Altogether, seeing the vindictive nature of fairies and their uncompromising attitude towards transgressors of their laws, it is perhaps as well that, although still inhabiting the earth, they should be gradually losing something of their power. At the same time, if the wholesome awe usually connected with the supernatural element in life, appears to be dying out, on the principle of the Kerry man who denied the power of the priest to turn him into a rat, but who all the same took the precaution of shutting up the cat at night, a certain respect for the fairies still prevails, which is as well, for if in the past they have displayed an altogether uncharitable tendency to take babies out of their cradles and to substitute for them fairy changelings of uncertain temper, to lure newly-married women away from their husbands, leaving counterfeit copies in their places, to administer blows to strong men which resulted in paralysis and blindness, to bewitch cows so that their milk fails, and to blight and destroy whole crops of potatoes, it must be remembered that they are also capable of rewarding virtue, as in the case of Hanafin and his cows, one of the many delightful fairy tales collected in Kerry by the late Mr. Jeremiah Curtin Edith Gordon ‘Some Kerry Fairies’ Kerry Archaeological Magazine 6 (1911), 347-356 at 351-352