Review: Horror Story: "The Child that Went With the Fairies" by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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In a sparse land of “bog and pasture,” about ten Irish miles east of the old city of Limerick under the Slieveelim hills, lived the widow Mary Ryan in a thatched cabin with her four children. Her cabin was surrounded by mountain-ash trees, also called rowans, which are protection against witches. Two horseshoes were nailed to the door. The house-leek, a cure for many maladies, grew over the lintel and along the thatch. Over the widow’s bed hung rosary beads and phial of holy water. The family lived half a mile away from one of the outposts of the “good people,” as the fairies were euphemistically called: the hill of Lisnavoura, a dome rising like an outwork of the mountains next to it. One day when Mary was out bringing home turf for the fire, and the eldest daughter was inside boiling water for the potatoes, the younger three were playing in the yard. Mary, on her return, doesn’t notice the younger children on her return. Where could they have gone? This is a sad story. Mary Ryan’s poverty is described in detail, as are her precautions against the good people. One thinks: how could she do more? She has to leave to get fuel for warmth and cooking. Two of the children return, only to tell a fantastic tale of a coach—none of them had ever seen a coach before—and of beautiful (and horrible) people who coaxed the youngest, Little Billy/Leum, into going with them. One of the obstacles for the reader is the dialect, which is, mercifully, restricted to the dialogue. As a sample, this is Mary taking to her daughter Nell after the initial search for the younger children: “Ay, do--didn't I lose enough, this night, without lavin' the doore open, for more o' yez to go; but first take an' sprinkle a dust o' the holy waters over ye, acuishla, and bring it here till I throw a taste iv it over myself and the craythurs; an' I wondher, Nell, you'd forget to do the like yourself, lettin' the craythurs out so near nightfall. Come here and sit on my knees, asthora, come to me, mavourneen, and hould me fast, in the name o' God, and I'll hould you fast that none can take yez from me, and tell me all about it, and what it was--the Lord between us and harm--an' how it happened, and who was in it.” I briefly read some scholarly notes about how fear of the fairies taking children reflected xenophobia. I’m sure people who write this stuff know what they’re talking about. But I wonder if it doesn’t have to do with something for fundamental, given the stress on poverty in most of the stories I’ve read and how the children are often left to their own devices out of sheer necessity. Accidents happen in those circumstances. All kinds of things might occur to keep Little Billy from coming home, no fairies necessary. This story is available from Wikisource: _____ Title: “The Child That Went With the Fairies” Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) First published: All the Year Round February 1870 Source: ISFDB