Leprechauns, Faeries and The Banshee


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Of Leprechauns, Faeries and The Banshee

We live in cynical times. There are those skeptics and disbelievers who will tell you that there is no such thing as a leprechaun, will laugh at the idea of faeries, tell you there is no such thing as a banshee wailing in the night.

True believers will swear that when you take a walk along a quiet country lane in Ireland, paying due respect to the world around you, you can hear the faeries and leprechauns giggling at the side of the road. This has been reported by young and old alike.

If you remain a cynic, we offer the definitive word on the supernatural world of Ireland. The speaker is none other than the Nobel prize winning poet, William Butler Yeats. We must all pay attention to so eminent a personage:

"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 to an anxious consideration few more encircled by terror. It is the door of Faeryland. In the middle of night it swings open, and the unearthly troop rushes out." WB Yeats, Mythologies.

We feel this settles any debate about the Faeries and leprechauns. As for the banshee - who among us has not heard a banshee?

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