In recent years I have met only one sign of true respect for the ‘Sheevra’ race. A small patch of land was left untilled in the midst of a cornfield at the end of the steep descent from Carran old church to Eanty in the Burren. It was left for three years amidst the tillage, and then the field was allowed to return to grass. The owners obviously disliked to explain the matter, but the act was clearly understood in the neighbourhood as a concession to the spirits of the field when the grass land was broken up for the first time in human memory. Westropp ‘Clare’ 197

In another poem of MacCurtin’s [18 cent?], on a monk’s horse ‘overlooked’ and killed by the evil eye, or by the look of a red-haired woman, or by ‘the stroke of a fairy,’ the poet recommends the holy man to get the aid of a local practitioner of renown, Peter the Fairy Killer. Westropp ‘Clare’ 196-197

The greatest fairy monarch in Clare was ‘Donn of the Sand-hills’ (now the golf links), near the old castle of Doogh, (i.e. Dumhach or Sand Dune), near Lehinch. He, or one of the other fairy princes named Donn, appears in a list of the divine race of the Tuatha De Danann, and is therefore of the family of the Dagda, and, it may be presumed, a lineal descendant of the ancient Ana, Mother of the Gods. A well-known Irish scholar and antiquary, Andrew MacCurtin, before 1730 addressed a political petition to Donn of Dumhach complaining, like most Irish antiquaries, of the neglect of the gentry, and praying for any menial post at his Court. As there was none that answered, the petitioner had to rest content with the hospitality of the MacDonnells of Kilkee and the O’Briens of Ennistymon. Donn’s heartless conduct met poetic justice, for he has ever since ‘lacked a sacred bard,’ and, save for a slight uneasiness in a few poor old people passing across the sandhills after the golfers have left and the sun has set, he is now all but forgotten. Westropp ‘Clare’ 196

Besides the forts and wells, the dolmens are believed to have been fairy homes, but in my enquiries since 1892 I have never been able to authenticate a case of offerings at them of milk and butter, although small basins like the Swedish ‘elf mills’ are found in the covers of more than one of these structures, and large bullauns or basins at others, such as Bally-ganner Hill near Noughaval, Cappaghkennedy on the hills above Corofin, and Newgrove and Kiltanon near Tulla in eastern Clare. Food and drink, however, have been, until at least the present century, set out in plates and cups in Inchiquin and Moyarta Baronies, and in the latter, on the Shannon bank, the slops were thrown out and clean plates, water, chairs, and a well-swept hearth left by a punctilious servant for fairy guests in 1888 or 1889. Westropp ‘Clare’ 196

‘Sowans,’ or in northern pronunciation ‘sones,’ is a dish in Scotland. It is made from ‘pron’ i.e. siftings of oatmeal. The ‘pron’ is first steeped in water in the ‘sone bowie,’ and allowed to stand for a short time. It is then poured into the C’se ysones and drained, and thus all the ‘sids’ are removed and nothing is left but the flour of the meal. When the ‘pron’ was put into the ‘bowie,’ and water poured over it, a burning coal was thrown by some canny goodwives into the mixture. This they did to prevent the fairies from urinating amongst it. Gregor, Walter ‘Stories of Fairies from Scotland’ The Folk-Lore Journal 1 (1883), 55-58 at 56-57

The fairies danced round the Hallow-fires, and, whilst they were doing so, they kept casting knots of blue ribbons with their left hands, and throwing them over their left shoulders. These knots could not be unloosed, and were called ‘fairy-knots.’ Those who were fascinated by their beauty, and were foolish enough to lift them, came immediately under the power of the ‘fair-folk,’ and were liable to be carried off by them at any moment. Gregor, Walter ‘Stories of Fairies from Scotland’ The Folk-Lore Journal 1 (1883), 55-58 at 55

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

…I felt sufficiently encouraged to suggest the removal of a thorn tree which seriously impeded the view from the house, but to which I had long been resigned, as one resigns one-self to fate and all the immovable circumstances of life. Again however there was no remonstrance, and as the tree fell with a crash on the mossy bank, if any fear of horrible consequences was felt by those present it was felt by me alone, the men who had done the unholy deed resuming their pipes, shouldering their saws and hatchets, and strolling back to their ordinary work. Personally, to this day I never pass the spot where the tree once stood without an almost imperceptible shudder of apprehension, for after all, the thorn is a fairy tree… Edith Gordon ‘Some Kerry Fairies’ Kerry Archaeological Magazine 6 (1911), 347-356

In Kerry where credulity in everything, save perhaps in the amiable intentions of the British Government, still flourishes, the belief in fairies has lingered longer than in most parts of the Empire. Unfortunately however, education with its inevitably blighting effect on the imagination, is doing its best, or rather its worst, to undermine it, so that even here where ‘Pookies’ still dance on mossy raths, and the ‘fairy blast’ – as a sudden wind arising on a sultry summer day is called – strikes those foredoomed to die; where ‘leprechauns’ still point the way to hidden treasure, and red-haired ‘Banshees’ shriek their weird warnings; the awe in which the dwellings of these weird and supernatural beings was once held is rapidly dying out, that only the other day I personally supervised the opening up of a ‘fairy fort’ and the cutting down of a ‘fairy thorn’ without a protest by men whose fathers and grandfathers would have flatly declined to lay hands on either. So little prepared indeed was I for this act of sacrilege, that it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I had even suggested clearing the ground round the narrow stone-lined entrance, accidentally discovered on the side of one of the two forts situated on the Eastern shore of Caragh Lake. Whatever the original destiny of these forts, which are to be found all over Kerry, may have been; whether they were used for burying places or for storing grain, for centuries at any rate, they have been tenanted, according to tradition, by a fairy race, and so great is – or rather was – the superstition with which these forts have always been regarded that up till quite recently there was hardly a grown man in Kerry who would venture even in the neighbourhood of one after dark. My surprise can therefore be understood when one of the labourers engaged in the work, after industriously digging round the opening of the cave, suddenly lay down flat on the ground, and crawling on all fours disappeared from sight into the bowels of the earth. None of the other men present exhibiting any concern, I considered it advisable to also maintain an attitude of indifference, although fully conscious that a few years ago such an act would certainly have been attended by alarming consequences. In a few moments however, the man’s heels having reappeared, and these being presently followed by his head, I was able to inquire, not only as to his discoveries, but as to the motive which must have induced him to undertake what must, in any case, have been a singularly unpleasant expedition, judging from the condition of his clothes and the spiders’ nests re-posing on his hair. Unfortunately, as far as his investigations went there was nothing startling to reveal, the long narrow passage being one of five originally leading into a central cave, the roof of which, however, had now fallen in, and as to his motive, much as I regret having to record it, I am obliged to admit that it was wholly and entirely mercenary. ‘I thought,’ he replied, as he gingerly removed the woolly nests from his head, ‘there could be money inside’; voicing the tradition of buried treasure which prevails all over Kerry, as well as the altogether modern supremacy of the passion for gain over the power of superstition. Edith Gordon ‘Some Kerry Fairies’ Kerry Archaeological Magazine 6 (1911), 347-356 at 348-350

While according to the earliest authorities this mythical land of perennial delight was located beyond the Western sea, in other and later legends, belief in which prevails to this day in some parts of Kerry, we find the dwelling place of the Immortals removed to the ‘fairy mound’ in which the Sidhe (Shee), the ‘people of the hill,’ live in subterranean palaces, into which mortals have occasionally been known to penetrate, and in which they have found wonderful treasures of gold and silver, and held strange converse with cats and greyhounds which according to tradition possessed, like all animals before the introduction of Christianity, faculties of speech and reason. Edith Gordon ‘Some Kerry Fairies’ Kerry Archaeological Magazine 6 (1911), 347-356 at 348