Fairy Forths                                                                                                 -From "Irish Folktales", ed Henry Glassie
                                                                                                  -Peter Flanagan
 .
    It was a fairy tale told that if you could get ahold of a fairy, that he would tell you where there was a crock of gold.
    Supposed to be gold buried here in Ireland at all these forths.
    They're on the top of every hill.
    They were supposed to be made at the invasion of the Danes.
    The Danes invaded Ireland, you see - away back - well, a thousand years ago. I can't give you the particular date.
    And these are fortifications built.
    The Danes are the first stranger invaded Ireland - used to come in canoes, and it was for plunder they came, the Danish people.
    And the Irish had to all collect, on the hilltops, and build these fortifications round, round as an O, or as round as that ovenlid there. And all get inside of it and they were all on the watch out.
    I was here on this hillside in my fortifications, and if they saw the Danes coming, they'd blow their bugles, and it passed an from one to the other, from one end of Ireland to another, whenever the Danes invaded.
    So there was a king. He was Brian Boru. He raged war against them, and 'twas ten hundred and fourteen, that's the date he banished the last of the Danes. In ten hundred and fourteen, at Clontarf, here in the south of Ireland. And that ended them. So.
    And there's supposed to be money buried at these forths, and that's where the fairies are supposed to be.
    There was witchcraft in Ireland too, in them days.
    And these witches were supposed to say to the people, "If you shoot me, I'll watch this crock of gold till the Day of Judgment, till the end of time."
    And they're supposed to be watching, and the Good People knows where these crocks of gold is, and if you could catch one of these fairies - some calls them leprechauns, that's another name - well, they'd tell you where the crock of gold was.
    But.
    A man made a great effort up here to catch one of them. He walked out of this clump of bushes, and he spoke up to him, and he told him that he was going to tell him where the crock of gold was.
    He wanted to do him a favor,
        but the man couldn't understand him,
            so he made a grab at the fairy.
    And the fairy just leaped up above him, and lit just on a branch.
    And that was that.
    He couldn't get him.
    It was the nearest fairy tale that I ever heard. And I saw the man.
    I saw the man. Yes.
    He spoke calmly to the fairy. He says, "Wait," he says, "till I catch you." So he went to make a grab at him like that, on the ground.
    But he had wings on him and he went up in the branches.
    And that was that.
    And if he had taken of him calmly, the fairy said that he'd tell him where the crock of gold was.
    But then, he scared the fairy, the way the fairy disappeared into thin air.
    That was that.
    He was an old beardy man. I saw him. He's not so very long dead now. That's that.