These were merrows--sea fairies.

"Where are you bound in that ship?" the merrows called to them.

[Illustration: "WHERE ARE YOU BOUND IN THAT SHIP?"]

"Where would we be bound at all," the King answered, "but to the
States, where the ship's bound?"

"And what are ye goin' there for?" the merrows asked again.

"Sure," said Naggeneen, "it's followin' the O'Briens and the Sullivans
we are, and it's the long way they're takin' us."

"Could you tell us what the States is like at all?" asked the King.
"Is it like Cork?"

"There's parts of them," said the man merrow, "that's more like Cork
than Cork itself, and there's other parts of them that's no more like
Cork than the sea here is like Cork Harbor."

"But are there no places there," the King asked again, "like the
country parts of Ireland, with the fields and the bogs and all?"

"I can't tell you that," the merrow answered. "We've never been far on
the land. Deep down under the sea it's the same way it is under the
sea about Ireland. There's the land at the bottom, with the sand all
fine and firm, like a floor, and there's the water above, like a green
sky, and there are the shells and the sea-flowers, and there are the
weeds that wave around you and over you, like red and green and purple
curtains to your house, and it's all as cool and as neat as any of the
sea-places around Ireland. And if you like to go up to get the warmth
of the sun or the light of the stars, there's white sand where you
can lie at your ease, and there's great rocks where you can sit and
look out over the sea and get the fresh breeze. And that's all we know
of it; we've not been away from the sea."

And after a week of voyaging through the sea--after going on and on
for so long and so far that both fairies and mortals began to think
that they must soon fall over the edge of the earth--the ship suddenly
stood up straight, instead of rolling and pitching about, and a little
later they saw the giant woman before them, holding up her torch, and
beyond her they saw the city. And then it was only a bit of a while
longer till they came close to the city.

"Look at it!" cried the King to all the fairies, who were crowded at
the bow; "it's like the country, after all! Look at all the grass and
the trees! But it has an iron chain all around it. I don't like the
look of that." All fairies hate iron. They more than hate it; they
simply cannot endure it. To touch any iron at all would hurt a fairy
mo