"You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say
the word `cow'"; or "You may live happily with the King's daughter,
if you do not show her an onion." The vision always hangs upon a veto.
All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small
thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let
loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden. Mr. W.B.Yeats,
in his exquisite and piercing elfin poetry, describes the elves
as lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses
of the air--

"Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide, And dance
upon the mountains like a flame."

It is a dreadful thing to say that Mr. W.B.Yeats does not
understand fairyland. But I do say it. He is an ironical Irishman,
full of intellectual reactions. He is not stupid enough to
understand fairyland. Fairies prefer people of the yokel type
like myself; people who gape and grin and do as they are told.
Mr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous insurrection of his
own race. But the lawlessness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness,
founded on reason and justice. The Fenian is rebelling against
something he understands only too well; but the true citizen of
fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all.
In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an
incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out.
A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love
flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited.
An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.

This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is certainly not