Now and again one, flying from another, would rise in the air, the pursuer following. They skimmed, soared, glided like swallows, in long sweeping curves--there was no noise in their flight. They were quite without reticence in their intercourse; desired or avoided, loved or hated as the moment urged them; strove to win, struggled to escape, achieved or surrendered without remark from their companions. They were like children or animals. Desire was reason good; and if love was soon over, hate lasted no longer. One passion or the other set them scuffling: when it was spent they had no after-thought.
One pretty sight I saw. A hare came lolloping over the valley bottom, quite at his ease. In the midst of the assembly he stopped to nibble, then reared himself up and cleaned his face. He saw them and they him without concern on either side.
The valley filled up; I could not count the shifting, crossing, restless shapes I saw down there. Presently, without call or signal, as if by one consent, the Oreads joined hands and enclosed the whole circuit in their ring. The effect in the dusk was of a pale glow, as of the softest fire, defining the contour of the valley; and soon they were moving, circling round and round. Shriller and louder swelled the hidden music, and faster span the ring. It whirled and wavered, lifted and fell, but so smoothly, with such inherent power of motion, that it was less like motion visible than motion heard. Nothing was distinguishable but the belt of pale fire. That which I had seen before they had now become--a ring of flame intensely swift. As if sucked upward by a centripetal force it rose in the air. Wheeling still with a sound incredibly shrill it rose to my level, swept by me heralded by a keen wind, and was followed by a draught which caught leaves and straws of grass and took them swirling along. Round and up, and ever up it went, narrowing and spiring to the zenith. There, looking long after it, I saw it diminish in size and brightness till it became filmy as a cloud, then melted into the company of the stars.
Now, it is the recent publication by Mr. Evans Wentz of a careful and enthusiastic work upon _The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries_ which has inspired me to put these pages before the public. Some of them have appeared in the magazines as curious recitals and may have afforded pastime to the idle-minded, but without the courageous initiative of Mr. Wentz I don't know that I should have attempted to give them such coherence as they may claim to possess. And that, I fear, will be very little without this chapter in which I shall, if I can, clear the ground for a systematic study of the whole subject. No candid reader can, I hope, rise from the perusal of the book without the conviction that behind the world of appearance lies another and a vaster with a thronging population of its own--with many populations, indeed, each absorbed in uttering its being according to its own laws. If I have afforded nothing else I have afforded glimpses into that world; and the question now is, What do we precisely gather, what can we be said to know of the laws of that world in which these swift, beautiful and apparently ruthless creatures live and move and utter themselves? I shall have to draw upon more than I have recorded here: cases which I have heard of, which I have read of in other men's books, as well as those which are related here as personal revelation. If I speak pragmatically, _ex cathedrâ_, it is not intentional. If I fail sometimes to give chapter and verse it will be because I have never taken any notes of what has gone into my memory, and have no documents to hand. But I don't invent; I remember.