fulness that the thought of Fand may haunt him no more, and Manannan shakes his robe between the lovers, that they may never meet again.

In the Book of Lismore, the story is told of a princess named Crede. She was daughter of the King of Kerry and a great heiress. Many suitors sought her in marriage; but she would accept him alone who should write such a poem about her beautiful home as pleased her. Cael of the Red Branch determined to make the essay and told his mind to Finn Mac Cool. Finn tried to dissuade him from the attempt. "She is the chief deluding woman among the women of Erin," said he, and told how there was scarce a beautiful jewel in all Erin that she had not inveigled into her dwelling. But Cael went his way and presented himself before the lady. "Has he a poem for me?" asked Crede.

"I have," answered Cael. That poem has been reconceived by some later poet and is preserved in the Book of Lismore. It is documentary. It is the picture of the home of a patrician Celt, taken from a volume which dates back to the eleventh century. Here is the poem in Petrie's literal translation:

Delightful the house in which she is

Between men and children and women,
Between druids and musical performers,
Between cup-bearers and door-keepers.

Between horse-boys who are not shy,

And table-servants who distribute;
The command of each and all of these
Hath Crede the fair, the yellow-haired.

It would be happy for me to be in her dun,
Among her soft and downy couches;
Should Crede deign to hear (my suit),
Happy for me would be my journey.

A bowl she has whence berry juice flows,
By which she colors her eyebrows black;
She has clear vessels of fermenting ale;
Cups she has and beautiful goblets.

The color (of her dun) is like the color of lime,
Within it are couches and green rushes,
Within it are silks and blue mantles,
Within it are red gold and crystal cups.

Crede's chair is on your right hand,

The pleasantest of the pleasant it is,
All over a blaze of Alpine gold,

At the foot of the beautiful couch.

A golden couch in full array

Stands directly above the chair,

It was made by (or at) Tuile in the East
Of yellow gold and precious stones.

There is another couch at your right hand,

Of gold and silver without defect,
With curtains and soft pillows,

And with graceful rods of golden bronze.

The household which are in her house

To the happiest of conditions have been destined;
Gray and glossy are their garments,
Twisted and fair is their golden hair.

Wounded men would sink in sleep,

Though ever so heavily teeming with blood,
With the warblings of the fairy birds,

From the eaves of her sunny grianan (sunny
chamber),

Its portico with its thatch

Of the wings of birds, blue and yellow;
Its lawn in front and its well

Of crystal and of carmogal (carbuncles?).

Four posts to every bed,

Of gold and silver gracefully carved;
A crystal gem between every two posts:
They are no cause of unpleasantness.

There is a vat there of kingly bronze,

From which flows the pleasant juice of malt;
There is an apple tree over the vat,

In the abundance of its heavy fruit.

Crede was delighted with the poem and, like a true literary amorist, she married the author. But the wedded life of the pair was brief. Ireland was invaded and the Red Branch were summoned to defend it. A great battle was fought in Ventry Harbor and the invaders had to flee. But, in the very hour of triumph, Cael met death. Crede bewailed her husband in a lament. So the story runs. Whether Crede wrote the lament which has come down to us cannot be ascertained; but there can be no doubt of the nobility of the poem. Douglas Hyde's translation, in literal prose, is full of elegiac beauty.

Sore suffering and O suffering sore is the hero's death, his death who used to lie by me-Sore suffering to me is Cael and O Cael is a suffering sore, that by my side he is in dead man's form-that the wave should have swept over his white body; that is what hath distracted me, so great was his delightfulness. A dismal roar and O a dismal roar is that the shore's wave makes upon the strand-A woeful booming and a boom of woe is that which the wave makes

upon the Northward beach, beating as it does against the polished rock lamenting for Cael now that he is gone. woeful fight and O fight of woe is that the wave wages with the Southern shore. O woeful melody and O a melody of woe is that which the heavy surge of Tullacleish emits. As for me the calamity which has fallen upon me, having shattered me, for me prosperity exists no more.

This lament has been set by Mr. Charles Wood to "A Little Hour Before Dawn," a fine old air. But it had first to be versified and paraphrased and much of the beauty of the original evaporates in the

process.

To the martial tune, "If all the Sea were Ink," Moore celebrates an immemorial burial custom of the Celtic race. When they laid a dead warrior in the tomb, they placed by his side, sometimes in his hand, the sword which he wielded in battle. A king they would sometimes inter in a standing position, looking in the direction from which he was wont to expect his enemies. When Owen Bell, king of Connaught, lay wounded unto death, after the battle of Sligo, which he fought against the men of Ulster in 537, he said to his warriors: "Bury me with my red javelin in my hand, on the side of the hill by which the Northerns pass, when fleeing before the army of Connaught, and place me with my face turned towards them in my grave." It was done as he commanded, and the story tells how the men of Ulster came on to the attack again and again, but were always driven back. At last, however, they succeeded in moving the body and averting the gaze of the dead king, and from that moment the fortune of

battle changed. A similar story is told of King Laegire, in whose reign St. Patrick came to Ireland. The custom seems to glance at a belief in a future existence on earth when warriors and foe shall meet again. The Celtic Britons long hoped for the return of King Arthur to rid them of the Saxon yoke, and Irish missionaries were probably responsible for the spread of the same idea in Germany. The old Teutonic legends picture Barbarossa sleeping his secular sleep, till the call of the Fatherland shall call him to sweep down on her foes. In Ireland, to this day, local traditions recall the ancient dream of heroic re-birth. At Aileach, in Donegal, the people point out an ancient cave from which the heroes of the Hy Niall are expected to come forth in some hour big with the fate of Ireland. A stranger passing this way came upon a group of horsemen sleeping beside their horses, bridle in hand, armed for the fight. The sound of footsteps awoke one of the warriors and, rising, he called out: "Is the hour come?" But the stranger fled in fear.