WHO WERE THE FAIRIES ? 277 



In the past it was thought by some that the poet 

 had appropriated him from some Irish acquaint- 

 ance as he must have done those six or seven Irish 

 songs with whose orthography he played such 

 havoc ; a puzzle to all the commentators until the 

 difficulty was cleared up. Now it would appear 

 that the current set in the opposite direction, and, 

 that the fairy of recent years was a bye-product 

 of the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Such 

 is the theory now propounded and Professor 

 Macalister explains by it the fact that fairy-legends 

 are attached to ring-forts or raths. " For," he 

 says, " these ancient steadings are not as a rule 

 ancient. They frequently have Ogham stones used 

 up as a building material in their construction, 

 and we must allow time for a number of stages of 

 historical development before the forts could be 

 ready for their supernatural occupants. First we 

 must assume the representatives of the owner of 

 the monument " (i.e., the Ogham stone, these 

 being inscribed tombstones) " to have become 

 extinct, before the stone could be appropriated. 

 Then we must allow time for the family of the 

 occupant of the fort to become extinct. Then we 

 must allow further time for the fort to lie derelict 

 and finally to fall into ruin ; and we need then a 

 further space for all recollection that it and places 

 like it were once centres of human habitation, to 

 be effaced from local popular memory. If we start 

 with a monument of the sixth or seventh century, 

 we will arrive at a date not very far off the Anglo- 

 Norman conquest by the time all this has hap- 

 pened." 



