The main characters of “The Stolen Child” are the band of fairies who narrate the poem and attempt to steal a human child. Yeats provides little in the way of physical details about their appearance, but much in the way of the actions that characterize them. They possess an abundance of berries and “reddest stolen cherries” (8), which they imply they will share with the human child. They engage in mystical rites based on “olden dances” (17) that last “all the night” (16). They play cruel tricks on fish to “Give them unquiet dreams” (34). Taken together, these characteristics develop a portrait of creatures that are both generous and ghoulish. They offer the human child an escape from a world “full of troubles / And anxious in its sleep” (22-23), while at the same time causing trouble for the sleep of other beings. They seem to occupy the interstices of human society...