In 1825 T. Crofton Croker published the first volume of his delightful “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.”  It was immediately translated into German by the Grimm brothers, and was received with enthusiasm by Walter Scott, who was introduced to the author in London in 1826, and a complimentary letter from whom was printed in the preface to the second edition.

Croker’s book opened a new world of romance, and introduced the English reader to novel varieties of elf creatures, with outlandish Gaelic names; the Shefro; the Boggart; the Phooka, or horse-fiend; the Banshee, a familiar spirit which moans outside the door when a death impends; the Cluricaune,[16] or cellar goblin; the Fir Darrig (Red Man); the Dullahan, or Headless Horseman.  There are stories of changelings, haunted castles, buried treasure, the “death coach,” the fairy piper, enchanted lakes which cover sunken cities, and similar matters not unfamiliar in the folk-lore of other lands, but all with an odd twist to them and set against a background of the manners and customs of modern Irish peasantry.  The Celtic melancholy is not much in evidence in this collection.  The wild Celtic fancy is present, but in combination with Irish gaiety and light-heartedness.  It was the day of the comedy Irishman—­Lover’s and Lever’s Irishman—­Handy Andy, Rory O’More, Widow Machree and the like.  It took the famine of ’49 and the strenuous work of the Young Ireland Party which gathered about the Nation in 1848, to displace this traditional figure in favour of a more earnest and tragical national type.  But a single quotation will illustrate the natural magic of which Arnold speaks:  “The Merrow (mermaid) put the comb in her pocket, and then bent down her head and whispered some words to the water that was close to the foot of the rock.  Dick saw the murmur of the words upon the top of the sea, going out towards the wide ocean, just like a breath of wind rippling along, and, says he, in the greatest wonder, ’Is it speaking you are, my darling, to the salt water?’

“‘It’s nothing else,’ says she, quite carelessly; ’I’m just sending word home to my father not to be waiting breakfast for me.’” Except for its lack of “high seriousness,” this is the imagination that makes myths.

Catholic Ireland still cherishes popular beliefs which in England, and even in Scotland, have long been merely antiquarian curiosities.  In her poetry the fairies are never very far away.

  “Up the airy mountain,
    Down the rushy glen
  We daren’t go a-hunting
    For fear of little men.” [17]