W. B. Yeats has pictured several witches for us, as the crone of the gray hawk, in _The Wisdom of the King_, a woman tall with more than mortal height, with feathers of the gray hawk growing in her hair, who stoops over the royal cradle and whispers a strange thing to the child, as a result of which he grows up in a solitude of his own mystic thoughts with dreams that are like the marching and counter-marching of armies. When he realizes that the simple joys of life and love are not for him, he disappears, some say to make his home with the immortal demons, some say with the shadowy goddesses that haunt the midnight pools in the forest. In _The Curse of the Fires and the Shadows_, Yeats pictures another witch, tall and in a gray gown, who is standing in the river and washing, washing the dead body of a man. As the troopers who have murdered the friars and burned down the church ride past, each man recognizes in the dead face his own face,--just a moment before they all plunge over the abyss to death. There are witches in most collections of English folk-tales, for the simpler people, the more elemental natures, have a strong feeling for the twilight of nature and of life. The weird woman has power over the forces of nature and can evoke the wrath of the elements as of unholy powers against her enemies. Stories of witches, as of sorcerers, occur in Indian folk-tales, as well as in those of the American Indian, differing in details in the tribal collections yet showing similar essential ideas. The Scotch show special predilection for the witch, since with their tense, stern natures, they stand in awe of the darker powers and of those that call them forth. They relate curious instances of the relations between the animal world and witchcraft, as in _The Dark Nameless One_, by Fiona McLeod, the story of a nun that falls in love with a seal and is forced to live forever in the sea, weaving her spells where the white foam froths, and knowing that her soul is lost. This is akin to the theme that Matthew Arnold uses,[152] though with a different treatment, showing similarity to Hans Christian Andersen's tale of _The Little Mermaid_. The cailleachuisge, or the water-witch, and the maighdeanmhara, the mermaid, and the kelpie, the sea-beast, are cursed with dæmonic spells and live forever in their witchery. When mortals forsake the earth and follow them their children are beings that have no souls. The Irish folk-tales, on the other hand, while having their quota of witches, do not think so much about them or take them quite so seriously, inclining more to the faëry forms of supernaturalism suited to their poetic natures. The sense of beauty of the Irish is so vivid and their innate poetry so intense that they glimpse the loveliness of magic, and their enchanted beings are of beauty rather than of horror. [152] In his _Forsaken Merman_ and _The Neckan_.