es not only in this world, and the world to come, but in that
other world which is the world of Faery, and which exercises an
extraordinary influence upon many actions of his life.

We see in the well-known dialogue between Oisin (Ossian) and St.
Patrick, and in other early Irish writers, how potent an influence
Druidism, with its powers of concealing and changing, of paralysing and
cursing, had been held to be in the days when the Irish worshipped no
hideous idols, but adored Beal and Dagdae, the Great or the Good God,
and afterwards Aine, the Moon, Goddess of the Water and of Wisdom, and
when their minor Deities were Mananan Mac Lir, the Irish Neptune, whose
name is still to be found in the Isle of _Man_; Crom, who corresponded
to Ceres; Iphinn, the benevolent, whose relations to the Irish Oirfidh
resembled those of Apollo towards Orpheus. The ancient Irish owed
allegiance also to the Elements, to the Wind, and to the Stars.

Besides these Pagan Divinities, however, and quite apart from them, the
early Irish believed in a hierarchy of fairy beings, closely analagous
to us "humans," supposed to people hill and valley, old road and old
earth-mound, lakes and rivers, and there to exercise a constant, if
occult, influence upon mankind.

Various theories have been advanced to account for their origin. Some
call these fairies angels outcast from heaven for their unworthiness,
yet not evil enough for hell, and who, therefore, occupy intermediate
space.

Others suggest that they are the spirits of that mysterious early Irish
race, the Tuatha da Danann, who were driven by their conquerors, the
Milesians, to become "men of the hills," if not "cave" and "lake
dwellers," in order to avoid the extermination that ultimately awaited
them. Their artistic skill and superior knowledge evidenced to this day
by remarkable sepulchral mounds, stone-inscribed spiral ornamentation,
and beautiful bronze spear-heads, led them to be accounted magicians,
and Mr. Yeats and others of his school favour the idea that the minor
deities of the early Irish above referred to were the earliest members
of the Tuatha da Danann dynasty, and that we here have a form of that
ancestor worship now met with amongst the Chinese and Japanese.

Dr. Joyce does not hold, however, that the subjugation of the Tuatha da
Dananns, with the subsequent belief regarding them, was the origin of
Irish fairy mythology.

"The superstition, no doubt, existed long previously