Reidh-chnoc Mna Sidhe (The Dark Fairy Rath)

DESCRIPTION: The singer "in search of my love" meets her and is warned. "'Touch me not, and approach me not near; I belong to this Rath, and the Fairy host here.'" He tries to hold her but she disappears.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1884 (Mangan's translation _Poets and Poetry of Munster,_ according to OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads)
KEYWORDS: courting magic supernatural foreignlanguage abduction beauty separation
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (3 citations):
OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads 43, "The Dark Fairy Rath" (1 text, 1 tune)
OCroinin/Cronin-TheSongsOfElizabethCronin 122, "Re-chnoc Mna Duibhe" (7 texts)
Hylands-Mammoth-Hibernian-Songster, p. 173, "The Dark Fairy Rath" (1 text)
NOTES [182 words]: The description follows the English translation in James Clarence Mangan, The Poets and Poetry of Munster (Dublin: James Duffy and Sons, 1884 ("Digitized by Microsoft"), Fourth Edition, pp. 216-219, "Reioh-chnoc mna Sighe (The Dark Fairy Rath)."
"The original Gaelic of this song is attributed to George Roberts about whom, if he existed, nothing is known" (source: OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads). - BS
Ben's description of the Gaelic of this read "Gaelic. The singer meets and falls in love with a woman taken by the fairies. She discourages his advances but he puts his arms around her. "But, when I glanced up, behold! nought could I see. She had fled from my sight as a bird from the tree!"
In the earliest known phase of Irish mythology, the Sidhe (Aes Sidhe, the People of the Hills) were the remnants of the Tuatha De Danaan, who had been defeated and driven underground by the Celtic invaders. Later the name came to be used of any generic fairy or sprite -- but the first sense may have more meaning in context.
A rath was the Irish name for a fortification or earthwork. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.1
File: OLcM043

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