STORIES FROM FAIRYLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 972, 5 September 1889, Page 32

STORIES FROM FAIRYLAND.

Somewhere about the beginning of this century appeared at the western comer of Market street, Sligo, where the butcher's shop now is, not a palace, as in Keats' " Lamia," but an apothecary's shop, ruled over by a certain unaccountable Dr Opendon. Whence he came none ever knew. There also was in Sligo in those days a woman, Ormsby by name, whose husband had fallen mysteriously sick. The doctors could make nothing of him. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet weaker and weaker he grew. Away went the wife to Dr Opendon. She was shown into the shop parlour. A black cat was sitting straight up before the fire. She had just time to see that the sideboard was covered with fruit, and to say to herself, " Fruit must be wholesome when the doctor has so much," before Dr ■ Opendon came in. He was dressed all in black, the same as the cat, and his wife walked behind him dressed in black likewise. She gave him a guinea, and got a little bottle in return. "' Her husband recovered that time. Meanwhile

THE BLACK DOCTOK cured many people ; but one day a rich patient died, and cafe, wife, and doctor all vanished the night after. In a year the man Ormsby fell sick once more. Now, he was a good-looking man, and his wife felt sure the " gentry " were coveting him. She went and called on the "fairy doctor" at Cairnsfoot. As soon as he heard her tale he went behind the back door and began muttering, muttering, muttering— making spell 3. Her husband got well this time also. But after a while he* sickened again, the fatal third time, and away went she once more to Cairnsfoot, and out went the fairy doctor behind his back door and began muttering,.but soon he came in and told her it was no use — her husband would die ; and sure enough the man died, and ever after when she spoke of him Mrs Ormsby shook her head saying she knew well where he was, and it wasn't in heaven or hell or purgatory either. She probably believed that a log of wood was left behind in. his plage, but so bewitched, that it seemed

the dead body of her husband. She is dead now herself, but many still living remember her. She was, I believe, for a time a servant or else a kind of pensioner of some relations of my own. Sometimes those who are carried off are allowed after many years — seven usually — a final glimpse of their friends. Many years ago A WOMAN VANISHED SUDDENLY FBOM A

SLIGO GABDEN,

where she was walking with her husband. When her son, who was then a baby, had grown up he received word in some way, not handed down, that his mother was glamoured by fairies and imprisoned for a time in a house in Glasgow, and longed to see him. Glasgow, in those days of sailing ships, seemed to the peasant mind almost over the verge of the known world, yet he, being a dutiful son, started away. For a long time he walked the streets of Glasgow. At last, down in a cellar, he saw his mother working. She was happy, she said, and had the best of good eating, and would he nob eat?— and therewith laid all kinds of food on the table ; but he, knowing well that she was trying to cast on him the glamour by giving him fairy food, that she might keep him with her, refused, and came home to his people in Sligo. • Some five miles southward of Sligo is a gloomy^and tree-boarded pond, a ereat gathering-place of water-fowl, called, because of its form, the Heart Lake. It is haunted by stranger things than heron, snipe, or wild duck. Out of this lake, as from the white square stone in Ben Bulben, issues an unearthly troop. Once men began to drain it; suddenly one of them raised a cry that

HE SAW HIS HOUSE IN FLAMES.

They turned round, and every man there saw his own cottage burning. They hurried home to find it was but fairy glamour. To this hour on the border of the lake is shown a half-dug trench— the signet of their impiety. A little way from this lake 1 heard a beautiful and mournf al history of fairy kidnapping. I heard it from a little old woman in a white cap, who sings to herself in Gaelic, and moves from one foot to the other as though she remembered the dancing of her youth. A young man going at nightfall to the house of his just-married bride, met on the way a jolly company, and with them his bride. They were fairies, and had stolen her as a wife for the chief of their band. To him they seemed only a company of merry mortals. His bride, when sho saw her own love, bade him welcome, but was most fearful lest he should eat the fairy food, and so be glamoured out of the earth into that bloodless, dim nation, wherefore she set him down to play cards with three of the cavalcade, and he played on, realising nothing until he saw the chief of the band carrying his bride away in his arms. Immediately he started up, and knew that

THEY SVEBE FAIBIES,

for slowly all that jolly company melted into shadow and night. He hurried to the house of his beloved. As he drew near came to him the cry of the keeners. She had died some time before he came. Some noteless Gaelic poet had made this into a forgotten ballad, some odd verses of which my white-capped friend remembered and sang for me. Sometimes one hears of stolen people acting as good genii to the living, as in this tale, heard also close by the haunted pond of John Kirwan, of Castle Hacket. The Kir wans are a family most rumoured of in peasant lore, and believed to be the descendants of a man and a spirit. They have ever been famous for beauty, and I have read that the mother of the pre3ent Lord Cloncurry was of their tribe. John Kirwan was a great horse-racing man, and once landed in Liverpool with a fine horse, going racing somewhere in middle England. That evening, as he walked by the docks,

A slip op A boy

came up and asked where he was stabling his horse. In such and such a place, he answered. . " Don't put him there," said the slip of a boy; "that stable will be burned to-night." He took his horse elsewhere, and sure enough the stable was burned. Next day the boy came and asked as reward to ride as his jockey in the coming race, and then was gone. The race-time came round. At the last moment the boy ran forward and mounted, saying, " If I strike him with the whip in my left hand I will lose, but if in my right hand bet all you are worth." " For," said Paddy Flynn, a noted fairly seer, who told me the tale, " the left arm is good for nothing. I might go on making

THE SIGN OF THE CEOSS

with it, and all that, come Christmas, and a Banshee, or such like, would no more mind than if it was that broom." Well,' the slip of a boy struck the horse with his right hand, and John Kirwan cleared the field out. When the race was over, " What can I do for you now 1 " said he. " Nothing but this," £said the boy : "My mother has a cottage on your land — they stole me from the cradle. Be good to her, John Kirwan, a.nd where ever your horses go I will watch that no ill follows them ; but you will never see- me more." With that he made himself air, and vanished. — W. B. Yeats, in the Scots Observer.