THE
FAIRY MUSIC
THE
FAIRY MUSIC
The fairy glance does not kill but it throws the object into a death like trance, in which the real body is carried off to some fairy mansion, while a log of wood, or some ugly, deformed creature is left in it's place, clothed with the shadow of the stolen form. Young women, remarkable for beauty, young men, and handsome children, are the chief victims of this fairy stroke. The girls are wedded to fairy chiefs, and the young men to fairy queens; and if the mortal children do not turn out well, they are sent back and others carried off in their place. It is sometimes possible by the spells of a powerful fairy-man to bring back a living being from Fairy land. But they are never quite the same after. They have always a spirit-look, especially if they have listened to the fairy music. For the fairy music is soft and low and plaintive, with a fatal charm for mortal ears.
One day a gentleman entered a cabin in Co Clare and saw a young girl about twenty seated by the fire chanting a melancholy song without words or music. On inquiry he was told she had once heard the fairy harp, and those who hear it lose all memory of love or hate, and forget all things and never more have any other sound in their ears save the soft music of the fairy harp, and, when the spell is broken, thy die.
It is interesting that the Irish national airs,
plaintive, beautiful and very sad, should so perfectly express the spirit of the
Ceol-Sidhe (the fairy music) as it haunts the fancy of the people and mingles
with all their traditions of the the spirit world. Wild and capricious as the
fairy music, these delicate harmonies, with their mystic, mournful rhythm, seem
to touch the deepest chords of feeling, or to fill the sunshine with laughter,
according to the mood of the players. But above all things Irish music is the
utterance of a Divine sorrow, not stormy or passionate, but like that of an
exiled spirit, yearning and wistful, vague and unresting, ever seeking the
unattainable, ever shadowed as it were, with memories of some lost good, or some
dim foreboding of a coming fate. Emotions that seem to find their truest
expression in the sweet, sad, lingering wail of the pathetic minor in a genuine
Irish air. There is a beautiful phrase in one of the ancient manuscripts
descriptive of the wonderful power of Irish music over the sensitive human
organization;
"Wounded men were soothed when they heard it, and slept; and women in travail
forgot their pains." There are legends concerning the subtle charm of the fairy
music and dance, when the mortal under their influence seems to move through the
air with "the naked, fleshless feet of the spirit," and is lulled by the ecstasy
of the cadence into forgetfulness of all things, and sometimes into the sleep of
death.
(From the pen of Lady Wilde)
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