Oscar Wilde, in his fairy stories and symbolic allegories, tells of magic, whereby the Happy Prince, high on the pedestal on the square, has a heart of lead because he sees the misery of the people, and sends a swallow as his messenger to pick out his jeweled eyes and take them to the suffering ones. He speaks of the wonder by which the bodies of the mermaid and the fisherman who lost his soul for love of her, when they are buried in unconsecrated ground, send forth strange flowers that are placed on the sacred altar. The dark enchantment appears in the poetry as often as in the prose, from Coleridge's _Christabel_ to the present. Gordon Bottomley's _The Crier by Night_ is a story of an evil presence that lurks in a pool, coming out to steal the souls of those it can lure into its waters. The woman, desperate from jealousy, who invokes its aid, says: "For I can use this body worn to a soul To barter with the Crier of hidden things That if he tangle him in his chill hair Then I will follow and follow and follow and follow Past where the ringed stars ebb past the light And turn to water under the dark world!" The fairy has always been a favorite being with poets, dramatists, and romancers, from Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton to the present time. There is no figure more firmly established in folk-literature, none more difficult to dislodge despite their delicacy and ethereal qualities than the Little People. The belief in fairies is firmly established in Gaelic-speaking sections and the Celtic peasant would as soon give up his religion as his belief in the Sidhe. W. B. Yeats, in _Celtic Twilight_, tells of an Irish woman of daring unbelief in hell, or in ghosts who, she held, would not be permitted to go trapsin' about the earth at their own free will, but who asserted, "There are fairies, and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels." Everybody among the peasantry believes in fairies, "for they stand to reason." And there are not wanting others more learned that believe in the small folk, as W. Y. E. Wentz, who in his volume _Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries_ puts up a loyal argument for the existence of the Sidhe. He says: Fairies exist, because in all essentials they appear to be the same as the intelligent forces now recognized by psychological researchers, be they thus collective units of consciousness like what William James calls soul-stuff or more individual units like veridical apparitions. If it were left to me, I'd as soon not believe in fairies as have to think of them as veridical units! Mr. Wentz has never seen any fairies himself, but he tells a number of stories to substantiate his faith in them.