus. I should like to know, Socrates, whether the

* Phadnis. Jowett's translation. (Clarendon Press.)

place is not somewhere here at which Boreas is said to have carried off Orithyia from the banks of the IHssus ?

" Socrates, That is the tradition.

"• T/uedrus. And is this the exact spot ? The little stream is delightfully clear and bright; I can fancy that there might be maidens playing near,

*' Socrates. I believe the spot is not exactly here, but about a quarter-of-a-mile lower down, where you cross to the temple of Artemis, and 1 think that there is some sort of an altar of Boreas at the place.

" Fhcsdrus, I do not recollect; but I beseech you to tell me, Socrates, do you believe this tale ?

^^ Socrates. The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like them, I also doubted. 1 might have a rational explanation that Orithyia was playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by Boreas. There is a discrepancy, however, about the locality. According to another version of the story, she was taken from the Areopagus, and not from this place. Now I quite acknowledge that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabihtate centaurs and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless other inconceivable and portentous monsters. And if he is sceptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of ciude philosophy will take up all his time. Now, I have certainly not time for such inquiries. Shall I tell you why ? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says ; to be curious about that which is not my

2

)r7iii INTRODUCTION,

business, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And, therefore, I say farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself. Am I, indeed, a wonder more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of gentler and simpler sort, to whom nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny ? "

I have to thank Messrs Macmillan, and the editors of JBelgravia, All the Year Rounds and Monthly Packet^ for leave to quote from Patrick Kennedy's Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, and Miss Maclintock's articles respectively; Lady Wilde, for leave to give what I would from her Ancient Legends of Ireland (Ward & Downey) j and Mr, Douglas Hyde, for his three unpublished stories, and for valuable and valued assistance in several ways; and also Mr, Allingham, and other copyright holders, for their poems. Mr. AUingham's poems are from Irish Soiigs and Poems (Reeves and Turner); Fergus-son's, from Sealey, Bryers, & Walker's shilling reprint; my own and Miss O'Leary's from Ballads and Poems of Young Ireland, 1888, a little anthology published by Gill & Sons, Dublin,

W. B.