The peasants have the greatest dread of the fairy-stroke, and consider
it the most dangerous indication of fairy hostility. When a person is
struck, he becomes wholly insensible to external things, as if his soul
had been taken out of him and carried away.
A farmer once began to build a barn on a fairy circle, to the great
horror of the neighbours, who warned him of the danger; but he only
laughed at their nonsense, and built and finished his barn on the fairy
rath.
However, riding home one evening after sunset, he was suddenly
“struck,” and fell insensible to the ground. They carried him home and
laid him on his bed, where he lay for several days, his eyes fixed and
staring without any motion of the eyelids, and no indication of life
remaining, except his colour which never changed.
All the doctors came and looked at him, but could do nothing. There
was no fracture nor injury of any kind to his frame; so the doctors
shook their heads and went their way, saying they would call again in
a day or two. But the family objected to delay, and sent at once for
the great fairy doctor of the district. The moment he came he threw
herbs on the fire, when a fragrant smell filled the room like church
incense. Then he pounded some herbs and mixed a liquid with them, but
what the herbs were, no one knew. And with this mixture he touched the
brow and the lips and the hands of the man, and sprinkled the rest over
his insensible form. After this he told them to keep silence round him
for two hours, when he would return and finish the cure. And so it
happened, for in two hours the life came back to the man, though he
could not speak. But strength came gradually; and by the next day he
rose up, and said he had dreamed a dream, and heard a voice saying to
him, “Pull down the barn, for ill-luck is on it.” Accordingly he gave
orders to his men, and every stick and stone was carried away, and
the fairy rath left free again for the fairies to dance on, as in the
olden time, when they were the gods of the earth, long before men came
to dispute their rights, and take possession of their ancient pleasure
grounds—an indignity no high-spirited fairy could calmly endure. For
in their councils they had decreed that the fairy rath, at least,
should be sacred for all time, and woe to the man who builds his house
thereon. An evil fate is on him and on the house for evermore. Down it
must come, or the evil spell will never be lifted. There is no hope for
it, for the most dangerous and subtle of all enemies is an angry fairy.
Nor should the paths even be crossed by work of human hand, which the
fairies traverse from one palace to another. Their line of march
must not be impeded. Finvarra and his men would resent such a gross
insult to the royal fairy rights, and severely punish the audacious
and offending mortal. Not even the Grand Jury would be allowed to
interfere, for if they did, every man of them would be demolished in
some way or other by fairy power.