I took a group of my California high school students to Ireland many years ago. We were headed north toward Dublin on a highway--bereft of sheep, like the flocks you need to stop for on narrower roads. We missed them on this modern highway, like any other, and so bereft of charm.

Our bus driver, Ken, was tall, angular, soft-spoken and immensely dignified. He seemed grave but had a sense of humor so dry that you'd giggle about something he'd said a half-hour later. He was proud to be Irish. "The winners write the history, young people," he told us once. "The losers write the music." We all grew very fond of Ken.

I was behind his seat on the highway drive north when the highway first did something interesting. It divided, leaving a small island in the median. On the island there was a hawthorn tree so homely and bare that only a mother hawthorn could love it.

I asked Ken why they'd veered around the unsightly little tree when they'd built the fine modern road.

He regarded me in the mirror--I could see his eyes. They were pale blue under eyebrows craggy enough to remind me of our stop at the Cliffs of Moher. Then, patiently, as if talking to a child, he said: "Jim, that's a thorn tree. That's where the fairies live."

We'd been in Ireland long enough so that I nodded. This was something I could understand.