resolved not to lose sight of their only friends, in a land like this.
They found that the O'Briens and the Sullivans were quickly taken to a
big round house, in the very bit of a place like the country that they
had first seen. The fairies did not like the inside of the big round
house, so the King left a few to watch the O'Briens and the Sullivans,
and to bring word if they made any important move, and the rest went
out and found pleasanter places on the grass and under the trees. They
had managed to get into the Battery Park without touching any of the
horrible iron chains that were around it. They would have been a very
sorry-looking company, if anybody could have seen them.
"I don't like it at all," the King said, "and nothing would please me
better than to be at home again. If they're going to live in that big
round house, I dunno what we'll do. We want to be near to them, and
yet this is no place for us. We could stand it a little while, maybe.
The grass is fine and smooth for dancing, but these lights, like suns,
that they have all around on the tops of the poles, are terrible. Do
they want no night at all here? And then what a noise there is! It's
nothing but rattle and roar all day, and then the boats do be
screeching around all night."
"Have no fear," said the Queen. "The O'Briens would never live in a
place like this. They'll soon be out of it, and then we'll follow them
and find a better place near where they go."
It proved that the Queen was right. Before long there came an alarm
from those who had been left to watch, that the O'Briens and the
Sullivans were coming out. In a moment more they came, and the whole
tribe followed them. Old Mrs. O'Brien, who never forgot anything that
was worth remembering, had not forgotten to write to some old friends
who had come to America years before, that she and her son and his
wife and their neighbors were coming. These old friends had found
tenements for them, and soon they were in new homes. There was enough
of Mrs. O'Brien's money to keep them for a little while, and they
hoped that before it was gone, John and Peter would find work and
would be getting more money.
The fairies followed them, filled with more and more wonder. For miles
they followed, and then for more miles. It was not that the distance
troubled them. They could have gone a hundred times as far without
thinking of being tired. But they could scarcely believe their eyes
when they saw these never-ending stone roads and these never-ending
rows of stone and brick houses, all built so that they touched one
another. They could not understand how people could live so close
together, nor why they should want to do it, if they could. Perhaps
you have never thought of it, but it is really true that the ways of
mortals are just as wonderful to fairies as the ways of fairies are to
mortals.
Indeed, the place where they found themselves at last was not a
pleasant one for fairies. It was two places, in fact, but they were so
much alike that there was nothing to choose between them. A tenement
had been found for the O'Briens, up many flights of stairs, in a house
with many other tenements. There was barely enough room in it for them
to live, though it was better, in that respect, than their old cabin
in Ireland. The stairs and the passage were far from clean, and they
led down to a street that was just as far from clean.
It was hard all over with square stones, which had sunk, in places,
and made hollows, which were filled with muddy water. Lean cats
scuttled about here and there, and ran away, if anybody came near
them, as if they expected to have stones thrown at them, and then,
when the danger seemed past, they rummaged in the ash-barrels for
scraps of meat or fish or bread. The people who lived in the houses
sat on the doorsteps and on the curb-stones, and chattered and
laughed and quarrelled and slept. The sun shone into the street, but
it could not shine between the houses. A breeze blew up from the East
River, which was not far away, but the air was none too fresh, for all
that. The place that had been found for the Sullivans was in another
street, not far away. It was much the same, as I have said, but it was
even smaller, for there were only two of the Sullivans, and they could
get on with less space.
The fairies were fairly terrified at all this. And was it any wonder?
The poor little Good People! They had been used to a beautiful, bright
hall, to green, fresh grass to dance on in the quiet, misty moonlight,
and to cool shade for the day. What could they do in such a place as
this? They remembered how the King of All Ireland had told them that
they did not know whether the place where they were going was a place
fit for them to live in.
The first thing that the King did was to send some of the fairies in
all directions to see if they could spy out any place where the whole
tribe could live in a decent and comfortable manner. The street, he
was sure, would never do. Of course, if the Fairy King wanted a rock
or a hill to open and let him into it, it would open, and he could
live in it, if he chose, just as he used to in his own old rath. And
no mortal who might happen to be about would know that anything
unusual was happening. And just so the street would open for him, if
he wanted it to. But before he had decided to try it he saw a place
where some men had opened it, and that was quite enough for him. If
you have ever seen a New York street opened, you know what it was
like; if you have not, it is of no use to try to tell you.
But the messengers whom the King had sent in all directions were
scarcely gone when those who had started toward the west were back
with joyful news. "We have found a beautiful place," they said. "It's
only a bit of a way from here, and if we live there we'll not be far
from the O'Briens. Ye never saw grass smoother in your life, though
it's not quite so green, maybe, as it is at home. And then there's
tall trees of all kinds, and there's bushes that'll have flowers on
them, belike, in the right time of the year. And there's smooth roads
and walks, and there's hills and great rocks, that we could live
inside of as easy as in a rath itself. It's a much quieter place than
here, too, and the air is better, though it's so near. It's not wide
toward the west, but off to the south it reaches as far as we can see,
like a forest."
The King left a guard to watch, lest the O'Briens should like the
place as little as himself and should leave it and be lost, and then
he hurried with the rest to see the new country that had been
discovered. If you know New York very well indeed, you have guessed
already that it was the north end of Central Park which the fairies
had found. But you may know New York pretty well and not know, as a
good many people who live in it do not, that there is any north end to
Central Park, still less that it is far prettier than the south end.
After all the distressing streets and houses that he had seen, the
King was delighted with it. He found a big rock, which was the base of
a hill, and at the top of it stood a queer little square stone house.
Back in this hill, he declared, behind the rock and under the stone
house, would be as pleasant a place to live as ever the rath was. He
made the rock open, and he and all the fairies with him went in,
although the policemen and the men and women in carriages and on
horses and on bicycles and on foot who were all about, did not see
that the rock looked at all different.
"A fine place for us it will make," said the King; "we couldn't be
asking for a better. Get to work now, all of you. Hollow out the
inside of the hill, only leave pillars to hold up the roof, and go and
find gold for the floor and silver for the walls, and you can have
every other pillar gold and every other one silver, after you get the
rest done, and take down the rock that you left. And then find
diamonds and rubies and emeralds to light it with."
No, I am not going to explain to you how the fairies did all this. I
shall not tell you how they got the rock out nor what they did with it
after they got it out. I will tell you all that there is any need of
your knowing about it, and that is that in a very short time it was
all done; that the new fairy palace was as much larger and finer and
better than any fairy palace in Ireland ever was as we Americans
intend that everything here shall be larger and finer and better than
anything anywhere else. And it was all done before the most of the
messengers who had been sent in other directions got back to tell what
they had found.
These fairies went straight to where the O'Briens lived, and there the
fairies who had been left on guard told them where to find the King,
and asked them to say to him that they were tired of their duty and
they wished that he could send somebody else to take their places.
The fairies were not much surprised when they found the King and all
the tribe settled in a new palace, as comfortably as if they had never
moved. The building of a palace in a night is no more to a fairy than
it is to a New York man to come back after he has been out of town for
a month and find a house twenty stories high in a place where there
was a hole in the ground when he went away.
"What's the use at all to be tellin' Your Majesty what we've found in
the places we've been," said one of the first who came back, "and you
livin' this minute in the finest palace that was ever dug out of a
hill?"
"You may tell us all the same," said the King.
"Well and good," said the fairy. "It's to the south I've been. First
there's all this island that we're on, down to the place with the
grass and the iron chain around it. Then there's the bay, with the
ships. Then there's another island, with hills and trees, and then
there's the sea, and a long shore, all sand, and hundreds of houses,
big and little, where people live. And that's all."
Another fairy said: "I went farther to the west than this, but not
much farther till I came to a great river. Of course I couldn't be
crossin' the runnin' water, so I went round the mouth of it and then
kept on. The country was all flat for a good way, and bars of iron
everywhere, laid two and two, so many of them that I didn't dare rest
anywhere, and there were towns and plenty of people, and then at long
last I came to hills."
I suppose you know, without my telling you, that fairies cannot bear
to cross running water, any more than they can bear to touch iron, and
that was why this fairy had to go around the mouth of the Hudson River
instead of going across it.
Then came another fairy, who had been to the north, and he said: "It
beats everything, the lovely country I've seen. Never a better did I
see anywhere. Hills and woods and mountains, and the trees all yellow
and red and green and brown. I went up the big river on this side for
a long way, and then I saw great mountains on the other side. So
beautiful they looked, I wanted to go to them, only, sure, I couldn't
cross the river. So I went round the head of it and came down back to
the mountains. And there I found that they were full of fairies
already. But they seemed to be Dutch, and it's little English they
could talk, let alone Irish. Still we got along, and they gave me some
mighty fine drink that they had. And they said that we could come
there, the whole tribe, and welcome kindly, and I'ld say it was a good
place to go, only it's farther off than this from them we want to be
near."
"We'll stay where we are," said the King. "It's as well that we know
what's all around us, but here we'll be more to ourselves, as many
people as there are, for I'm thinkin' there's no fairies but us here."
Then slowly out of the crowd of fairies one came forward and said:
"Your Majesty, could I be saying something that's breakin' my heart?
It's hard for me to say and it'll maybe be harder for you to hear; but
it's on my mind and I can't get it off my mind. Will you forgive me if
I say it?"
And the King answered: "It's much that's bad and a little that's good
we've heard since we left our own home. But it's best that we know all
there is to know, bad or good. Say what you have to say."
"It's not far I've been," said the fairy; "only around here in the
city that's all about us; but many things I've seen, and wonderful
things. Ah, Your Majesty, don't blame me for what I'm saying, but
what's to become of us all and of you yourself, I dunno. We know all
about magic; we've known all about it for years--aye, for ages. And we
thought that made us better than mortals. We thought they could never
do the things we could do; maybe they never can. But oh, Your Majesty,
they're doing things as good as we can do, or better. You wouldn't
believe what the mortals in this country do, if you wasn't after
seein' it. They do things as wonderful as we ourselves, and it's iron,
iron, iron everywhere. We can do nothing with iron--we can't touch
it--and what will we do at all to be ahead of them, or even up with
them?"
"What's all this they do?" said the King.
"You saw yourself," the fairy said, "the coaches that went along up in
the air. They go on bridges, miles long, built of iron. And they run
on bars of iron. You saw for yourself that they had no horses, and the
coach in front that pulls them is all made of iron, and men ride in
them, as if it was no harm at all to touch iron. And that's not all.
There are other coaches that go in the streets without horses. They
have no iron coach in front to pull them. They go in different ways.
Sometimes there's an iron rope, that's all the time moving and moving
along under the street, and there's a gripping iron under the coach
that takes hold on it, and so it's pulled along. And sometimes there's
only a little string--not iron, I think, but some other metal--and
something just reaches down from the coach and touches it, and that
makes it go. I dunno how it is, but it makes it go. And sometimes
there's fire comes out of it."
Then another fairy came out of the crowd and stood before the King.
"Your Majesty," he said, "I can tell you more than that. I have been
about the city, too, and I went into some of the houses. I saw a man
talking to a little box on the wall. I came close and I heard that the
box was talking to him too. I thought there was a fairy inside it, but
I looked inside, and there was nothing there but iron and strange
works that I couldn't understand. There were little strings of copper
coming out of the box, and then a long string of iron, that led away
over the tops of the houses."
The fairy stopped and shivered as he thought of the horrible string of
iron. Then he went on: "I followed it and it came into another house,
where there was so much iron that I couldn't stay there. But the
strings of iron came out of this house and led in all directions. I
followed them and I listened everywhere and I found what they were
for, though how they do it all I dunno. And it's this way: Anywhere
that there's a box you can talk to them that's in the house where all
the iron strings go. And if they like to help you, you can talk to
anybody else where there's a box. It may be a mile off or it may be a
dozen miles off. Many a time those in the house where all the strings
are will not help them that wants to talk, but when they will, it's
easy. Yes, Your Majesty, one man talks to another ten miles off, as if
he was standing by his side."
"Your Majesty," said another fairy, "you saw yourself the bright
lights that were at the place where the grass was, that we came to
first, and you've seen thousands more of them since. Do you know that
they're not candles, and they're not lamps, and that there's no fire
to them at all? There's strings of something, whatever it is, from one
of them to another, and the light goes through that, whatever it is."
"There's another thing that they do with strings like that," said
still another fairy. "I saw men doing it not far from here. They made
a hole in a rock and they put one end of a string in it. Then where
the other end was, a man pushed a thing like a sort of handle, and the
rock was all burst open, and nobody had touched it."
And another fairy said: "Your Majesty, there are boats all the time
going across the rivers--across the running water. Of course we always
knew that mortals could cross running water, but these boats go
without sails or oars, like the ship that we came here on. To be sure
I couldn't go on one, because it was across running water, but I went
near one, when it was at the shore, and it was all full of iron, and I
got the most awful pains from being near it. It was as bad, almost, as
I felt coming here, when I'ld get too near the iron sides of the
ship."
"And a strange thing it was that I saw too," said another fairy. "I
saw people looking into little boxes of wood, so I looked in too. And
in one I saw a woman dancing, and in another there were horses
running, and in another I saw two men fighting. And it was not a real
woman or real horses or real men, but only pictures that moved and did
the things that real people and horses would do."
The King listened to all this and then he sat and thought. "What is
there in it that I can't do?" he asked. "Do you not all know of the
coaches in Ireland that are drawn by horses without heads and driven
by coachmen without heads?"
All the fairies looked at one another and nodded and said, "Yes, yes,
we know."
But Naggeneen came forward and stood before the throne. Nobody had
noticed that he had been listening or that he was there. "And what if
those coaches were in Ireland?" he said. "They had horses, though the
horses had no heads. Can you make iron coaches go without any horses
at all?"
The King was trying to talk boldly, but he stammered and grew pale at
the very thought of having anything to do with an iron coach, and he
did not answer. He went on instead: "Can I not send any one of you on
a message, as fast as the wind?"
"But can you talk for ten miles," Naggeneen asked, "and will the very
voice of you go as fast as the lightning?"
"Why would I want to be doin' that," said the King, "when I can send a
messenger as fast as I like?"
"That's not the question," said the cruel Naggeneen; "can you do it?"
"I never tried," said the King. "And can I not light up this palace,"
he went on, "or any other palace, with diamonds? Can I not make a
light so that a man who looks behind him when he is going on a journey
or at work in the fields will think his house is on fire and run
back?"
"And when he has run back," said Naggeneen, "will he find that his
house is on fire? You know that he will not. It's only glamour, and
he'll soon be laughing at you. Oh, we can catch a few firebugs in
spiders' webs and deceive a boy or a girl that's passing, and maybe
make them turn aside and dance with us, but can you put real lights
all over the country for miles--lights that will burn on and on and
show real things? Our lights are lies themselves and they can no more
than lead a silly mortal astray for a time; their lights tell the
truth. What else can you do?"
The King had lost the most of his boldness. "They say," he said, "that
men can burst open the rock. Can I not do that as well?"
"You can open this rock for us to pass through," said Naggeneen; "and
what then? A man can see it open for a moment, if you choose to let
him, and the next minute it's all as one as if you had never touched
it. And the man thinks that's wonderful, for he doesn't know that you
can do it no other way. All glamour again! Can you burst the rock open
and leave it open, so that it will always be so, for mortal and for
fairy?"
"Why should I want to be doin' that?" said the King.
"For the same reason makes the men want to do it, but you couldn't.
And those boats that cross the river, full of iron--can you make them,
and can you cross the running water in them?"
The King had no voice to answer. "And the pictures in the boxes,"
Naggeneen went on; "can you make pictures dance?"
"Sure," said the King, "I can make a man think he sees anything I
like--a woman dancing or a horse running, or anything."
"Glamour! Glamour! Glamour!" cried Naggeneen. "You can make him think
he sees! Yes, but he does not see. You can no more make a picture
dance than you can cross a river!" And Naggeneen turned on his heel
and walked off, as if he thought the King a poor creature that was not
worth talking to.
The King had no more courage left in him than if he had been talking
to the King of All Ireland instead of to Naggeneen. "Naggeneen," he
cried, "come back and tell us something better nor all this. It's not
pleasant you are in your talk, and it's often you make me angry with
you, but after all you're cleverer than any of us. Tell us what to do.
It was not like this where we lived before. There we could do all
manner of things that mortals could not, and they were afraid of us."
"And so here too," said Naggeneen, "you can do all manner of things
that mortals cannot, but they can do as many that you cannot--as many
and better."
"But what are we to do," the King went on, "to show them that we're
their masters? Sure we're cleverer than them all out, and we can prove
it in some way."
"King," said Naggeneen, speaking as boldly as if he were himself a
greater king, "you can never prove that you're cleverer than men, for
you're not cleverer. It was a poor, wasted, weak, and sorrowful
country that we came from, and it's a rich, new, strong, and happy
country that we've come to. There's the differ. Clever you are, maybe,
and your people, too, and I may be clever in my own way, and we may
play our little tricks on mortals, as I did on the Sullivans, if
they're as stupid as them. But mortals can be cleverer than we ever
can when they are clever, and they can beat us every time if they know
how. And do you know why? Because they have what we have not--because
they have souls. I heard a school-master say once that the word
'mortal' was made from a word that meant death. And they call mortals
that, I'm thinkin', because they never die. But you will die, King,
and all your people, and I. We live on and on for thousands of years,
and men come and change and pass away, but at the last day we shall be
gone, as a bit of cloud up in the sky is gone when the sun shines on
it. That's why men will always be greater and finer and stronger than
us, with all our magic."
The fairies were all so terrified that they shrank away from Naggeneen
and clung together and shook, in their fright, for this fear of living
for a long time and then going out like a candle is their greatest
fear. There was not a bit of color left in the King's face now. It was
almost with a sob that he spoke again, and there was a kind of
beseeching in his tone as he said: "Naggeneen, don't talk like that to
us! We don't know it! It may be so, but we don't know it! We've tried
many a time to find out, but no one that knew would ever tell us! We
may have souls! We don't know that we've not! We may be saved!"
"You do know it!" Naggeneen cried. "Why will you try to deceive
yourselves? You've no soul and I've no soul, and there's no way that
we can have them. If there'd been any way, I'ld have had one long ago.
But we'll never have them, and mortals will always outwit us, if they
half know how. Shall I tell you how one of them outwitted me--a big,
lazy, stupid gommoch, with not enough brains to keep his neck safe?"
The fairies were far past caring whether they heard a story or not,
but they listened as Naggeneen went on. "I'm after tellin' you," he
said, "that if there was any way that one of us could be gettin' a
soul, I'ld have had one long ago. This was the way I tried it, and a
silly mortal outwitted me. Guleesh na Guss Dhu was the name that was
on him. I had heard--and I believed it--that if I could get a mortal
woman married to me--a woman with a soul--that I would get a soul,
too, that way. Well, I was never over-modest in my tastes, you know,
and I thought that the daughter of the King of France was about right
for me. A beautiful girl she was, with the rose and the lily fighting
in her cheeks, and she was eighteen years old. But sure I thought that
the differ of a few thousand years in our ages would be nothing to me,
and I hoped it would be nothing to her either.
"I was living in a rath and wearing a green jacket then. All the
others in the rath promised that they'ld help me. The King's daughter
was to be married to the son of the King of another country on
November Eve; and you know there's no better time to steal a girl than
the night she's to be married, and November Eve is a fine time, too,
so it was settled that we'ld go over to France and steal her on that
night. But, as you know, we needed a mortal to help us. How else could
we be bringin' her across from France? If we could put her on a horse
behind a man, she'ld have flesh and blood to take a grip of, but if
she was put up behind one of us, she might as well try to hold to a
puff of smoke. You know that.