Who are they? �Fallen angels who were not good
enough to be saved, nor bad enough to be lost,� say
the peasantry. �The gods of the earth,� says the Book
of Armagh. �The gods of pagan Ireland,� say the Irish
antiquarians, �the Tuatha de Danaan, who, when no
longer worshipped and fed with offerings, dwindled
away in the popular imagination, and now are only
a few spans high.� (Yeats 1)
In the story of The Priest�s Supper, as told by T. Crofton Croker, the fairies are frightened away from their dancing place by the approach of good Father Horrigan, who is on his way to visit Dermod Leary. In retaliation, the fairies pull the net off a salmon that Dermod has caught, so that the priest will have only potatoes for supper. Dermod thinks this a shame, and chastises the fairies for it. The fairies offer to replace the salmon with a finer meal, if Dermod will ask the priest one question for them. ��I�ll have nothing at all to do with you,� replied Dermod in a tone of determination; and after a pause he added, �I�m much obliged to you for your offer, sir, but I know better than to sell myself to you, or the like of you, for a supper�� (Croker 12). The fairies ask again, and Dermod, after thinking it over, decides that �no one could come to harm out of asking a civil question��but I will have nothing in life to do with your supper�mind that�� (Croker 12). He, at the fairies� bidding, then asks the priest if �the souls of the good people are to be saved at the last day� (Croker 12). The priest figures out that the fairies, not Dermod, are the ones who want to know, and bids Dermod to ��Go back by all means�and tell them, if they want to know, to come here to me themselves, and I�ll answer that or any other question they are pleased to ask with the greatest pleasure in life�� (Croker 13). The fairies flee at this response, and Dermod returns to his house to eat potatoes with the priest, who does not take the experience very seriously. Dermod, however,
could not help thinking it a mighty hard case that
his reverence, whose words had the power to banish
the fairies at such a rate, should have no sort of relish
to his supper, and that the fine salmon he had in the net
should have been got away from him in such a manner.
(Croker 13)
It is clear in this story that the Church has the upper hand concerning power, but the fairies still had enough power to keep the fish! It should also be noted that Dermod�s initial rejection of the fairies is followed quickly by a polite and respectful response, and a softening of resolve. The co-existence of fairies and good Fathers embodies the Irish reluctance to relinquish past beliefs and cultural icons, not only because they think it difficult or unwise, but also undesirable.
The fairies of Irish tales are not generally friendly with people. One of the oddest examples of the fairy-human relationship is the �changeling� stories, in which a healthy human baby is stolen by the fairies, who leave behind either a sickly fairy child, or a log of wood bewitched to approximate the appearance of a sickly, dying child. It would be easy to psychoanalyze these tales; infant mortality rates were quite high in Ireland until the last 30-50 years. Particularly in rural Ireland, where birth control of any kind has always been strongly discouraged, poverty and its companions�malnutrition and illness�caused many infant deaths. Psychologically, blaming the fairies for the fact that a baby has become wizened and sickly is easier than confronting societal reasons for the problem. To find out if a child was a changeling, one method was considered infallible: �Lay it on the fire with this formula, �burn, burn, burn�if of the devil, burn; but if of God and the saints, be safe from harm�� (Wilde 47). T. Crofton Croker recorded a typical �changeling� story:
Mrs. Sullivan fancied that her youngest child had been
exchanged by �fairies theft,� and certainly appearances
warranted such a conclusion; for in one night her healthy,
blue-eyed boy had become shrivelled [sic] up into almost
nothing, and never ceased squalling and crying�all the
neighbours, by way of comforting her, said that her own
child was, beyond any kind of doubt, with the good people,
and that one of themselves was put in his place. (Croker 48)
Probably the most compelling words about changelings were written by Yeats:
Come away, O, human child!
To the woods and waters wild,
With a fairy hand in hand,
For the world�s more full of weeping than
You can understand. (Yeats 59)
Ireland�s starvation and poverty have, in good part, been caused by invasion, war, and conquest. From the full-scale Viking invasion of 795 AD to the Anglo-Irish agreement signed in 1984 (and protested mightily), Ireland has survived generations of conflict. England, of course, has proved the most troublesome of invaders. The Act of Settlement in 1653 followed the invasion of Cromwell in 1649, and stripped land and property from Cromwell�s opponents. The Act of Union in 1801 declared Ireland part of the British Empire (without permission from the Irish). The all-out war in 1920-21 left repercussions that still resound today. For 400 years, relations between the two countries have been strained at best and violently hostile at worst. Sydney Smith, an Englishman, wrote in a letter to Peter Plymley, �The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling--common prudence and common sense--and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots� (Bladey 1).
