The fairies are often central in Irish folklore, existing alongside humankind as an independent and separate race. Indeed, it has often been argued that the name “fairy” comes from an early Celtic description, “fah-ri” (the spirit race); but, because they objected to that name, they were frequently referred to as “the Good People” or “the Other Crowd” to avoid angering them. The only day on which anyone was allowed to talk about them was Tuesday, and any remark regarding them had to be prefaced with “may their heels be turned toward us,” hoping that they were looking the other way!

Despite these prohibitions, it was believed that humans and fairies lived cheek by jowl across the Celtic landscape. However, there was only limited contact between the two for the fairies were a secretive species and greatly mistrustful of Men.

For the most part, the fairy kind remained invisible to the human eye, going about their business, unseen by their mortal neighbors. Occasionally, of course, there was contact between the two races—sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberate on the part of the fairies. Some mortals had the fortune (or sometimes misfortune) to either see the Good People or to visit them where they lived. Occasionally, too, certain mortals might be taken away for a time to be the with fairies, perhaps to return later with their wits all but gone and little recollection as to where they'd been. Some had been away a long time, as an hour in the fairy world was said to be more than a hundred years in its human counterpart; some had been away no time at all.

One of those who had been “away” with the fairy kind was a lady from County Sligo who was interviewed at the end of the 19th century by Lady Augusta Gregory (1859–1931), a fairy abductee whom she refers to as “Mrs. Sheridan.” This lady had benefited from her time amongst the fairy kind in several ways. First, though poorly sighted, she was nevertheless able to see the fairy kind around her; and second, on her return from the fairy country, she had become a great healer. A contemporary of the famous County Clare wise woman, Biddy Early, Mrs. Sheridan may even have at one time challenged that famous wise women as the most famous in Ireland. Describing this “fairy woman,” Lady Gregory writes:

“Mrs Sheridan, as I call her was wrinkled and half blind and had gone barefoot through her lifetime. She was old for she had once met Raftery, the Gaelic poet at a dance and he died well before the famine of ‘47. She must have been comely then for he said to her ‘Well planed you are; the carpenter that planed you knew his trade’ and she was ready of reply and answered him back ‘Better than you know yours’ for his fiddle had two or three broken strings”. It was to Lady Gregory that Mrs. Sheridan recounted some of her experiences with the fairies. Her stories contain a number of interesting elements, including the strong association in the Irish west between the fairies and the dead. This account is taken from Lady Gregory's “Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland” (published 1920).

Excerpt From “Visions and Beliefs
in the West of Ireland”

by Lady Augusta Gregory

“Come here close and I'll tell you what I saw at the old castle there below (Ballinamantane). I was passing there in the evening and I saw a great house and a grand one with screens (clumps of trees) at the ends of it and the windows open—Coole house is nothing like what it was for size or grandeur. And there were people inside and ladies walking about and a bridge across the river. For they can build up such things all in a minute. And two coaches driving up and across the bridge to the castle, and in one of them I saw two gentlemen and I knew them well and both of them had died long before. As to the coaches and the horses I didn't take much notice of them for I was too much taken up with looking at the two gentlemen. And a man came and called out and asked me would I come across the bridge, and I said I would not. And he said “It would be better for you if you did, you'd go back heavier than you came”. I suppose they would have given me some good thing. And then two men took up the bridge and laid it against the wall. Twice I've seen that some thing, the house and the coaches and the bridge and I know well that I'll see it a third time before I die.”

“One time when I was living at Ballymacduff there were two little boys drowned in the river there, one was eight years old and the other eleven years. And I was out in the fields, and the people looking in the river for their bodies and I saw a man coming away from it, and the two boys with him, he holding a hand of each and leading them away. And he saw me stop and look at them and he said “Take care, would you bring them from me, for you have only one in your own house and if you take these from me she'll never come home to you again”. And one of the little chaps broke from his hand and ran to me and the other cried out to him, “Oh Pat, would you leave me!” So he went back and the man led them away. And then I saw another man, very tall he was, and crooked and watching me like this with his head down and he was leading two dogs the other way and I knew well where he was going and what he was going to do with them.

And when I heard the bodies were laid out, I went to the house to have a look at them and those were never the two boys that were lying there but the two dogs that were in their places. I knew this by a sort of stripes on the bodies such as you'd see in the covering of a mattress; and I knew that the boys couldn't be in it, after me seeing them being led away.

And it was at that time I lost my eye, something came on it, and I never got the sight again. All my life, I've seen them and enough of them. One time I saw one of the fields below full of them, some were picking up stones and some were ploughing it up. But the next time I went by, there was no sign of it being ploughed at all. They can do nothing without some live person is looking at them, that's why they were always so much after me. Even when I was a child I could see them, and once they took my walk from me and gave me a bad foot, and my father cured me, and if he did, in five days after he died.

But there's no harm in them, not much harm.

There was a woman who lived near me at Ballymacduff and she used to go about to attend women [Editor's Note: She was a “handy woman”—a local midwife.]: Sarah Redington was her name. And she was brought away one time by a man that came for her into a hill, through a door, but she didn't know where the hill was. And there were people in it and cradles and a woman in labour and she helped her and the baby was born and the woman told her it was only that night she was brought away. And the man led her out again and put her on the road near her home and he gave her something rolled in a bag and he bid her not to look at it till she'd get home and to throw the first handful of it away from her. But she couldn't wait to get home to look at it and she took it off her back and opened it, and there was nothing in it but cowdung. And the man came to her and said; “You have us near destroyed looking in that, and we'll never bring you in again among us”.

There was a man I know well was away with them often and often, and he was passing one day by the big tree and they came about him and he had a new pair of breeches on, and one of them came and made a slit in them, and another tore a little bit out, and they all came running and tearing little bits till he hadn't a rag left. Just to be humbugging him they did that. And they gave him good help, for he had but an acre of land and he had as much on it as another would have on a big farm. But his wife didn't like him to be going and some one told her of a cure for him, and she said she'd try it and if she did, within two hours after she was dead, killed her they had before she'd try it. He used to say that where he was brought was into a round, very big house and Cairns that went with him told me the same.

Three times when I went for water to the well, the water spilled over me and I told Bridget after that they must bring the water themselves, I'd go for it no more. And the third time it was done there was a boy, one of the Heniffs, was near and when he heard what had happened me he said, “It must have been the woman that was at the well along with you that did that”. And I said there was no woman at the well along with me. “There was” says he; “I saw her there beside you, and the two little tins in her hand”.

One day after I came to live at Coole, a strange woman came into the house and I asked what was her name and she said: “I was in it before ever you were ever in it” and she went into the room inside and I saw her no more.

But Bridget and Peter saw her coming in and they asked me who she was for they never saw her before. And in the night when I was sleeping at the foot of the bed, she came and threw me out on the floor, that the joint of my arm has a mark on it yet. And every night she came and she'd spite me or annoy me in some way. And at last we got Father Nolan to come and to drive her out. As soon as he began to read, there went out of the house a great blast, and there was a sound as loud as thunder. And Father Nolan said, “It's well for you that she didn't have you killed before she went”.

I know that I used to be away among them myself, but how they brought me I don't know, but when I'd come back I'd be cross with the husband and with all. I believe that when I was with them, I was cross that they wouldn't let me go, and that's why they didn't keep me altogether, they don't like cross people to be with them. The husband would ask me where I was, and why I stopped so long away but I think he knew I was taken and it fretted him, but he never spoke much about it. But my mother knew it well, but she tried to hide it. The neighbours would come in and ask where was I and she'd say I was sick in the bed—for whatever was put in the place of me would have the head in under the bed-clothes. And when a neighbour would bring me in a drink of milk, my mother would just put it by and say ‘Leave her now, maybe she'll drink it tomorrow”. And maybe in a day or two, I'd meet someone and he'd say ‘Why wouldn't you speak to me when I went into the house to see you?” And I was a young, fresh woman at the time.

Himself died but it was they took him from me. It was in the night and he lying beside me and I woke and heard him move, and I thought I heard someone with him. And I put out my hand and what I touched was an iron hand, like knitting needles it felt. And I heard the bones of his neck crack, and he gave a sort of a choked laugh and I got out of bed and struck a light and I saw nothing but I thought I saw someone go through the door. And I called to Bridget and she didn't come, and I called again and she came and she said she struck a light when she heard a noise and was coming and someone came and struck the light from her hand. And when we looked in the bed, himself was lying dead and not a mark on him”.

[Editor's Note: Lady Gregory concludes her account of the conversations with Mrs. Sheridan in the following manner:]

“She died some year ago and I am told:

There is a ghost in Mrs. Sheridan's house. They got a priest to say Mass there, but with all that there's not one in it has leave to lay a head on the pillow till such time as the cock crows”.