“The gods of ancient Ireland, the Tuatha de Danaan, or the Tribes of the goddess Danu, or the Sidhe, from Aes Sidhe, or Sluagh Sidhe, the people of the Faery Hills, as these words are usually explained, still ride the country as of old. Sidhe is also Gaelic for wind, and certainly the Sidhe have much to do with the wind. They journey in whirling wind, the winds that were called the dance of the daughters of Herodias in the Middle Ages, Herodias doubtless taking the place of some old goddess.9 When old country people see the leaves whirling on the road they bless themselves, because they believe the Sidhe to be passing by. Knocknarea is in Sligo, and the country people say that Maeve, still a great queen of the western Sidhe, is buried in the cairn of stones upon it.10 I have written of Clooth-na-Bare in The Celtic Twilight. She ‘went all over the world, seeking a lake deep enough to drown her faery life, of which she had grown weary, leaping from hill to hill, and setting up a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted, until, at last, she found the deepest water in the world in little Lough Ia, on the top of the bird mountain, in Sligo.’ I forget, now, where I heard this story, but it may have been from a priest at Collooney. Clooth-na-Bare is evidently a corruption of Cailleac Bare, the old woman of Bare, who, under the names Bare, and Berah, and Beri, and Verah, and Dera, and Dhira, appears in the legends of many places.” —1899-1906.

此诗作于1893年8月29日，最初发表于《国民观察家报》（1893年10月7日）时题为《仙军》。叶芝自注（1899）说：“富贵人过去把古爱尔兰诸神称为图阿莎·德·妲南，即妲奴女神的部族，而贫苦人过去，有时现在也仍然，把它们称为希，源于诶·希或斯路阿·希，意即仙山之人。‘希’也是盖尔语中的风，当然希与风有许多关联。它们乘旋风而行，那旋风在中世纪被称为海若迪亚斯的女儿之舞——海若迪亚斯无疑取代了某个古代女神的地位。当乡民们看见树叶在路上旋转时，他们就祝福自己，因为他们认为希正在经过。它们据说总是不戴头巾，而任头发飘泻如瀑；它们有尊卑之分，尊者多半骑马。如果有人对它们过于感兴趣，过多地看见它们，他就会对普通事物失去一切兴趣。……古代的伟大人物都出自妲奴的部族，是它们中间的王和后。奎尔塔是费安的战友；……尼娅芙是妲奴部族中的美女，她曾把乌辛诱引到她们的国度‘青春之乡’；我在《乌辛漫游记》中写到了她；最终，他又回到苦难和厌倦之中。科垴克纳瑞山在斯来沟，乡民说，西部的希的伟大女王梅娃就葬在山上的石冢中。我在《凯尔特的曙光》〔维护者按：常见译名为《凯尔特的薄暮》〕中写到过科露什纳芭尔。她‘走遍全世界，寻找一个足够深的湖，以溺毙她的仙躯，她已厌倦了神仙生活；她从一个山丘跃到另一个山丘，在所到之处建立一个个石冢；终于，她在斯来沟，鸟山之巅的小伊阿湖找到了世界上最深的水。’……科露什纳芭尔义为‘芭尔的老妇人’……她出现在许多地方的传说中”（《校刊本》，页800—802）。

Earlier versions of the note (VP pp. 800-803) offer more details on Clooth-na-Bare as well as the following additional commentary on the Sidhe:

“They are almost always said to wear no covering upon their heads, and to let their hair stream out; and the great among them, for they have great and simple, go much upon horseback. If anyone becomes too much interested in them, and sees them over much, he loses all interest in ordinary things. I shall write a great deal elsewhere about such enchanted persons, and can give but an example or two now. A woman near Gort, in Galway, says: ‘There is a boy, now, of the Cloran's; but I wouldn't for the world let them think I spoke of him; it's two years since he came from America, and since that time he never went to Mass, or to church, or to fairs, or to market, or to stand on the cross roads, or to hurl- ing, or to nothing. And if anyone comes into the house, it's into the room he'll slip, not to see them; and as to work, he has the garden dug to bits, and the whole place smeared with cow dung; and such a crop as was never seen; and the alders all plaited till they look grand. One day he went as far as the chapel; but as soon as he got to the door he turned straight round again, as if he hadn't power to pass it. I wonder he wouldn't get the priest to read a Mass for him, or something; but the crop he has is grand, and you may know well he has some to help him.’ One hears many stories of the kind; and a man whose son is believed to go out riding among them at night tells me that he is careless about everything, and lies in bed until it is late in the day. A doc- tor believes this boy to be mad. Those that are at times ‘away,’ as it is called, know all things, but are afraid to speak. A countryman at Kiltartan says, ‘There was one of the Lydons-John-was away for seven years, lying in his bed, but brought away at nights, and he knew everything; and one, Kearney, up in the mountains, a cousin of his own, lost two hoggets, and came and told him, and he knew the very spot where they were, and told him, and he got them back again. But they were vexed at that, and took away the power, so that he never knew anything again, no more than another.’ This wisdom is the wisdom of the fools of the Celtic stories, that was above all the wisdom of the wise. Lomna, the fool of Fiann, had so great wisdom that his head, cut from his body, was still able to sing and prophesy; and a writer in the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ writes that Tristram, in the oldest form of the tale of Tristram and Iseult, drank wisdom, and madness the shadow of wisdom, and not love, out of the magic cup. The great of the old times are among the Tribes of Danu, and are kings and queens among them.” (1899; VP p. 801)