, the host of the air,
and Sluagh Sidhe, the host of the Sidhe, and describe the host of the
air as of a peculiar malignancy. Dr. Joyce says, 'of all the different
kinds of goblins ... air demons were most dreaded by the people. They
lived among clouds, and mists, and rocks, and hated the human race with
the utmost malignity.' A very old Arann charm, which contains the words
'Send God, by his strength, between us and the host of the Sidhe,
between us and the host of the air,' seems also to distinguish among
them. I am inclined, however, to think that the distinction came in with
Christianity and its belief about the prince of the air, for the host of
the Sidhe, as I have already explained, are closely associated with the
wind.

They are said to steal brides just after their marriage, and sometimes
in a blast of wind. A man in Galway says, 'At Aughanish there were two
couples came to the shore to be married, and one of the newly married
women was in the boat with the priest, and they going back to the
island; and a sudden blast of wind came, and the priest said some
blessed words that were able to save himself, but the girl was swept.'

This woman was drowned; but more often the persons who are taken 'get
the touch,' as it is called, and fall into a half dream, and grow
indifferent to all things, for their true life has gone out of the
world, and is among the hills and the forts of the Sidhe. A faery doctor
has told me that his wife 'got the touch' at her marriage because there
was one of them wanted her; and the way he knew for certain was, that
when he took a pitchfork out of the rafters, and told her it was a
broom, she said, 'It is a broom.' She was, the truth is, in the magical
sleep, to which people have given a new name lately, that makes the
imagination so passive that it can be moulded by any voice in any world
into any shape. A mere likeness of some old woman, or even old animal,
some one or some thing the Sidhe have no longer a use for, is believed
to be left instead of the person who is 'away;' this some one or some
thing can, it is thought, be driven away by threats, or by violence
(though I have heard country women say that violence is wrong), which
perhaps awakes the soul out of the magical sleep. The story in the poem
is founded on an old Gaelic ballad that was sung and translated for me
by a woman at Ballisodare in County Sligo; but in the ballad the husband
found the keeners keening his wife when he go