The Story of Ireland

rd no obtrusive pretensions to accuracy, and for that very reason are far truer in that larger sense in which all the genuine and spo

ote of poetry and pathos which breaks continually through all the dull hard prose of the surface. A note often lost in unmitigated din and discord, yet none the less re-emerging, age after age, and century after century,

f more than a sample--the story of "The Pursuit of Gilla Backer and his Horse," not by any means one of the best, yet characteristic enough. In it we learn that from Beltane, the 1st of May--the great Celtic festival of the sun--to Sanim, the 1st of November, the chiefs and Fenni hunted each day with their hounds through the forests and over the plains, while from Sanim to Beltane they lived in the "Betas," or house

ng his horse by the halter, an animal larger, it seems, than six ordinary horses, but broken down and knock-kneed, with jaws that stuck out far in advance of its head. How the heroes, idling pleasantly about in the sunshine, laughed aloud at the uncouth "foreigner" and his ugly raw-boned beast, "covered with tangled scraggy hair of a sooty black." How he came before the king a

thirteen more of the heroes mounted, but still it stirred not. The very instant, however, that its master, the Gilla Backer rose up angrily to depart, the old horse went too, with the fourteen heroes still upon his back, whereat the Fenni raised fresh shouts of laughter. But the Gilla Backer, after he had walked a little way, looked back, and seeing that his horse was following, stood for a moment to tuck up his skirts. "Then, all at once changing his pace, he set

saluting the king, told him their names were Foltlebar and Feradach, and that they were the sons of the king of Innia, and each possessed an art, and that as they walked they had disputed whose art was the greater. "And my art," said Feradach, "is this. If at any time a company of warriors need a ship, give me only my j

ting stones, strung ra

ver nine ridges and nine glens, and follow her without being once thrown out, till I drop upon her in

my service. Though our own trackmen, the Clan Naim, are good, yet we now need

n island with vast rocky cliffs towering high above their heads as steep as a sheet of glass, at which the heroes gazed amazed and baffled, not knowing what to do next. But Dermot O'Dynor--called also Dermot of the Brigh

llar stone beside it, and beside the pillar stone a drinking-horn chased with gold. And he took up the drinking-horn to drink, being thirsty, but the instant he touched the brim with his lips, lo! a great Wizard Champion armed to the teeth, sprang up out of the earth, whereupon he a

et free, but Dermot held him, and at length they both fell together into the well, deeper and deeper to the very bottom of the earth, and there was nothing to be seen but dim shadows, and nothing to be heard but vague confused sounds like the roaring of waves. At length there came

at last recaptured, would be too long to tell. Unlike most of these legends all comes right in the end; Gilla Dacker

bulous antiquity pervades them, greater perhaps than pervades the legends of any other north European people. We seem transplanted to a world of the most primitive type conceivable; a world of myth and of fable, of direct Nature interpretations, of mythology, in short

ingers and story-tellers of their race, but to a great degree they bore a religious or semi-religious character. Like the Brehons or judges they were the directors and guides of the others, but they possessed in addition

the less terrible, supernatural penalty in another. Occasionally, as in the case of the Ollamh Fodla, by whom the halls of Tara are reputed to have been built, the king was himself the bard, and so combined both offices, but this appears to have been rare. Even as late as the sixt

one singular, and, as far as I am aware, unique power possessed by the Irish Bards, which goes beyond any priestly or papal anathema, and which was known as the Clann Dichin, a truly awful malediction, by means of which the Ollamh, if offended or injured, could pronounce a spell against the very land of his injure

owers of nature, should have exercised an all but unlimited influence over the minds of their countrymen, especially at a time when the powers of evi

e autumn storms. Fish demons gleam out of the sides of the mountains, and the black bog-holes are the haunts of slimy monsters of inconceivable horror. Even the less directly baneful spirits such as Finvarragh, king of the fairies, who haunts the stony slopes of Knockmaa, and all the endless variety of dii minores, the cluricans, banshees, fetches who peopled the primitive forests, and