Ferguson and Yeats both depict faeries as untrustworthy, if not outright dangerous. The moon, personified as having "taken flight" in 'The Stolen Child', can be a symbol of mystery, a sense of which is evident in all three poems, though it can alternatively symbolise death and darkness, linking faeries to danger. In 'The Fairy Well of Lagnanay', faeries are "a silent race" -- Ferguson's use of this modifier similarly creates a sense of mystery, as silence indicates secrecy. The faeries in Ferguson's poem are mostly referred to by the third-person pronoun "they", which is impersonal in its lack of specificity, suggesting a sort of omnipotence in a faceless race. The imagery in 'The Fairy Well of Lagnanay' is decidedly negative; the metaphor "the memory which all my heart is haunting still" presents an unusual view of hearts, which are normally fragile and breakable, but which in this case has a description of being ghostly and oppressive.
The presentation of faeries in 'The Maids of Elfen-Mere' differs in that the faeries are more of a process than actual beings, and so they are dehumanised; they come "spinning to a pulsing cadence, singing songs of Elfin-Mere" every night and leave at the tolling of "the eleventh hour". Similarly, the faeries are described as "three doves on snowy plume" and as "three white lilies" -- objects and animals rather than women. However, Allingham uses these descriptions to link the faeries to the colour white, which is generally seen as a symbol of innocence and purity. Allingham tells of the Pastor's son, who winds back the clock to fool the faeries into staying for longer, but the faeries are killed by this act and all that is found of them is "three stains of gore". From this, we see that the faeries are in fact the victims, whose white innocence was reduced to red blood (where red is linked to sin and danger) by the Pastor's son "because true love should never lie". So here we see a role reversal similar to the English poems, in which the faery is the victim and the lustful, thoughtless human man is the one who causes the faeries' deaths.
Colour is also used in the other two poems. 'The Stolen Child' features "the reddest stolen cherries", where the superlative "reddest" emphasises the impossibility of anything being more evil or dangerous than the faeries, and the "dim grey sands" the faeries take the child to are intended to be a dull contrast to the dancing and the chaos of the faeries. Chaos is a lot less present in 'The Fairy Well of Lagnanay', as the faeries are more mysterious and cold, as is suggested by "the mountain's eye, cold and grey".
This stanza is repeated:
"Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand"
This is interesting because it suggests that, though the faeries might be mad and cruel, they are saving the child from a world of unthinkable sadness. The semantic field of water in 'The Stolen Child', such as "wandering water gushes" and "ferns drop their tears", seems to create a link to tears, which is particularly obvious in the line "the world's more full of weeping than you can understand", which is sinister because children are known to cry more than adults; this hints at a world unknown to the child where adults cry for much greater problems than the child can imagine. Being "hand in hand" creates a physical link between the faery and the child and demonstrates equality between the two of them, unlike the way humans could be expected to look down on the child.
Yeats' description of pools "that scarce could bathe a star" in 'The Stolen Child' perhaps uses a star as a symbol of childhood and is meant to imply that the child's innocence is washed away by adults, but as they travel farther into the realm of faeries this becomes "scarce". This idea of treasuring childhood is an idea of romanticism that became popular in the 19th century.
Music is heavily associated with faeries in Irish mythology, so it is to be expected the the faeries in each of these three poems are singing or dancing. In 'The Fairy Well of Lagnanay', the line "mournfully, sing mournfully" in repeated throughout, and is fairly ambiguous; whether this imperative was directed at the poem's audience or at the faeries is unknown. The singing in 'The Maids of Elfen-Mere' is alternately named as a "cadence" and as "lamentings", both of which are phonetically soft and lacking in harsh consonants, reflecting the gentle nature of Allingham's faeries. This contasts with the dynamic verbs "leap", "weaving", and "chase" in 'The Stolen Child', again showing the chaotic nature of the faeries in this poem.
The faeries in these poems are much more literal than those in the English poetry I analysed previously, but there is no consistency in the way they are depicted. This is quite likely a result of how legends and mythology can have many varients, especially in the case of Irish mythology, which was mostly passed down through word of mouth; even now it is difficult to find a telling of Irish mythology that is in any way complete or conclusive. Irish culture was heavily influenced by stories of faeries in the 19th century, and so its poetry is rich with mythology,
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