plenty of everything to eat and drink; nothing at all wanting that he could wish for or think of.  And he does not mind (recollect or know) how at last he falls asleep; and in the morning he finds himself lying, not in ever a bed or a house at all, but just in the angle of the road where first he met the strange man:  there he finds himself lying on his back on the grass, and all his sheep feeding as quiet as ever all round about him, and his horse the same way, and the bridle of the beast over his wrist.  And I asked him what he thought of it; and from first to last he could think of nothing, but for certain sure it must have been the fairies that entertained him so well.  For there was no house to see anywhere nigh hand, or any building, or barn, or place at all, but only the church and the Mote (barrow).  There’s another odd thing enough that they tell about this same church, that if any person’s corpse, that had not a right to be buried in that churchyard, went to be burying there in it, no, not all the men, women, or childer in all Ireland could get the corpse anyway into the churchyard; but as they would be trying to go into the churchyard, their feet would seem to be going backwards instead of forwards; ay, continually backwards the whole funeral would seem to go; and they would never set foot with the corpse in the churchyard.  Now they say that it is the fairies do all this; but it is my opinion it is all idle talk, and people are after being wiser now.

The country people in Ireland certainly had great admiration mixed with reverence, if not dread, of fairies.  They believed that beneath these fairy mounts were spacious subterraneous palaces, inhabited by the good people, who must not on any account be disturbed.  When the wind raises a little eddy of dust upon the road, the poor people believe that it is raised by the fairies, that it is a sign that they are journeying from one of the fairies’ mounts to another, and they say to the fairies, or to the dust as it passes, ‘God speed ye, gentlemen; God speed ye.’  This averts any evil that the good people might be inclined to do them.  There are innumerable stories told of the friendly and unfriendly feats of these busy fairies; some of these tales are ludicrous, and some romantic enough for poetry.  It is a pity that poets should lose such convenient, though diminutive machinery.  By the bye, Parnell, who showed himself so deeply ‘skilled in faerie lore,’ was an Irishman; and though he has presented his fairies to the world in the ancient English dress of ‘Britain’s isle, and Arthur’s days,’ it is probable that his first acquaintance with them began in his native country.