The Fairy Rath of Keshcorran

On the slopes below Keshcorran, where caves breathe out air cold as a well, sits a green ring in the grass—a rath, neat as a coin on a table. Cattle give it a wise berth; so did men, until a certain year when butter ran thin and a farmer’s patience ran thinner.

Pádraig Ó Hehir, who had more sons than spoons and a thatch that could use three new bundles, eyed the rath with a measuring look. “It’s dry ground,” he told his wife. “I’ll move the shed to the top. What harm can a circle of old earth do?”

His wife crossed herself with the peel-knife. “Leave the Fair Folk their ring,” she said. “We’ll thatch tighter and sing louder.” But hunger has a voice that sings its own song.

Pádraig cut turf for posts and set them where the grass grew brightest. The first night the cow lowed as if remembering a lost calf. The second night a sweet fiddling came from the rath, a tune like a stream laughing over stones. Pádraig’s youngest son, who’d two left feet and a good heart, danced in his sleep and woke with briar scratches as if he’d reel’d through a hedge.

On the third night it rained, not from the sky but from a clear night itself: a silver drizzle that wet only the roof of the new shed and nowhere else. Pádraig stood in it, baffled and slowly ashamed.

At midnight he took off his cap and went to the rath. The music stopped at once, polite as a guest when the host enters the room.

“I have been a poor neighbour,” he said to the grass. “I’ll move the posts in the morning.”

A wind like a sigh moved around the ring. Pádraig set a small dish of cream on the bank and, because he’d been raised with manners, a slice of the brown bread his wife baked on a stone.

By morning the cream dish was clean as a whistle and the bread gone. The posts came up easily from the bright grass and went down easily where the ground was duller but unenchanted. That night the cow slept as if someone had read her a story. The youngest son’s feet still tangled, but only when he tried to carry two pails at once.

On clear evenings, if you walk below Keshcorran and keep your hat off, you may hear a tune that will make you kinder to your neighbours and harder on your own greed. The ring is green as ever, and the grass there never scorches, even in a hard summer. Pádraig became known as a man with good butter and better sense, which is a wealth the Fair Folk often leave behind when they take offense away.