they did not cease till a few years ago, when, during some repairs, a
snipe flew out of the solid plaster and away; the troubled ghost, say
the neighbours, of the note-finder was at last dislodged.

My forebears and relations have lived near Rosses and Drumcliff these
many years. A few miles northward I am wholly a stranger, and can find
nothing. When I ask for stories of the faeries, my answer is some such
as was given me by a woman who lives near a white stone fort--one of
the few stone ones in Ireland--under the seaward angle of Ben Bulben:
"They always mind their own affairs and I always mind mine": for it is
dangerous to talk of the creatures. Only friendship for yourself or
knowledge of your forebears will loosen these cautious tongues. My
friend, "the sweet Harp-String" (I give no more than his Irish name for
fear of gaugers), has the science of unpacking the stubbornest heart,
but then he supplies the potheen-makers with grain from his own fields.
Besides, he is descended from a noted Gaelic magician who raised the
"dhoul" in Great Eliza's century, and he has a kind of prescriptive
right to hear tell of all kind of other-world creatures. They are
almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage of
magicians be true.




THE THICK SKULL OF THE FORTUNATE


I

Once a number of Icelandic peasantry found a very thick skull in the