Page:Book Of Halloween(1919).djvu/63

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HALLOWE'EN IN IRELAND
43

late as the fifth century the Druids kept their skill in fortune-telling. King Dathi got a Druid to foretell what would happen to him from one Hallowe'en to the next, and the prophecy came true. Their religion was now declared evil, and all evil or at any rate suspicious beings were assigned to them or to the devil as followers.

"Maire Bruin:
Are not they, likewise, the children of God ?
Father Hart:
Colleen, they are the children of the fiend.
And they have power until the end of Time,
When God shall light with them a great pitched battle

And hack them into pieces."
Yeats:Land of Heart's Desire.

The power of fairy music was so great that St. Patrick himself was put to sleep by a minstrel who appeared to him on the day before Samhain. The Tuatha De Danann, angered at the renegade people who no longer did them honor, sent another minstrel, who after laying the ancient religious seat Tara