Arthur Machen

“ I spoke of the strange little, wandering downhill tracks by the thorns as suggesting to me, somehow or other, the thought of the Fairy Folk, so I think I should explain, before I go on, that I am not one of those happy people who have only to think of fairies to be hallucinated, whether visibly or audibly. ”

“ Yeats and the new Irish literature, and I was expressing some bewilderment at the fact that men of character, and of apparent good faith, talked of seeing fairies in their daily walks.
"Is it," I said, "some kind of symbolism? Or what do they mean?"
"What should they mean," said young Mr. Geraldine, "but the truth? Can't you see the fairies when you want to? I've only to wish, to see them; and I've often seen them sitting on the stone walls by the mountain roads in Galway." ”

“ But when we got to his country house, I found, as he had said, that it was fended and hedged about by mountain ash trees.
The saddest of all roads is the road that has been murdered. I know such a road in Wales. It wound to right and left in a goodly and leisurely fashion up a long, steep hill. The road was narrow and deep down in the ground. Every fern grew in splendour on those high banks ”

“ I wish I were, for the actual roads of life are often, or always, gritty and punishing to tender feet, and it would be well and happy indeed if one could be rapt at the desire into the tender grass-grown ways of fairyland. ”

“ Gillespie. "You see, about half the people are Protestants and the other half Catholics. That's because we're getting higher. You see, the Ulster settlers took all the good land in the valleys and drove the Catholics away, and the higher you go, and the poorer the soil, the more Catholics you'll find." (He was a fair man.)
But I had noticed that, though there were no gardens, nearly every house had a mountain ash planted by its door. I said:
"You seem very fond of the mountain ash here."
"Well," he replied, "the people think that they keep away the fairies. ”