Note 28 — Chapter XII · Race in Folklore and Myth

Among the speakers of Goidelic in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland the fairies take their designation chiefly from a word síd or síth (genitive síde or sída), which one may possibly consider as of a common origin with the Latin word sēdes, and as originally meaning a seat or settlement, but it sooner or later came to signify simply an abode of the fairies, whence they were called in Medieval Irish aes síde, ‘fairy folk,’ fer síde, ‘a fairy man,’ and ben síde, ‘a fairy woman or banshee.’ By the side of síd, an adjective síde, ‘of or belonging to the síd,’ appears to have been formed, so that they are found also called simply síde, as in Fiacc’s Hymn, where we are told that before the advent of St. Patrick the pagan tribes of Erin used to worship síde or fairies28. Borrowed from this, or suggested by it29, we have in Welsh Caer Sidi, ‘the Fortress of the Fairies,’ which is mentioned twice in the Book of Taliessin30. It first occurs at the end of poem xiv, where we have the following lines, which recall Irish descriptions of Tír na nÓg or the Land of the Young:—