If a potion is made up of herbs it must be paid for in silver; but charms
and incantations are never paid for, or they would lose their power. A
present, however, may be accepted as an offering of gratitude.
CHARM FOR THE FAIRY STROKE
THERE is a very ancient and potent charm which may be tried with
great effect in case of a suspected fairy-stroke.
Place three rows of salt on a table in three lines, three equal measures to
each row. The person performing the spell then encloses the rows of salt
with his arm, leaning his head down over them, while he repeats the Lord's
Prayer three times over each row--that is, nine times in all. Then he takes the
hand of the one who has been fairy-struck, and says over it, "By the power
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, let this disease depart,
and the spell of the evil spirits be broken! I adjure, I command you to leave
this man [naming him]. In the name of God I pray; in the name of Christ I
adjure; in the name of the Spirit of God I command and compel you to go
back and leave this man free! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!"
SACRED TREES
THE large old hawthorns, growing singly in a field or by an ancient well,
are considered very sacred; and no one would venture to cut them down,
for the fairies dance under the branches at night, and would resent being
interfered with.
POPULAR NOTIONS
CONCERNING THE SIDHE RACEFROM the earliest ages the world has believed in the existence of a race
midway between the angel and man, gifted with power to exercise a strange
mysterious influence over human destiny. The Persians called this mystic
race Peris; the Egyptians and the Greeks named them demons, not as evil,
but as mysterious allies of man, invisible though ever present; capable of
kind acts but implacable if offended.
The Irish called them the Sidhe, or spirit-race, or the Feadh-Ree, a
modification of the word Peri. Their country is the Tir-na-oge, the land of
perpetual youth, where they live a life of joy and beauty, never knowing
disease or death, which is not to come on them till the judgment day, when
they are fated to pass into annihilation, to perish utterly and be seen no
more. They can assume any form and they make horses out of bits of straw,