My own experience is that beliefs in the _Sidhe_ (pronounced Shee) folk, and in other denizens of the invisible world is, in many places, rapidly dying. In reading folk-lore collections like those of Mr. Wentz and others, one is naturally inclined to exaggerate the extent and depth of these traditions. They certainly still exist, and can be found if you go to search for them; but they often exist almost as it were by sufferance, only in spots, and are ceasing to be any longer a power. Near my home in a western county (County Roscommon) rises gently a slope, which, owing to the flatness of the surrounding regions, almost becomes a hill, and is a conspicuous object for many miles upon every side. The old people called it in Irish _Mullach na Sidhe_. This name is now practically lost, and it is called Fairymount. So extinct have the traditions of the _Sidhe_-folk, who lived within the hill, become, that a high ecclesiastic recently driving by asked his driver was there an Irish name for the hill, and what was it, and his driver did not know. There took place a few years ago a much talked of bog-slide in the neighbouring townland of Cloon-Sheever (_Sidhbhair_ or _Siabhra_), 'the Meadow of the Fairies,' and many newspaper correspondents came to view it. One of the natives told a sympathetic newspaper reporter, 'Sure we always knew it was going to move, that's why the place is named Cloon-Sheever, the bog was always in a "shiver"!' I have never been able to hear of any legends attached to what must have at one time been held to be the head-quarters of the _Sidhe_ for a score of miles round it. Of all the beings in the Irish mythological world the _Sidhe_ are, however, apparently the oldest and the most distinctive. Beside them in literature and general renown all other beings sink into insignificance. A belief in them formerly dominated the whole of Irish life. The _Sidhe_ or Tuatha De Danann were a people like ourselves who inhabited the hills--not as a rule the highest and most salient eminences, but I think more usually the pleasant undulating slopes or gentle hill-sides--and who lived there a life of their own, marrying or giving in marriage, banqueting or making war, and leading there just as real a life as is our own. All Irish literature, particularly perhaps the 'Colloquy of the Ancients' (_Agallamh na Senórach_) abounds with reference to them. To inquire how the Irish originally came by their belief in these beings, the _Sidhe_ or Tuatha De Danann, is to raise a question which cannot be answered, any more than one can answer the question, Where did the Romans obtain their belief in Bacchus and the fauns, or the Greeks their own belief in the beings of Olympus?