Page:Book Of Halloween(1919).djvu/67

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HALLOWE'EN IN IRELAND
47

Guleesh liastened home, prepared the herb, and cured the royal girl.

Sometimes people did not have the luck to return, but were led away to a realm of perpetual youth and music.

"Father Hart. What are you reading?
Maire Bruin. How a Princess Edane,
A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard
A voice singing on a May Eve like this,
And followed, half awake and half asleep,
Until she came into the land of faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue;
And she is still there, busied with a dance,
Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood.

Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top."
Yeats: Land of Heart's Desire.

If one returned, he found that the space which seemed to him but one night, had been many years, and with the touch of earthly sod the age he had postponed suddenly weighed him down. Ossian, released from fairyland after three hundred years dalliance there, rode back to his own country on horse-