Still in the west and south of Ireland, the peasant, returning home, hears, as the evening falls from the haunted hills, airs unknown before, or at midnight a wild triumphant song from the Fairy Host rushing by, or wakes with a dream melody in his heart.

And these are played and sung next day to the folk sitting round the fire.

Many who heard these mystic sounds became themselves the makers of melodies, and went about the land singing and making and playing from village to village and cabin to cabin, till the unwritten songs of Ireland were as numerous as they were various.
Moore collected a hundred and twenty of them, but of late more than five hundred he knew not of have been secured from the people and from manuscripts for the pleasure of the world.

And in them lives on the spirit of the Fianna, and the mystery of the Fairy Host, and the long sorrow and the fleeting joy of the wild weather in the heart of the Irish race.
[7] This word is pronounced Shee, and means "the folk of the fairy mounds." As to the poetry of Ireland, that other Art which is illustrated in this book, so fully has it been dwelt on by many scholars and critics that it needs not be touched here other than lightly and briefly.

The honour and dignity of the art of poetry goes back in Irish mythology to a dim antiquity.