~A Faery Tale~

We think of faery's as bringers of light,

enchantment, wonder.

In journeying into the Faery past we are 

going back from safety to terror. Into the 

dark. Where do faery's come from? 

From the dark. To find the origins of faery's 

we must go back to the dark-dark of our 

own past, dark of the worlds past. 

This is an old theory, Ireland must surely be 

the very home of the supernatural. For is it

not a country where the gloom of day can make 

way suddenly for the bloodshot splendor of 

sunset?  Where mist falls across the land 

in eerie veils, and clouds pile up like wreaths 

on the purple mountains? Where weird silences

haunt the lonely hills and valleys and waves 

lap the rugged coastline with a melody unchanged

since the ages long before the coming of man?

The Irish people, too, are quite unlike any other race.

Surely no one else has such a keen appreciation

Of the supernatural or is so aware that there is 

much in life no ordinary logic can explain?  Nor

perhaps are there any other folk so amply 

provided for with fables, so well stocked in myths,

so rich in all manner of stories and legends. 

Beyond all doubt, surely, Ireland is a place of the 

fantastic, and indeed its storytellers have celebrated 

the fact for two thousand years and more in oral

traditions and folk stories which have been handed 

down lovingly with hardly a line changed.

Tales that are full of wonder of the place and, 

more particularly, of the creatures which reform 

the very heart and soul of this magic. 

The love and respect the Irish people have 

always had for their mysterious little people 

if I can use such a term to embrace all these 

creatures of the supernatural has long been 

a source of amazement.

Tradition says they are fallen angels not good 

enough to be saved, nor bad enough to be lost. 

Faery's exist between, betwixt, and not quite 

here. We call their world the faery realm, but 

some faery's live just on the edge, where their 

realm blurs with our world : in nature, the sea,

and even in your attic! The faery realm has also 

been called the Otherworld, Avalon, The Land 

Of the Blessed, and Tir-na-Tir-na-n-og 

Open for me the secret way 

The pathway of intelligence 

Beyond the gates of night and day 

Beyond the bounds of time and sense 

?Broken187Soul ?