'The Child That Went With the Fairies' has its dialog written in Irish dialect. I've read enough old stories to know that 'aisy' is 'easy' and 'craythurs' is 'creatures,' but I can't figure out all of the words. Still, that didn't keep me from getting the sense of the story, which has great atmosphere.

A very poor widow named Moll Mary Ryan lives in a very lonely area of Ireland, three miles from the priest, and much too close to the fairy hill of Lisnavoura. (I read this story in Ghost stories and Mysteries by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. It appears to be used there as we would use 'Ms.' -- none of the female characters known as Moll [surname] are depicted as criminals, prostitutes, or women of loose morals.)

Moll Ryan's house is amply protected against supernatural menaces (I hadn't known about the house leek's value in that regard). Unfortunately, she went to gather bog turf (peat), which is used as firewood in that area. Moll Ryan left her eldest, Nell, to cook the dinner and mind the three much younger children, Con, Peg, and Billy. Nell was not cautioned to sprinkle holy water on her little siblings before letting them out to play, not did the girl think of it herself.

Sure enough, only two of the littlest Ryans come home. How one of them was taken by a fairy princess makes for a good story. (I didn't care for the description of the black woman in the coach with the princess. If she were not almost certainly a supernatural creature, I'd consider it racist.)

As in another story in the same collection, there's a hint that humans who go off with the fairies might go on living, but would probably be happier if they could die.

Mentions: Sarsfield (Patrick Sarsfield, 1st Earl of Lucan?), King William [III], Limerick, Tipperary, Dublin ( )