Editor’s Note: Count John de Salis gave these legends and they were written out by Evans-Wentz with the help of Rev J.F. Lynch

I am convinced that some of the older peasants still believe in fairies. I used to go out on the lake occasionally on moonlight nights, and an old woman supposed to be a ‘wise woman’ (a seeress), hearing about my doing this, told me that under no circumstances should I continue the practice, for fear of ‘Them People’ (the fairies). One evening in particular I was warned by her not to venture on the lake. She solemnly asserted that the ‘Powers of Darkness’ were then abroad, and that it would be misfortune for me to be in their path. Evans-Wentz 82

Editor’s Note: Count John de Salis gave these legends and they were written out by Evans-Wentz with the help of Rev J.F. Lynch

Under ordinary circumstances, as a very close observer of the Lough Gur peasantry informs me, the old people will  pray to the Saints, but if by any chance such prayers remain unanswered they then invoke other powers, the fairies, the goddesses Aine and Fennel [!?!], or other pagan deities, whom they seem to remember in a vague subconscious manner through tradition. Evans-Wentz 82-83

Editor’s Note: Count John de Salis gave these legends and they were written out by Evans-Wentz with the help of Rev J.F. Lynch

The leprechaun indicates the place where hidden treasure is to be found. If the person to whom he reveals such a secret makes it known to a second person, the first person dies, or else no money is found: in some cases the money is changed into ivy leaves or into furze blossoms. Evans-Wentz 82

Editor’s Note: Count John de Salis gave these legends and they were written out by Evans-Wentz with the help of Rev J.F. Lynch

The Buachailleen is most likely one of the many forms assumed by the shape-shifting Fer Fi, the Lough Gur Dwarf, who at Tara, according to the Dinnshenchas of Tuag Inbir (see Folk-Lore, iii ; and A. Nutt, Voyage of Bran, i. 195 ff.), took the shape of a woman; and we may trace the tales of Ceroid larla to Fer Fi, who, and not Ceroid, is believed by the oldest of the Lough Cur peasantry to be the owner of the lake. Fer Fi is the son of Eogabal of Sidh Eogabail, and hence brother to Aine. He is also foster-son of Manannan Mac Lir, and a Druid of the Tuatha De Danann (cf. Silva Gadelica,n. 225; also Dinnshenchas of Tuag Inbir). At Lough Gur various tales are told by the peasants concerning the Dwarf, and he is still stated by them to be the brother of Aine. For the sake of experiment I once spoke very disrespectfully of the Dwarf to John Punch, an old man, and he said to me in a frightened whisper: ‘Whisht! he’ll hear you.’ Edward Fitzgerald and other old men were very much afraid of the Dwarf.’ J. F. Lynch. Evans-Wentz 81-82

In this connection it is worth noting that old women in some country districts used to put salt and oatmeal on Hallowe’en and we know that salt was believed to be a protection against spirits. It would be difficult to separate fairies and the souls of the dead in the Hallowe’en traditions. (Foster, Ulster, 30)

It was proper when having finished milking a cow [in Ireland] to put one’s thumb in the pail of milk, and with the wet thumb to make the sign of the cross on the thigh of the cow on the side milked, to be safe against fairies. And I have seen them when churning put a live coal about an inch square under the churn, because it was an old custom connected with fairies.’ (Evans-Wentz, 1911, 37)

Their habitations were universally believed to be underground, in dimly lit regions, with the entrance to them under a sod, near one of their circles, by some ancient standing stone, under the bank of a river, away on the open moor hidden by bushes, or in the ruins of an old castle, as on Ynys Geinon rock. In the midst of this castle there was a pit with a three-ton stone lying across it, and when they wanted ingress or egress, they uttered a secret word, and lo! the stone lifted, and fell back again of its own accord. From the entrance down to the underground passage they descended along a ladder of twenty-one or –two gold rungs. D. Parry-Jones, Welsh Legends and Fairy Lore, 19

In Cardiganshire it was firmly believed that one class of them were definitely hostile and particularly so to the Methodists, whom they had singled out for their especial disfavor, going so far on one or two occasions as to molest visiting ministers. But, here, the peasantry may have confused the fairies with another order of supernatural beings, though one writer says that he had been informed by a Monmouthshire person ‘that they are not partial at ll to the gospel and that they left  Monmouthshire on account of there being so much preaching, praying to, and praising God, which were averse to their dispositions.’ The old guide to the waterfalls of Glyn Neach also said the same thing, that is, that they were driven away from Craig y Dinas ‘by the preaching of the gospel’. D. Parry-Jones, Welsh Legends and Fairy Lore, 24

A Belfast lady told me that some fifty or sixty years ago in Belfast there was a type of beggar called ‘the Muntiagh’ men and women. Money, she said, was given them by nearly everbody, not so much as an act of charity, but rather because it was belived that in some way, they were entitled to it. Her mother said that they were a ‘fairy kind of folk’. (Foster, Ulster, 84)

Editor’s Note: Interesting passage from one of Evans-Wentz’ witnesses in Cornwall. Evans-Wentz has been delicate here but, parallels with Irish tradition, suggest that fairies urinate or defecate on blackberries.

The ‘Little Folk’. ‘The old people thoroughly believed in the ‘little folk’, and that they gambolled all over the moors on moonlight nights. Some pixies would rain down blessings and others curses; and to remove the curses people would go to the wells blessed by the saints. Whenever anything went wrong in the kitchen at night the pixies were blamed. After the 31st of October [or after Halloween] the blackberries are not fit to eat, for the pixies have then been over them’ (178-179)