No More Learning

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. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother's sister, and
Betty was like none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any of
them. She was round and fresh in the face, and she never was married,
and she never would take any man; and we used to say that the Wee
Woman--her being like Betty--was, maybe, one of their own people that had
been took off before she grew to her full height, and for that she was
always following us and warning and foretelling. This time she walks
straight over to where my mother was standing. "Go over to the Lough
this minute! "--ordering her like that--"Go over to the Lough, and tell
Joseph that he must change the foundation of this house to where I'll
show you fornent the thorn-bush. That is where it is to be built, if he
is to have luck and prosperity, so do what I'm telling ye this minute. "
The house was being built on "the path" I suppose--the path used by the
people of faery in their journeys, and my mother brings Joseph down
and shows him, and he changes the foundations, the way he was bid, but
didn't bring it exactly to where was pointed, and the end of that was,
when he come to the house, his own wife lost her life with an accident
that come to a horse that hadn't room to turn right with a harrow
between the bush and the wall. The Wee Woman was queer and angry when
next she come, and says to us, "He didn't do as I bid him, but he'll
see what he'll see. "' My friend asked where the woman came from this
time, and if she was dressed as before, and the woman said, 'Always the
same way, up the field beyant the burn. It was a thin sort of shawl she
had about her in summer, and a cloak about her in winter; and many and
many a time she came, and always it was good advice she was giving to
my mother, and warning her what not to do if she would have good luck.