Equinox

When a person visits an ancient site at dawn or dusk on the equinoxes, solstices and cross-quarter periods, the chances of being elf-shot, blinded, and even captured for a time are substantially higher ... Circle Stories


And I think today is the Equinox, when the Good People fairies can move from one Otherworld doorway to another, occasionally whisking off a human who might be lurking around a mound or stone circle or fairy tree . The folklore is full of cautionary tales:


There was a man one time who lived in Malin with his wife. Their house was beside a river. At the side of this river there grew a bush of "sally rods" which people said they shouldn't be touched because it was a "fairy tree". In olden times the people used to make creels and baskets out of rods. So this man went down one might and pulled a burden of the rods to make creels. When he came into the house, his wife asked him what happened to his face and he said nothing happened his face but she said something must have happened because your nose is on the side of your face. Then she asked him where he got he rods and he told her where he got them, she told him to go back and leave them in the same place where he got them and ask pardon of the fairies if he did anything wrong. So he did what she told him, and when he returned back to the house his nose was in the right place.


Some years ago when Fairies or "Good people" as they were then called were numerous in this country a man's wife was taken away by the Fairies and he was in great distress. Some of the older people in the village told him that if he knew where the fairies passed at night he would get her back. At last he got to know where the Fairies were to pass one night, and he waited at a certain gap or pass-way and the Fairies all came on horse-back and his wife was on horse-back with them. He jumped up and took her off the horse and brought her home with him and was very glad indeed. He got the best of the fairies this time.



Best not to wander abroad tonight. And isn't the moon colossal. 


King of the Fairies