By serendipity I met a friend in town on Saturday. Over coffee and an organic raspberry and white chocolate scone (still slightly warm), Mandy told me how she and a friend had been haring round Ireland on a road trip on the trail of the sidhe. Their trip took them from Tara in the east, down to Clare, then up to Carrowkeel and Knocknashee in Sligo. They took in some of the most sacred sites and amazing megaliths in the land.  But they didn't really need to stir themselves so far from Fermanagh. They are all around us here. Or maybe I am just sensitive to the local fey vibrations.

Tourists ask me if I see fairies. I answer honestly. I don't see them and I very much doubt they are very much like Mabel Lucie Atwell's vision of them.  Here is West Cavan I experience them as nature's skin turners and messengers. But maybe that's just how they want to show themselves to  me, for I have a strong suspicion that when they want to make themselves known as friendly allies they choose a form that is least threatening to their beholder. So maybe children do see Mabel Lucie Atwell creations. Musicians hear fairy music. But I have seen a hitch hiker that turned out to be a heron standing on the road verge. A local storyteller saw a bent old woman that turned out to be a hare. 'Turned' being the operative word.

I live with a man who patterns himself on St. Francis of Assisi. He routinely saves mice from the depredations of our cats. On one rescue mission it meant we had to empty a bedroom of nearly every stick of furniture, making a mouse proof run for escaping out the front door. We only had to lift the double bed under which the mouse had last been seen scampering for refuge. I stumbled and lost my grip of my end of the bed. Down it went with a bang. The mouse having started to make a break for it ran back under the bed, with the beloved verbally chastising me for frightening the poor wee creature.  I got a better grip and we lifted. A spider legged it. But no sign of any wee mousey.

Early on living in our cottage a woman whose name in Irish means little fairy told us that there was a fairy track to the west of the house. "Go dowse it for yourself," she advised. It turned out that a shed had been built on it by a previous owner. He had also built an extension to the west on the original house. Now a local man had told me that before you do any construction you should outline the building plot with string and sticks. If they remain upright overnight then you have planning permission to build.

Now the previous owners had not had a great deal of luck; we also had seemed to go from challenge to challenge. At any rate, my beloved took a notion to tear down the shed, which was no thing of beauty. He wanted to put in flowers and a rambling rose over the willows. I had already erected what I call the Prayer Cairn in that section of the land.

And lo and behold, our luck changed.

True story!