The Cleverness of Mortals

The King had no more courage left in him than if he had been talking to the King of All Ireland instead of to Naggeneen. "Naggeneen," he cried, "come back and tell us something better nor all this. It's not pleasant you are in your talk, and it's often you make me angry with you, but after all you're cleverer than any of us. Tell us what to do. It was not like this where we lived before. There we could do all manner of things that mortals could not, and they were afraid of us."

"And so here too," said Naggeneen, "you can do all manner of things that mortals cannot, but they can do as many that you cannot—as many and better."

"But what are we to do," the King went on, "to show them that we're their masters? Sure we're cleverer than them all out, and we can prove it in some way."

"King," said Naggeneen, speaking as boldly as if he were himself a greater king, "you can never prove that you're cleverer than men, for you're not cleverer. It was a poor, wasted, weak, and sorrowful country that we came from, and it's a rich, new, strong, and happy country that we've come to. There's the differ. Clever you are, maybe, and your people, too, and I may be clever in my own way, and we may play our little tricks on mortals, as I did on the Sullivans, if they're as stupid as them. But mortals can be cleverer than we ever can when they are clever, and they can beat us every time if they know how. And do you know why? Because they have what we have not—because they have souls. I heard a school-master say once that the word 'mortal' was made from a word that meant death. And they call mortals that, I'm thinkin', because they never die. But you will die, King, and all your people, and I. We live on and on for thousands of years, and men come and change and pass away, but at the last day we shall be gone, as a bit of cloud up in the sky is gone when the sun shines on it. That's why men will always be greater and finer and stronger than us, with all our magic."

The fairies were all so terrified that they shrank away from Naggeneen and clung together and shook, in their fright, for this fear of living for a long time and then going out like a candle is their greatest fear.