These chapters continue the motif of story collecting by contrasting Harold’s detached, academic methodology with the volatile power of folklore within the community. Harold’s systematic classification of tales into categories like “Fairy Abductions,” along with his insistence on seeking out reliable sources, reflects a rationalist attempt to impose order on the supernatural. He admits, “I suppose I am approaching this with a scientist’s brain” (82), and attempts to reconcile this academic mindset with the mystical belief system he encounters. His scholarly distance is juxtaposed with the villagers’ lived experience, where the stories they tell feel integral to their daily life. Cathal O’Shaughnessy’s warning that one cannot simply seek out the “Good People” and the schoolmaster’s account of a man murdering his wife as a changeling demonstrate that these narratives carry immense social and moral weight that actively shapes the present reality of the community.

The narrative further complicates the function of folklore by using the changeling motif as both a supernatural element and a psychological lens for examining human cruelty. The schoolmaster’s tale of the man who burns his wife is a brutal depiction of how folk belief can provide a framework for rationalizing violence. The husband’s insistence that he is burning “an old witch” (119) who has replaced his wife illustrates the capacity of narrative to distort reality and absolve perpetrators. Woods juxtaposes this account with Anna’s flashback to witnessing the Hawley twins kill a baby hare. Olivia’s taunting and George’s reluctant but vicious act are depicted as innate malevolence. The twins’ remorselessness and Olivia’s chilling glare position them as psychological changelings—beings who look human but lack essential empathy. This juxtaposition underscores the novel’s suggestion that ancient myths like the changeling story emerged as metaphors to explain the inexplicable presence of psychopathy within a community, blurring the line between folkloric horror and the terrors of human nature.

Both Anna and Sarah utilize folkloric belief to confront their own trauma, emphasizing The Healing Power of Storytelling. Anna’s flashback reveals that witnessing the Hawley twins’ cruelty was the catalyst that broke her trauma-induced muteness following her sister’s death. This moment solidifies her defining character trait: a deep-seated opposition to helplessness. Her silent vow that she “would never feel so helpless again” (128) evidences a commitment to action that informs her role as Harold’s assistant and prepares her for future confrontations. In the present timeline, Sarah’s healing follows a parallel trajectory. Her anxiety, a result of her daughter’s stillbirth, has made her feel helpless and silenced her creatively and emotionally. Her recovery begins through ancillary actions: engaging with Anna’s story, re-embracing her art by sketching during a panic attack, and exploring the landscape of Thornwood with Oran. For both women, trauma is a silencing force, and reclaiming their agency requires finding a new way to interact with the world.

In this section, Harold’s published book, The Fairy Compendium, acts as another concrete link between the novel’s dual timelines. When Hazel gives the book to Sarah, it creates a tangible bridge between 1911 and 2011, transforming a series of perceived coincidences into a meaningful pattern. This event validates Sarah’s feeling that her journey is guided by more than chance, reflecting her own artistic belief that “a truly creative life demand[s] a kind of blind faith in signs” (111). The book shifts Sarah’s role from a passive reader of a private diary to an active inheritor of a public history. Where Anna’s diary provides a raw, subjective account, Harold’s academic text offers a formal, external validation of her experiences. This synthesis of personal narrative and historical record allows Sarah to see her own private grief as part of a larger continuum of loss and survival, externalizing her pain and connecting her to the stories of others, which in turn unlocks her creative potential.

The characters’ relationships with the physical landscape reinforce the novel’s thematic engagement with The Lingering Influence of the Past on the Present. For example, Oran’s fierce protectiveness of the snowdrops is not about conservation in the abstract, but about safeguarding the specific spot where his late wife shared the news of her pregnancy. Butler’s Cottage, his former home, is so saturated with the pain of his loss that he cannot bring himself to enter it. Similarly, the decaying grandeur of Thornwood House physically manifests the moral corruption of the Hawley family line. For Sarah and Oran, exploring its overgrown grounds becomes a symbolic act of navigating their own internal ruins. Their shared laughter after climbing the estate wall marks a significant moment of connection, a mutual step out of the isolation of their respective griefs. By embedding personal and historical trauma directly into the Irish landscape, the novel argues that confronting the past requires a journey through these haunted places.