Without Lifting A Finger

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, And white owl's feather! Down along the rocky shore Some make their home, They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain lake, With frogs for their watch-dogs, All night awake. High on the hill-top The old King sits; He is now so old and gray He's nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music On cold starry nights To sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights. They stole little Bridget For seven years long; When she came down again Her friends were all gone. They took her lightly back, Between the night and morrow, They thought that she was fast asleep, But she was dead with sorrow. They have kept her ever since Deep within the lak

Don't have the time or energy to follow up all the leads Hawthorne has been sending my way via his foreign journals (he was the American Consul in Liverpool for a few years), but this one was worthwhile because it led to "The Faeries." Kiddish perhaps by contemporary standards, but something I imagine the young Yeats swallowed whole. *** William Allingham (19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889) was an Irish poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem 'The Faeries' was much anthologised; but he is better known for his posthumously published Diary , [1] in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham , was a well-known water-colorist and illustrator. [From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Allingham  ]