Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

A HOSTING OF THE SIDHE.
A swift word had traversed all Erin, coming upon the
cold blasts of the wind to every fairy rath and glen and
sacred hill, and the ancient plains of tomb and temple,
and with one accord the happy Shee came forth out of
Fairy Land, out of Tiernanog where they live in bliss,
consuming the " feast of age." From Wisna, and Tlatga,
and Taylteen ; from Cruhane, and Tara, and Awlin ;
from Gowra, Knock Ainey, Dunamarc, and Bru Liah,
Adair, and Lahran, and Oileen Arda Nemed ; from
Brugh-na-Boyna, and Tu Inver, and Fionahah, of Slieve
Few, Slieve Blahma of the Layhees, and Slieve-na-man
came the Shee of the ancient Fomoroh
Fion of the Osree ;
out of the west, and the Shee of the Fir-bolgs ; came
Kasar, the hoary queen, paling, irielting into the air,
before the growing glory of the Tuatha de Danan ; even
she, though smit to death, wan and faded as the moon
struck by the beams of the rising sun, came with her
waning sovereignty to comfort the guileless Cuculain.
From the Shannon, where the hills are dark above the
waters of the Red Lake, came Bove Derg, endlessly
grieving for his grand-children, the cruelly transformed.
They indeed came not, for the cold waters of the Moyle
detained them where they wandered swanlike—^d
and Fiechra and comely Conn, and Finoola, their sister
maternal, though so young. They themselves came not,
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