The Friends of the People of Faery - Page 2

says,
'I hear them singing and making music all the time, and one of them is
after bringing out a little flute, and it's on it he's playing to
them.' And this I know, that when he pulled down the chimney where he
said the piper used to be sitting and playing, he lifted up stones, and
he an old man, that I could not have lifted when I was young and
strong."

A friend has sent me from Ulster an account of one who was on terms of
true friendship with the people of faery. It has been taken down
accurately, for my friend, who had heard the old woman's story some
time before I heard of it, got her to tell it over again, and wrote it
out at once. She began by telling the old woman that she did not like
being in the house alone because of the ghosts and fairies; and the old
woman said, "There's nothing to be frightened about in faeries, miss.
Many's the time I talked to a woman myself that was a faery, or
something of the sort, and no less and more than mortal anyhow. She
used to come about your grandfather's house--your mother's grandfather,
that is--in my young days. But you'll have heard all about her." My
friend said that she had heard about her, but a long time before, and
she wanted to hear about her again; and the old woman went on, "Well
dear, the very first time ever I heard word of her coming about was
when your uncle--that is, your mother's uncle--Joseph married, and
building a house for his wife, for he brought her first to his
father's, up at the house by the Lough. My father and us were living
nigh hand to where the new house was to be built, to overlook the men
at their work. My father was a weaver, and brought his looms and all
there into a cottage that was close by. The foundations were marked
out, and the building stones lying about, but the masons had not come
yet; and one day I was standing with my mother foment the house, when
we sees a smart wee woman coming up the field over the burn to us. I
was a bit of a girl at the time, playing about and sporting myself, but
I mind her as well as if I saw her there now!" My friend asked how the
woman was dressed, and the old woman said, "It was a gray cloak she had
on, with a green cashmere skirt and a black silk handkercher tied round
her head, like the country women did use to wear in them times." My
friend asked, "How wee was she?" And the old woman said, "Well now, she
wasn't wee at all when I think of it, for all we called her the Wee
Woman. She was bigger than many a one, and yet not tall as you would
say. She was like a woman about thirty, brown-haired and round in the
face. She was like Miss Betty, your grandmother's sister, and Betty was
like none of the rest, not like your grandmother, nor any