was called in to administer relief through the medium of certain
powers which were thought to be derived from something holy and also
supernatural. She brought a mysterious bottle, of which he was to take
every third spoonful, three times a day; it was to be administered by
the hand of a young girl of virgin innocence, who was also to breathe
three times down his throat, holding his nostrils closed with her
fingers. The father and mother were to repeat a certain number of
prayers; to promise against swearing, and to kiss the hearth-stone nine
times--the one turned north, and the other south. All these ceremonies
were performed with care, but Phelim's malady appeared to set them
at defiance; and the old crone would have lost her character in
consequence, were it not that Larry, on the day of the cure, after
having promised not to swear, let fly an oath at a hen, whose cackling
disturbed Phelim. This saved her character, and threw Larry and Sheelah
into fresh despair.

They had nothing now for it but the "fairy man," to whom, despite the
awful mystery of his character, they resolved to apply rather than see
their only son taken from them for ever. Larry proceeded without delay
to the wise man's residence, after putting a small phial of holy water
in his pocket to protect himself from fairy influence. The house in
which this person lived was admirably in accordance with his mysterious
character. One gable of it was formed by the mound of a fairy Rath,
against the cabin, which stood endwise; within a mile there was no other
building; the country around it was a sheep-walk, green, and beautifully
interspersed with two or three solitary glens, in one of which might be
seen a cave that was said to communicate under ground with the rath. A
ridge of high-Peaked mountains ran above it, whose evening shadow, in
consequence of their form, fell down on each side of the rath, without
obscuring its precincts. It lay south; and, such was the power of