IRISH VISIONS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—It was the experience of a Northern farmer. The road was long and lonely that led to the market town, and he had to be up betimes to catch the early market. With his stout thorn stick in his hand he set out in the dark- ness from his home. He knew his road well, but as he passed on he was aware of company, of hurrying crowds, and they did not seem to lessen but rather increase, till suddenly he found himself entering a village street where village there never had been any. The crowds seemed unwitting of his presence, and all pursued their business with the greatest activity. But as he passed along the street his stick was quickly snatched from him, and in a moment the vision was gone, "as the baseless fabric of a dream." He looked on every side, but nothing could he see. The dark- ness only thickened as the mist hung close upon the desolate wayside. What could it all mean ? And as he thought of the strange occurrence he remembered how he had cut a branch the day before from the old thorn-tree in spite of an old man's warning that he should not meddle with a fairy thorn. So the little people had claimed and taken back their own again. Such was the story as my father told it to me long ago in the black North. And still when I go along the old familiar roads I see here and there, growing perhaps in the midst of some cultivated field, old, weather- worn, storm-beaten thorn-trees, and if a peasant is asked, "Why is that old useless tree left them F" be will answer, "That is a fairy thorn," and he thinks the answer sufficient. Can it be that the little people are still with us P—I am, Sir,
D. S.
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