curls beside her cheeks, and they were the colour of silver. I saw Mary
Molloy that was drowned in the river beyond, and Mary Guthrie that was
in Ardrahan, but she took the sway of them both, a very comely
creature. I was at her wake too--she had seen too much of the world.
She was a kind creature. One day I was coming home through that field
beyond, and I was tired, and who should come out but the Poisin Glegeal
(the shining flower), and she gave me a glass of new milk." This old
woman meant no more than some beautiful bright colour by the colour of
silver, for though I knew an old man--he is dead now--who thought she
might know "the cure for all the evils in the world," that the Sidhe
knew, she has seen too little gold to know its colour. But a man by the
shore at Kinvara, who is too young to remember Mary Hynes, says,
"Everybody says there is no one at all to be seen now so handsome; it
is said she had beautiful hair, the colour of gold. She was poor, but
her clothes every day were the same as Sunday, she had such neatness.
And if she went to any kind of a meeting, they would all be killing one
another for a sight of her, and there was a great many in love with
her, but she died young. It is said that no one that has a song made
about them will ever live long."

Those who are much admired are, it is held, taken by the Sidhe, who
can use ungoverned feeling for their own ends, so that a father, as an
old herb doctor told me once, may give his child into their hands, or a
husband his wife. The admired and desired are only safe if one says
"God bless them" when one's eyes are upon them. The old woman that sang
the song thinks, too, that Mary Hynes was "taken," as the phrase is,
"for they have taken many that are not handsome, and why would they not
take her? And people came from all parts to look at her, and maybe
there were some that did not say 'God bless her.'" An old man who lives
by the sea at Duras has as little doubt that she was taken, "for there