Then come The Solitary Fairies, amongst whom we find the little Lepracaun mentioned above.  He has grown very rich, as he possesses all the treasure-crocks buried in war-time.  In the early part of this century, according to Croker, they used to show in Tipperary a little shoe forgotten by the fairy shoemaker.  Then there are two rather disreputable little fairies—­the Cluricaun, who gets intoxicated in gentlemen’s cellars, and the Red Man, who plays unkind practical jokes.  ’The Fear-Gorta (Man of Hunger) is an emaciated phantom that goes through the land in famine time, begging an alms and bringing good luck to the giver.’  The Water-sheerie is ‘own brother to the English Jack-o’-Lantern.’  ’The Leanhaun Shee (fairy mistress) seeks the love of mortals.  If they refuse, she must be their slave; if they consent, they are hers, and can only escape by finding another to take their place.  The fairy lives on their life, and they waste away.  Death is no escape from her.  She is the Gaelic muse, for she gives inspiration to those she persecutes.  The Gaelic poets die young, for she is restless, and will not let them remain long on earth.’  The Pooka is essentially an animal spirit, and some have considered him the forefather of Shakespeare’s ‘Puck.’  He lives on solitary mountains, and among old ruins ’grown monstrous with much solitude,’ and ‘is of the race of the nightmare.’  ’He has many shapes—­is now a horse, . . . now a goat, now an eagle.  Like all spirits, he is only half in the world of form.’  The banshee does not care much for our democratic levelling tendencies; she loves only old families, and despises the parvenu or the nouveau riche.  When more than one banshee is present, and they wail and sing in chorus, it is for the death of some holy or great one.  An omen that sometimes accompanies the banshee is ’. . . an immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headless horses driven by a Dullahan.’  A Dullahan is the most terrible thing in the world.  In 1807 two of the sentries stationed outside St. James’s Park saw one climbing the railings, and died of fright.  Mr. Yeats suggests that they are possibly ’descended from that Irish giant who swam across the Channel with his head in his teeth.’

Then come the stories of ghosts, of saints and priests, and of giants.  The ghosts live in a state intermediary between this world and the next.  They are held there by some earthly longing or affection, or some duty unfulfilled, or anger against the living; they are those who are too good for hell, and too bad for heaven.  Sometimes they ’take the forms of insects, especially of butterflies.’  The author of the Parochial Survey of Ireland ’heard a woman say to a child who was chasing a butterfly, “How do you know it is not the soul of your grandfather?” On November eve they are abroad, and dance with the fairies.’  As for the saints and priests, ‘there are no martyrs in the stories.’  That ancient chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis ’taunted