When I was in a northern town awhile ago, I had a long talk with a man
who had lived in a neighbouring country district when he was a boy. He
told me that when a very beautiful girl was born in a family that had
not been noted for good looks, her beauty was thought to have come from
the Sidhe, and to bring misfortune with it. He went over the names of
several beautiful girls that he had known, and said that beauty had
never brought happiness to anybody. It was a thing, he said, to be
proud of and afraid of. I wish I had written out his words at the time,
for they were more picturesque than my memory of them.
1902.