“Up the airy mountain/Down the rushy glen/We daren’t go a-hunting,/For fear of little men.//Wee folk, good folk,/Trooping all together,/Green jacket, red cap,/White owl’s feather! – Wm Allingham”
Customs-officer, magazine editor, and poet William Allingham was born in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, in 1824, and his ashes – brought back from London – are interred in St Anne’s church in the town (WP). “The Faeries” (poetry.com) was first published in his 1850 collection Poems (UCC) and remains a staple of children’s and mythological collections.
The art shown here is on The Mall/An Mál in Ballyshannon/Béal Átha Seanaıdh.
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