Well done again Jim; I still don't fully understand though how you are able to unearth stuff that isn't there! When I followed your link to Nora Hopper Chesson's book Aquamarines all I could discover was "No preview available".

The song as sung by John McCormack is a beautiful song; what I find questionable are the references to fairies, which was rather an obsession of the time. It seemed that no Irish country person could wander down the lane without Lady Gregory or some other collector leaping out from behind a hedge and demanding to know a story or song about fairies!

There were plenty of such stories, but generally it wasn't thought wise to mention the topic. This was the pragmatic attitude adopted by one woman who, when asked if she believed in fairies, replied "No, but they're there anyway!"

The romanticised fairyland of the poetry of the Celtic Twilight glosses over this fatalistic attitude, and in my opinion falsifies the hard-edged realistic approach to the Otherworld which is such a feature of Irish folklore.

Matthew Edwards