Kilflyn, County Kerry

My grand-father was a hard working industrious thrifty and tasty farmer.
I often heard my father say that the beautiful whitethorn hedges that separate our fields were planted by my grand-father when my father was a little boy. Grand father planted these hedges from haws. He put the haws into a long soft hay sugan and planted a few inches deep in a row. At both ends of each hedge he planted a white thorn quick about two feet high. These quicks being established grew quickly. Grand-father was very attentive to them. In his walks in the evening he pulled the grass round them and when any of the fields were being tilled he threw a couple of forks of manure round these quicks.
Time rolled by. All the hedges grew but each whitethorn quick at the end made great growth. They grew practically to be trees rather than bushes.
The time came for the hedges to be cut, branched and thickened. Grand-father alone did so carefully. But he never touched with saw nor axe the valued white thorn tree at each end.
To him these individual white-thorn trees were sacred. He said they were shelters for the bean sidhe.
Years rolled by again. Grand-father got old and retired from work. In fact he lived to the age of eighty-nine hale and harty and died without sickness. Always a spiritual life seemed to guide him, and he certainly had unshaken belief in the bean sidhe and the fairies.
The time came for the hedges to be cut again. This, father and a workman did, and did it in modern style. They spared nothing. They had no beliefs in bean sidhe and fairies and they slashed and cut the large white thorn trees at the end as they cut the others. During the following nights was heard by grand-father and even by others the sad wail and cry of the bean sidhe after the shelter which had been cut away.

From the National Folklore Collection, UCD.