The Red-Haired Little People of a Mourne Valley

In her 1913 book Ulster Folklore, Elizabeth Andrews notes that the colour red is closely linked with the fairies in the north: little men in red jackets running about forts, fairy women in red cloaks and fairies with red hair. She records that a farmer living in one of the valleys of the Mourne Mountains said he had seen, one stormy night, little creatures with red hair, about the size of children. Andrews asked whether they might really have been children from some cottage, but he replied that no child could have been out in such weather.