Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

how
IrisJi Superstitions, o-.
—
fairies, as they listen without being seen. Their fciiKiKs
look after men, as their males look after women.
They have kings and queens. Oberon or Elbcrich was
a king, and Titania a queen. The Irish say that Don, the
Milesian leader, drowned in a storm raised b\' the Tuaths,
became a King of the Fays. Inis Mananain, now Isle of
IMan, was so called from Mananan, an ancient chief transformed
to a royal Sidhe. Mab, daughter of King Eochaidh
Faidhleach, became Queen of the Fairies, being more than
immortalized in Spenser's Fairy Queen. Another King of
the Fairies was the Tuath Fionnbharr. The Welsh Fairy
King was Gwyh ab Nudd.
As these spirits of air, earth, and water are numerous, it
is
a comfort to learn from the Talmud that, while the bad
ones are exactly 7,405,926, the good ones number, in the
rougher estimate, 1,064,340,000,000,000.
Black fairies are not conspicuous, unless in the mines.
The Maories of New Zealand assure us that their merry
little
fays are not of their dark colour, but fair like Englishmen.
They love the hills of Waikato. A chief, frightened
of them, took off his ornaments, and gave them away. As
soon as they finished their song, as he told the tale, they
took the shadows of the Maori's earrings, and handed them
about from one to the other.
As all know, the Fairies, or Peris, are suffering from some
misconduct in happier climes. Christian tradition holds to
their final redemption.
"Ah !
Irish fairies are thus mourned for by D. F. iMcCarthy
:
the pleasant time hath vanished ere our wretched doublings
banished
All the graceful spirit people, children of the earth and sea—
Whom in days now dim and olden, when the wodd was fresh ar.d
golden,
Every mortal could l^ehold in haunted rath and tower and tree—
They have vanished, they are banished. Ah sad the loss lor
!
thee."