y. Carleton,
a peasant born, has in many of his stories, . . . more especially in
his ghost stories, a much more serious way with him, for all his
humour. Kennedy, an old bookseller in Dublin, who seems to have had
a something of genuine belief in the fairies, comes next in time. He
has far less literary faculty, but is wonderfully accurate, giving
often the very words the stories were told in. But the best book
since Croker is Lady Wilde's _Ancient __Legends_. The humour has all
given way to pathos and tenderness. We have here the innermost heart
of the Celt in the moments he has grown to love through years of
persecution, when, cushioning himself about with dreams, and hearing
fairy-songs in the twilight, he ponders on the soul and on the dead.
Here is the Celt, only it is the Celt dreaming.

Into a volume of very moderate dimensions, and of extremely moderate
price, Mr. Yeats has collected together the most characteristic of our
Irish folklore stories, grouping them together according to subject.
First come _The Trooping Fairies_. The peasants say that these are
'fallen angels who were not good enough to be saved, nor bad enough to be
lost'; but the Irish antiquarians see in them 'the gods of pagan
Ireland,' who, 'when no longer worshipped and fed with offerings,
dwindled away in the popular imagination, and now are only a few spans
high.' Their chief occupations are feasting, fighting, making love, and
playing the most beautiful music. 'They have only one industrious person
amongst them, the _lepra-caun_--the shoemaker.' It is his duty to repair
their shoes when they wear them out with dancing. Mr. Yeats tells us
that 'near the village of Ballisodare is a little woman who lived amongst
them seven years. When she came home she had no toes--she had danced
them off.' On May Eve, every seventh year, they fight for the harvest,
for the best ears of grain belong to them. An old man informed Mr. Yeats
that he saw them fight once, and that they tore the thatch off a house.
'Had any one else been near they would merely have seen a great wind
whirling everything into the air as it passed.' When the wind drives the
leaves and straws before it, 'that is the fairies, and the peasants take
off their hats and say "God bless them."' When they are gay, they sing.
Many of the most beautiful tunes of Ireland 'are only their music, caught
up by eavesdroppers.' No prudent p