fourth generation."


1902.




THE QUEEN AND THE FOOL


I have heard one Hearne, a witch-doctor, who is on the border of Clare
and Galway, say that in "every household" of faery "there is a queen
and a fool," and that if you are "touched" by either you never recover,
though you may from the touch of any other in faery. He said of the
fool that he was "maybe the wisest of all," and spoke of him as dressed
like one of the "mummers that used to be going about the country."
Since then a friend has gathered me some few stories of him, and I have
heard that he is known, too, in the highlands. I remember seeing a
long, lank, ragged man sitting by the hearth in the cottage of an old
miller not far from where I am now writing, and being told that he was
a fool; and I find from the stories that my friend has gathered that he
is believed to go to faery in his sleep; but whether he becomes an
Amadan-na-Breena, a fool of the forth, and is attached to a household
there, I cannot tell. It was an old woman that I know well, and who has
been in faery herself, that spoke of him. She said, "There are fools
amongst them, and the fools we see, like that Amadan of Ballylee, go
away with them at night, and so do the woman fools that we call
Oinseachs (apes)." A woman who is related to the witch-doctor on the
border of Clare, and who can Cure people and cattle by spells, said,