woman was the
offspring of a woman and the spirit of a river, or of a man and the
spirit of a hill or oak-tree, it does not seem to me at all
extraordinary. The story of the wife who suffered a fairy union and
bore a fairy child which disappeared with her is a case in point. The
fairy father was, so far as I can make out, the indwelling spirit of a
rose, and the story is too painful and the detail in my possession too
exact for me to put it down here. I was myself actually present, and
in the house, when the child was born. I witnessed the anguish of the
unfortunate husband, who is now dead. Mr. Wentz has many instances of
the kind from Ireland and other Celtic countries; but fairies are by
no means confined to Celtic countries, though they are more easily
discerned by Celtic races.

[Footnote 8: The speech of Balaam's ass or of Balaam, of Achilles and
his horses are, of course, necessary conventions of the poet's and do
not imply that words passed between the parties.]

Of this chain of Being, then, of which our order is a member, the
fairy world is another and more subtle member, subtler in the right
sense of the word because it is not burdened with a material envelope.
Like man, like the wind, like the rose, it has spirit; but unlike any
of the lower orders, of which man is one, it has no sensible wrapping
unless deliberately it consents to inhabit one. This, as we know, it
frequently does. I have mentioned several cases of the kind; Mrs.
Ventris was one, Mabilla By-the-Wood was another. I have not
personally come across any other cases where a male fairy took upon
him the burden of a man than that of Quidnunc. Even there I have never
been satisfied that Quidnunc became man to the extent that Mrs.
Ventris did. Quidnunc, no doubt, was the father of Lady Emily's
children; but were those children human? There are some grounds for
thinking so, and in that case, if "the nature follows the male,"
Quidnunc must have doffed his immateriality and suffered real
incarnation. If they were fairy children the case is altered. Quidnunc
need not have had a body at all. Now since it is clear that the fairy
world is a real order of creation, with laws of its own every whit as
fixed and immutable as those of any other order known to naturalists,
it is very reasonable to inquire into the nature and scope of those
laws. I am not at all prepared at present to attempt anything like a
digest of them. That would require a lifetime; and no