Kidnappers

A little north of the town of Sligo, on the southern side of Ben
Bulben, some hundreds of feet above the plain, is a small white square
in the limestone. No mortal has ever touched it with his hand; no sheep
or goat has ever browsed grass beside it. There is no more inaccessible
place upon the earth, and few more encircled by awe to the deep
considering. It is the door of faery-land. In the middle of night it
swings open, and the unearthly troop rushes out. All night the gay
rabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless
perhaps where, in some more than commonly "gentle" place--Drumcliff or
Drum-a-hair--the nightcapped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust from
their doors to see what mischief the "gentry" are doing. To their
trained eyes and ears the fields are covered by red-hatted riders, and
the air is full of shrill voices--a sound like whistling, as an ancient
Scottish seer has recorded, and wholly different from the talk of the
angels, who "speak much in the throat, like the Irish," as Lilly, the
astrologer, has wisely said. If there be a new-born baby or new-wed
bride in the neighbourhood, the nightcapped "doctors" will peer with
more than common care, for the unearthly troop do not always return
empty-handed. Sometimes a new-wed bride or a new-born baby goes with
them into their mountains; the door swings to behind, and the new-born
or the new-wed moves henceforth in the bloodless land of Faery; happy
enough, but doomed to melt out at the last judgment like bright vapour,
for the soul cannot live without sorrow. Through this door of white
stone, and the other doors of that land where geabheadh tu an sonas aer
pighin ("you can buy joy for a penny"), have gone kings, queens, and
princes, but so greatly has the power of Faery dwindled, that there are
none but peasants in these sad chronicles of mine.

Somewhere about the beginning of last century appeared at the western
corner of Market Street, Sligo, where the butcher's shop now is, not a
palace, as in Keats's Lamia, but an apothecary's shop, ruled over by a
certain unaccountable Dr. Opendon. Where he came from, none ever knew.
There also was in Sligo, in those days, a woman, Ormsby by name, whose
husband had fallen mysteriously sick. The doctors could make nothing of
him. Nothing seemed wrong with him, yet weaker and weaker he grew. Away
went the wife to Dr. Opendon. She was shown into the shop parlour. A
black cat was sitting straight up before the fire. She had just time to
see that the side-board was covered with fruit, and to say to herself,
"Fruit must be wholesome when the doctor has so much," before Dr.
Opendon came in. He was dressed all in black, the same as the cat, and