Mail me at theapothecaryguy at yahoo dot co dot uk and I can do a return of post jobby.

I believe it is correct to point out that Brown was in no way speaking dismissively of the apparently contradictory nature of the seeming miasma in question.

The theory is that the women were killed during a raid from the Dublin mountains on the English Pale and buried afterwards by people who had missed the loot - presumably this would have been during the 13th or 14th century, though possibly later. Given the effective cantonisation of ireland up to the close of the 17th century one wonders how much of the country’s portable wealth was kept and lost in comparable circumstances. Certainly enough one supposes to keep the fairies in lucre.

the gist of his reply, on being asked what people in Ireland believe with regard to the dead was:

Well first of all they believe everything the Church teaches with regard to the afterlife, for example that the souls of the dead go onto their eternal reward (good bad or indifferent and lose all contact with the mortal world), they also believe that when you’re dead you’re dead - and that’s it.
At the same time they believe that the dead are down at the bottom of the house conspiring against them, and they believe that those same dead are sitting with the saints and can do a power of work by way of interceeding with higher authorities on their behalf.

Feckin fairies, what a bunch of moralising hypocrites - with their pots of loot and well known predilection for whipping anything that takes their fancy.

Hoho. A fair point. What do fairies know of “honest toil”? Aren’t they forever dancing, making merry, and spreading mischief far and wide?

For all that they don’t seem shy on dishing out cough-softening lessons…

The farmer in question should have had a look at the judgment in Webb v Ireland [Webb and his son found the Derrynaflan hoard on their very first expedition with a newly acquired metal detector] before bothering his arse trying acquire it from the wee folk. The AG would have it in the National Museum in Dublin quicker than you could say “Leprechaun in the Hood”.

Having long neglected his land the field was home at one spot to a crop of buachalann bui (the poisonous and illegal ragworth). The farmer watched the fairy bury his treasure under the weeds and stole off to bed. When he arrived back next day to dig it up hadn’t the yellow weeds spread right out over the field so that he couldn’t recognize the spot he was after. His confidence was so high, and greed so powerful, that undeterred he set about digging down under the deep roots of every weed in the field until he had tilled and turned every sod he owned.

It was only when his poor wife saw what was going on and came to congratulate him on his hard work and great reform as a character that he realised he had been tricked. The fairies had been watching him all along and in their pity for his hungery children and desperate wife had tricked him into an honest days work. As the truth dawned on him the farmer realised the error of his ways and vowed to settle down to a life of honest toil and steady income rather than continue the desperate search for an easy fortune.

Feckin fairies, what a bunch of moralising hypocrites - with their pots of loot and well known predilection for whipping anything that takes their fancy.

There’s always been an oddly ambivalent attitude to ‘truth’ in this country - with a sly wink and a nod often telling you all you need to know, i.e. a multi-layered story is frequently preferred to ‘truth’ with a capital ‘T’.

I’m all for contradiction and different levels of ‘truth’…only overly empirical killjoys insist on concrete divisions between the ‘real’ and the ‘unreal’.

So do I believe in fairies? Well no…and…yes!