Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland

The erudite Lessing styles a preface “the history of a book.” Now, though there can be no necessity for a preface in that sense of the word to the reprint of a work of mere whim...

Glorious to behold was the sight that burst upon him as he came down through the moat, twirling round and round with the lightness of a straw, to the sweetest music that kept ti...

“Good morrow,” says he. “Good morrow,” kindly, says Mick, looking at the stranger, who was a little man, you’d almost call him a dwarf, only he wasn’t quite so little neither: h...

“Why, then, I’ll tell you, sir,” said Bourke: “When your father said what I told you, I did not know very well what to do. I walked down the little _bohereen_, you know, sir, th...

He looked, and saw a gallant spectacle. His road lay by a noble demesne, gracefully sprinkled with trees, not thickly planted as in a dark forest, but disposed, now in clumps of...

“Success, my little fellow,” said Billy Mac Daniel, nothing daunted, though well he knew the little man to belong to the _good people_; “here’s your health, any way, and thank y...

Mr. Bunworth gradually declined; but nothing particular occurred until the night previous to his death: that night both his daughters, exhausted with continued attendance and wa...

“The Bourkes kept us up so late on Friday night, that yesterday was pretty far advanced before we could begin our journey, and the day closed when we were nearly fifteen miles d...

“Well, we had every thing of the best, and plenty of it; and we ate, and we drank, and we danced, and the young master by the same token danced with Peggy Barry, from the Bohere...

There was a pause when Peggy Barrett finished. Those who heard the story before had listened with a look of half-satisfied interest, blended, however, with an expression of that...

The first beams of the rising sun were just gilding the lofty summit of Glenaa, when the waters near the eastern shores of the lake became suddenly and violently agitated, thoug...

Who can tell or can fancy the treasures that sleep, Entombed in the wonderful womb of the deep? The pearls and the gems, as if valueless, thrown To lie ‘mid the sea-wrack concea...

“Well, she’s a mighty smart creature any how. To be sure, how neat she steps upon her pasterns! Did any one ever see the like of that before;—but I’ll not be balked by any woman...

“Keeping” he muttered, as the old mare had reduced her canter to a trot at the bottom of Kilcummer Hill. Charley’s eye fell on the old walls that belonged, in former times, to t...

John Sheehan was confounded by this address from his invisible persecutor, but nevertheless he mustered courage enough to say—“Who are you?—come here, and let me see you, if you...

“‘Open the door for Ned Sheehy,’ said a voice inside. Now, besides that I could not, for the life of me, make out how any one inside should know me before I spoke a word at all,...

FIR DARRIG means the red man, and is a member of the fairy community of Ireland, who bears a strong resemblance to the Shakspearian Puck, or Robin Goodfellow. Like that merry go...

Polly M’Bride, my kind hostess, might not in this remonstrance have been altogether disinterested; but her advice prevailed, and the dawn of the following morning found me in a...

As he proceeded, the mountain-bee hummed his tune of gladness around the holy man, save when he buried in the foxglove bell, or revelling upon a fragrant bunch of thyme; and eve...

However Robin Kelly may have been questioned, the worthy couple of Ronayne’s court doubted not that he was the deliverer of their child from the power of the giant Mac Mahon; an...