No More Learning

There was an old Martin Roland, who lived near a bog a little out of
Gort, who saw them often from his young days, and always towards the
end of his life, though I would hardly call him their friend. He told
me a few months before his death that 'they' would not let him sleep
at night with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their
pipes. He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend
had told him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or
to play on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and
he did, and they always went out into the field when he began to play.
He showed me the pipe, and blew through it, and made a noise, but he
did not know how to play; and then he showed me where he had pulled his
chimney down, because one of them used to sit up on it and play on the
pipes. A friend of his and mine went to see him a little time ago, for
she heard that 'three of them' had told him he was to die. He said they
had gone away after warning him, and that the children (children they
had 'taken,' I suppose) who used to come with them, and play about the
house with them, had 'gone to some other place,' because 'they found
the house too cold for them, maybe'; and he died a week after he had
said these things.

His neighbours were not certain that he really saw anything in his old
age, but they were all certain that he saw things when he was a young
man. His brother said, 'Old he is, and it's all in his brain the things
he sees. If he was a young man we might believe in him. ' But he was
improvident, and never got on with his brothers. A neighbour said, 'The
poor man, they say they are mostly in his head now, but sure he was a
fine fresh man twenty years ago the night he saw them linked in two
lots, like young slips of girls walking together. It was the night they
took away Fallon's little girl. ' And she told how Fallon's little girl
had met a woman 'with red hair that was as bright as silver,' who took
her away. Another neighbour, who was herself 'clouted over the ear' by
one of them for going into a fort where they were, said, 'I believe
it's mostly in his head they are; and when he stood in the door last
night I said, "The wind does be always in my ears, and the sound of it
never stops," to make him think it was the same with him; but he says,
"I hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of them
is after bringing out a little flute, and it's on it he's playing to
them. " And this I know, that when he pulled down the chimney where he
said the piper used to be sitting and playing, he lifted up stones,
and he an old man, that I could not have lifted when I was young and
strong.
'

A friend has sent me from Ulster an account of one who was on terms
of true friendship with the people of faery. It has been taken down
accurately, for my friend, who had heard the old woman's story some
time before I heard of it, got her to tell it over again, and wrote
it out at once. She began by telling the old woman that she did not
like being in the house alone because of the ghosts and faeries;
and the old woman said, 'There's nothing to be frightened about in
faeries, miss. Many's the time I talked to a woman myself that was
a faery, or something of the sort, and no less and more than mortal
anyhow. She used to come about your grandfather's house--your mother's
grandfather, that is--in my young days. But you'll have heard all about
her. ' My friend said that she had heard about her, but a long time
before, and she wanted to hear about her again; and the old woman went
on, 'Well, dear, the very first time ever I heard word of her coming
about was when your uncle--that is, your mother's uncle--Joseph married,
and building a house for his wife, for he brought her first to his
father's, up at the house by the Lough. My father and us were living
nigh hand to where the new house was to be built, to overlook the men
at their work. My father was a weaver, and brought his looms and all
there into a cottage that was close by. The foundations were marked
out, and the building stones lying about, but the masons had not come
yet; and one day I was standing with my mother fornent the house, when
we sees a smart wee woman coming up the field over the burn to us. I
was a bit of a girl at the time, playing about and sporting myself, but
I mind her as well as if I saw her there now! ' My friend asked how the
woman was dressed, and the old woman said, 'It was a gray cloak she
had on, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied
round her head, like the country women did use to wear in them times. '
My friend asked, 'How wee was she? ' And the old woman said, 'Well now,
she wasn't wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the
Wee Woman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you
would say. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round
in the face.