"The following morning, on hearing the child cry again in the fort, Hanafin, 'like the brave man he was,' went inside. He saw no one, but he said, 'A child is crying for milk. A cow of mine will calve to-morrow. I'll let no one milk that cow; you can do what you like with her milk.'
"The tub was never overturned again, and for two years Hanafin prospered in every way, taking good care of the cow, and never letting her be milked.
"Unfortunately, however, Hanafin, being soft-hearted, went security for some of his neighbours who had got into trouble, with the result that their creditors came down on him, and the bailiffs arrived one day to drive off his cattle. Hanafin repaired to the fort, and said: 'I'm going to lose all my cattle, but I'll try and keep the cow I gave you, and feed her still, so that the child may have the milk.'
"Three bailiffs came and went down to the pasture across the field, but when they drove the cows up as far as the fairy fort 'each bailiff was caught and thrown hither and over by people he couldn't see. One moment he was at one side of the ditch, the next at the other. They were so roughly handled and bruised that they were hardly alive, and they not seeing who or what was doing it! The cattle, raising their tails, bawled and ran off to the pasture.'
"The following morning ten policemen and bailiffs went to take Hanafin's cattle, with exactly the same results, so that the men 'barely left the place alive.' Never again did police or bailiff meddle with Hanafin's cattle, and the creditors never collected their money."
These are the familiar fairies who stole children out of their cradles, young matrons from their husbands, and girls from their lovers; who bewitched cows and blighted potatoes, but who "did you many a good turn too." The peasant will not lightly lose faith in them, nor will the fairies lightly forsake the land of beauty, of sunshine, and of shadow. Quickly as events march and ideas change in this wonderful age, hurrying we know not where, and though here and there someone may be found to dare--or say he will--enter a fairy fort or cut down a fairy thorn, I think that with the boldest of these unbelievers it is a case of the man who denied the power of the priest to turn him into a rat, but who, saying "It's as well to make sure," took the precaution of shutting up the cat at night. "Taking it all round," writes Lady Gordon, "it would be a drab world if there were no fairies in it, no supernatural region in which nothing is too preposterous to occur.... Earth-bound humanity, seeking to escape from earth cares, still dreams in one form or other of a land of strange happenings."