Free Irish Fairy and Folk Tales by Edited and with an Introduction by William Butler Yeats

life, and ax’d her ladyship’s pardin, and said he didn’t know she was on duty, or he was too good a sojer not to know betther nor to meddle wid her.
    “I
was
on duty, then,” says the lady; “I was watchin’ for my true love that is comin’ by wather to me,” says she, “an’ if he comes while I’m away, an’ that I miss iv him, I’ll turn you into a pinkeen, and I’ll hunt you up and down for evermore, while grass grows or wather runs.”
    Well, the sojer thought the life id lave him, at the thoughts iv his bein’ turned into a pinkeen, and begged for mercy; and with that says the lady:
    “Renounce your evil coorses,” says she, “you villain, or you’ll repint it too late; be a good man for the futhur, and go to your duty * reg’lar, and now,” says she, “take me back and put me into the river again, where you found me.”
    “Oh, my lady,” says the sojer, “how could I have the heart to drownd a beautiful lady like you?”
    But before he could say another word, the lady was vanished, and there he saw the little throut an the ground. Well, he put it in a clean plate, and away he runs for the bare life, for fear her lover would come while she was away; and he run, and he run, even till he came to the cave agin, and threw the throut into the river. The minit he did, the wather was as red as blood for a little while, by rayson av the cut, I suppose, until the sthrame washed the stain away; and to this day there’s a little red mark an the throut’s side, where it was cut. †
    Well, sir, from that day out the sojer was an altered man, and reformed his ways, and went to his duty reg’lar, and fasted three times a-week—though it was never fish he tuk an fastin’ days, for afther the fright he got, fish id never rest an his stomach—savin’ your presence.
    But anyhow, he was an altered man, as I said before, and in coorse o’ time he left the army, and turned hermit at last; and they say he
used to pray evermore for the soul of the White Throut.
    [These trout stories are common all over Ireland. Many holy wells are haunted by such blessed trout. There is a trout in a well on the border of Lough Gill, Sligo, that some paganish person put once on the gridiron. It carries the marks to this day. Long ago, the saint who sanctified the well put that trout there. Nowadays it is only visible to the pious, who have done due penance.]

THE FAIRY THORN
An Ulster Ballad

S IR S AMUEL F ERGUSON
    “Get up, our Anna dear, from the weary spinning-wheel;
    For your father’s on the hill, and your mother is asleep;
    Come up above the crags, and we’ll dance a highland-reel
    Around the fairy thorn on the steep.”
    At Anna Grace’s door ’twas thus the maidens cried,
    Three merry maidens fair in kirtles of the green;
    And Anna laid the rock and the weary wheel aside,
    The fairest of the four, I ween.
    They’re glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve,
    Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare;
    The heavy-sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave,
    And the crags in the ghostly air:
    And linking hand in hand, and singing as they go,
    The maids along the hill-side have ta’en their fearless way,
    Till they come to where the rowan trees in lonely beauty grow
    Beside the Fairy Hawthorn gray.
    The Hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and slim,
    Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her knee;
    The rowan berries cluster o’er her low head gray and dim
    In ruddy kisses sweet to see.
    The merry maidens four have ranged them in a row,
    Between each lovely couple a stately rowan stem,
    And away in mazes wavy, like skimming birds they go,
    Oh, never caroll’d bird like them!
    But solemn is the silence of the silvery haze
    That drinks away their voices in echoless repose,
    And dreamily the evening has still’d the haunted braes
    And dreamier the gloaming grows.
    And sinking one by one, like lark-notes from the sky
    When the falcon’s shadow saileth across the open shaw,
    Are hush’d the