scales, but their dress I cannot remember, for I was quite absorbed in that gleaming woman.  I asked her to tell the seer whether these caves were the greatest faery haunts in the neighbourhood.  Her lips moved, but the answer was inaudible.  I bade the seer lay her hand upon the breast of the queen, and after that she heard every word quite distinctly.  No, this was not the greatest faery haunt, for there was a greater one a little further ahead.  I then asked her whether it was true that she and her people carried away mortals, and if so, whether they put another soul in the place of the one they had taken?  “We change the bodies,” was her answer.  “Are any of you ever born into mortal life?” “Yes.”  “Do I know any who were among your people before birth?” “You do.”  “Who are they?” “It would not be lawful for you to know.”  I then asked whether she and her people were not “dramatizations of our moods”?  “She does not understand,” said my friend, “but says that her people are much like human beings, and do most of the things human beings do.”  I asked her other questions, as to her nature, and her purpose in the universe, but only seemed to puzzle her.  At last she appeared to lose patience, for she wrote this message for me upon the sands—­the sands of vision, not the grating sands under our feet—­“Be careful, and do not seek to know too much about us.”  Seeing that I had offended her, I thanked her for what she had shown and told, and let her depart again into her cave.  In a little while the young girl awoke out of her trance, and felt again the cold wind of the world, and began to shiver.

I tell these things as accurately as I can, and with no theories to blur the history.  Theories are poor things at the best, and the bulk of mine have perished long ago.  I love better than any theory the sound of the Gate of Ivory, turning upon its hinges, and hold that he alone who has passed the rose-strewn threshold can catch the far glimmer of the Gate of Horn.  It were perhaps well for us all if we would but raise the cry Lilly the astrologer raised in Windsor Forest, “Regina, Regina Pigmeorum, Veni,” and remember with him, that God visiteth His children in dreams.  Tall, glimmering queen, come near, and let me see again the shadowy blossom of thy dim hair.

“And fair, fierce women”

One day a woman that I know came face to face with heroic beauty, that highest beauty which Blake says changes least from youth to age, a beauty which has been fading out of the arts, since that decadence we call progress, set voluptuous beauty in its place.  She was standing at the window, looking over to Knocknarea where Queen Maive is thought to be buried, when she saw, as she has told me, “the finest woman you ever saw travelling right across from the mountain and straight to her.”  The woman had a sword by her side and a dagger lifted up in her hand, and was dressed in white, with bare arms and feet.  She looked “very strong, but not wicked,”