LETTERS TO TIIE EDITOR.
IRISH VISIONS.
[To 755 EDITOR OF THE " SPEETATOR."] SIR,—Your correspondent, "Rory Dhu," in the Spectator of July 31st, asks what is the theology of the fairy. An old Donegal labourer's opinion on the subject may interest him. "Yer axing," said he to me, "what the fairies is. Weel, my lady, the gentry is the fallen angels. When Satan was thrown free the battlements of heaven, he an' the greater part o' his angels fell down to hell; but a whean o' them fell into the sea, an' those is the mermen an' mermaids, an' a big whean hit the earth,—those is the fairies."—" You say you saw fairies when you were a boy, Paddy. Why can't you see them now ? " Paddy thought a little while, and then replied : "There's them that says the wee folk's gone to Scotland, but they're wrang. This country's full o' them still, only there's so much Scripture spread abroad that they canna get making themsels visible." Paddy spoke the semi-Scottish dialect used in Ulster by the peasantry twenty years ago. He was a Roman Catholic. I used to hear fairy-tales from Protestants also. The "gentle bush," or fairy-haunted thorn, with all wild tangles and hedges, and whingrown braes, called "gentle places," are disappearing fast before the farmer's land hunger, and still more quickly disappear the legends under the labour of the national schoolmaster.—I am, Sir, &c.,
LETITIA. MCCLINTOCK.
Dunmore, Carrigans, Londonderry, August 20th.
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