Rain cannot wash it away;
you may walk over it; you may even plough up the soil, and replant
it ever so many times; the next season the fairy ring shines in the
grass just the same. It seems strange that I am blind to it, when
an ignorant, dirty spalpeen who lives near the foot of Knockma has
seen it and heard the fairy music again and again. He took me to
the very place where, last Lammas Eve, he saw plainly--for there was
a beautiful, white moon overhead--the arch king and queen of the
fairies, who appear only on state occasions, together with a crowd
of dancers, and more than a dozen pipers piping melodious music.
Not only that, but (lucky little beggar!) he heard distinctly the
fulparnee and the folpornee, the rap-lay-hoota and the roolya-
boolya--noises indicative of the very jolliest and wildest and most
uncommon form of fairy conviviality. Failing a glimpse of these
midsummer revels, my next choice would be to see the Elf Horseman
galloping round the shores of the Fairy Lough in the cool of the
morn.
'Loughareema, Loughareema,
Stars come out and stars are hidin';
The wather whispers on the stones,
The flittherin' moths are free.
Onest before the mornin' light
The Horseman will come ridin'
Roun' an' roun' the Fairy Lough,
An' no one there to see.'
But there will be some one there, and that is the aforesaid Jamesy
Flanigan! Sometimes I think he is fibbing, but a glance at his
soft, dark, far-seeing eyes under their fringe of thick lashes
convinces me to the contrary.
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