C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Fairies
By William Allingham (1824–1889)
From ‘Ballads and Songs’
U
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a hunting
For fear of little men:
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather.
Some have made their home;
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow-tide foam.
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Sliveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay northern lights.
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lakes,
On a bed of flag leaves
Watching till she wakes.
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall feel their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a hunting
For fear of little men:
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather.