The Host of the Air performed by David Polacheck

I love matching classic poetry with old/traditional folk tunes. This poem by William Butler Yeats appears to describe a "fairy taking", where the inimical host of the air (with the necessary presence of a mortal) steal a person, often a newly married bride. Folktales indicate that the fairies leave a simulacrum in the person's place, who soon appears to die and is buried while the abductee lives with the fairies. Yeats wrote that he heard an old woman in Sligo sing and translate for him a ballad in Irish describing a man encountering his new bride in the presence of the host of the air fairies. The bride prevents him from eating their food which would have made him captive as well. The fairies and his bride vanish away, and on continuing his journey, the man comes to his bride's home and finds her relatives keening her death. This song was the inspiration for the poem and now, since I have set it to the tune of "The Month of January" it has become a song again!