The Aos Sí
Prompt number #10 for 13 Days of Dark and Weird
The good people, the fair folk, the descendants…
‘I am Aengus…men call me the Young. I am the sunlight in the heart, the moonlight in the mind; I am the light at the end of every dream, the voice for ever calling to come away; I am the desire beyond joy or tears. Come with me, come with me: I will make you immortal; for my palace opens into the Gardens of the Sun, and there are the fire-fountains which quench the heart’s desire in rapture.’
George William Russell. Imaginations and Reveries. 1921.
Between gods and not gods …
The Aos Sí, the Sidhe, the descendants of Tuatha Dé Danann — sometimes known as the fair folk, the good people, but also as changelings, banshees, shapeshifters and all manner of good and evil things, this one mysterious race have become synonymous with the Fae.
Tricked into the underworld by mankind of old they hide in the underneath or walk parallel to our world behind a veil of magic. Right now, the border begins to blend as the days darken toward Samhain and humans should beware of fairy paths, of fairy forts, of all the hollow places they may dwell.
Offer milk and butter to keep them kind, light bonfires, or disguise yourself as one of them. You will know them by their beauty, or you may know them by their vileness, you will sometimes not know them at all until it is too late.
Speak well for they may listen, and you too may hear them in the sound of enchanting music, the whispers on the wind, follow at your peril. Or maybe take your chance to charm them back with a story brave, bold, of new or of old.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy, hand in hand.
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand
William Butler Yeats. The Stolen child.
Join us for 13 Days of Dark and Weird. 13 prompts followed by 13 days of stories prowling through the darkening days to Halloween.
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