i8 9 a-93.3 575 



foolish act. When fairies wished to go upon a long journey at 

 night, rushes and rag-weeds served as flying horses, and bore 

 them high in the air over land and sea. In Ireland the fairy 

 race was spoken of as the Sidhe, pronounced Shee ; this was a 

 general term applied to all sorts of elves and fairies. 



But these were not the only creatures, the belief in which, 

 the terrors which these beliefs caused, made life harder to the 

 people of this country. Demons were about, with power to 

 kill, or to transform persons into beasts. One demon, which 

 had concealed himself in an apple, went down the throat of a 

 king of Connaught, and caused him such a terrible hunger that 

 in three half-years he had eaten so much that a famine came to 

 his kingdom. In order to feed this monster, the king took for 

 his breakfast a pig, a fat cow, and an ordinary cow, sixty cakes 

 of pure wheat, a tub of new ale, and thirty eggs ; then followed 

 lunch. As regards his dinner, it is said that it exceeded all 

 counting ; his supper was as great, and was more troublesome, 

 because he added to it three things — a sack of nuts, a sack of 

 apples, and a sack of biscuits. When the famine grew in the 

 land, the poor king was only able to eat these meals by travelling 

 about his country with a body of his guards, and visiting from 

 house to house among his well-to-do subjects ; every one of 

 whom was eaten out of house and home before the king moved 

 on to the next house. 



These demons had also the power of taking the forms of 

 people, so that sometimes when a man thought he was safe in 

 the company of his wife, his child, or his trusted comrade, the 

 companion would change into some frightful shape, and the 

 poor man might be dashed down a cliff of the mountains, thrown 

 into a burning house, or torn to pieces. Some families in 

 Ireland had the strange gift of taking the form of wolves for 

 two or three years, and then becoming people again. The 

 woods were peopled by little hairy creatures called Loughrey 

 men ; but these did not harm people, and sometimes even 

 helped them in their work. 



The earliest settlers in Ireland, of whom we have any know- 



