Mr. Riordan would take me from me own boy? He's too good for that! Arrah, we'll see!"

She disregarded Powers' restraining gesture, and ran into the shop. Riordan had just finished wrapping up the shawl.

"Mr. Riordan, come in here a minit," she said. He followed her. When the door was closed she turned and faced him.

"If I said I'd marry ye," she cried, "would ye have me, knowin' well that I loved another man?"

"No," he said, "for yer an honest girl, an' I wish ye no shame."

"God bless ye for the word! Me uncle there wants to save himself, an' it was by that he thought to do it. Mr. Riordan, will ye let 'im go?"

"He's done his worst for both av us, Maggie. Let the poor divvle go, an' welcome. There, take yer money an' go, too, child. Don't leave it there for the owld hawk."

She took the packet from the table and said good-by. Riordan kissed her for the first and last time. For Frank Power she could summon neither word nor gesture of farewell.

She went straight to the station and found that a train left for the South in half an hour. To buy her ticket the packet had to be opened. She found, in addition to the money which Power had withheld, a five-pound note. At the last moment she remembered that she had left the shawl behind.

When she reached Carmore twilight was falling. The sight of the familiar white town and the long, uphill stretch of the Ballyclogher Road brought back to her in full flood the long-lost sense of freedom. As she walked, her hurried breath almost broke into happy sobbing; the only pause she made was by the wayside elm.

She had been too distressed in the morning to think of sending any notice of her coming, so that as she neared the cottage, no one was peering out to get the first sight of her. At the door she paused and listened. A single child's voice reached her it was Barney, saying his prayers. A moment later she was overwhelmed with welcomes, the centre of a chaos of laughter and tears.

When things had quieted down, and she was sitting with Conn's arm round her neck and a couple of children on her lap, she said suddenly:

"Ach! let me feel the floor agin. Get down, dears, while I take me shoes an' stockin's off. I niver liked thim, an' sure, it'd be no holiday at all wid thim things!"

"Let me take thim off," shrieked Barney.

"Do, boy," said Conn.

While Barney was at work Conn said: "We'd great times here yesterday, Maggie."

"Maggie," said Barney, "show us the thrick wid yer toes."

"What's wrong, asthor?" asked Conn. "Nothin'," she said, "but the flure feels cold. I'll soon be used to it agin." The End.

The Leprehaun.

'N Ireland, famed for fairy lore, There dwells mid hawthorn-shaded ditches

A little sprite who day and night Serenely raps, and taps, and stitches. He is the fairy cobbler old,

The watchman of a fairy treasure. He guards, we're told, the yellow gold Unnumbered, countless, without

measure,

And he is called "The Leprehaun,"
The airy, fairy Leprehaun,
In dress of blue and scarlet, too,
The cunning, scheming, Leprehaun.

He who would catch the little elf
Must eye him with а gaze that's

steady

If he would gain the much-sought pelf,
And, Ah! the sprite is always ready.
With sudden noise, and quick surprise,
As if a hundred worlds were falling;
The captor hears around his ears
The voices of the dead ones calling;
But he must watch the Leprehaun,
The scary, fairy Leprehaun,
The dead may rise, but still his eyes
Must stay upon the Leprehaun.

I told the tale to one I knew,
Drank deeply at the fount of knowl-
edge,

A scholar he, of note and worth,
And Senior Wrangler of a College.
He laughed the foolish tale to scorn
And sneered at "Irish superstition,"
Yet ere a week I watched him seek
An honored, salaried position.
Yes! sought the self-same Leprehaun,
The airy, fairy Leprehaun,

In different dress, but none the less,
Because "Ermined"-a Leprehaun.

The man of business smiled to hear
By good old nurse the tale recited,
Which please each childish listening

ear,

And many a fretful moment quieted. Then down the street the scoffer hied And thro' his ledgers, books and pa

pers

He chased all day the self-same fay,
The Leprehaun of many capers.
Yes! followed the same old Leprehaun,
The phantom fading Leprehaun,
In dress, 'tis true, of different hue,
His was a green-back Leprehaun.

The scientist has read it, too,
In some reposeful, careless hour,
And smiled a scientific smile

At peasant lore and fairy power,
Then wrapt in Alchemistic smoke
He battled on in weird contention,
And thought and fought but ever
sought

The shadowy phantom of "Invention," The same elusive Leprehaun,

The Gold-producing Leprehaun, With brain and skill, he worked his will And captured what? A Leprehaun.

better employed in the attempt to popularize genuine Irish literature by endeavoring to make it palatable to the taste of English readers. Before discussing their work, it will not be out of place to say something of the material which is already, or soon will be, in the hands of scholars.

The question as to the actual amount and value of early Irish literature still existing in manuscript is one to which it is difficult for the layman to obtain a satisfactory answer; but if we can trust some calculations lately made by Dr. Kuno Meyer,* there is undeniable evidence of its astonishing richness. Dividing Irish literature roughly into two main groups, the prose tale and lyrical poetry, Dr. Meyer maintains that there still exist in manuscripts of various ages about 500 tales, of which so far only about 150 have been printed and translated; while a manuscript catalogue in the library of the Royal Irish Academy enumerates the initial lines of nearly 7,500 poems still preserved to us.

It is true that among this huge number of tales and poems many are known to us only in late copies, while others are clearly the productions of recent times. But the former often reach back in an unbroken chain to very early originals, so that it sometimes happens that a poem originally composed in the eighth century has been preserved only in a seventeenth century manuscript; and of the latter many are merely modern settings of stories told and retold in Ireland for centuries.

In these tales there is embalmed a vast mass of legendary lore, of a character mythological, heroic, semi-historical, or romantic. In order to give an idea of the variety of their themes, one can hardly do better than quote the following episode from one of them. The story goes that a poet, by name Urard mac Coise, whose house had been plundered by some people in the pay of King Donall O'Neill (956-980), hit upon the following ingenious device to bring his complaint before the king himself.

Dressed in his poet's garb, and accompanied by his twenty-five followers and disciples, he goes to the court of the king and offers to recite a tale. The king demands a list of the stories he can recite. Thereupon Urard mentions the titles, one after another, of several hundred tales, but in every instance receives the answer that the king already knows that story. At last he mentions a tale unknown to the king, who demands to hear it. The poet then tells him of the pillage of his own house, and with his recital so moves the king that he promises him vengeance and compensation.

"Shall I tell you," he says, "the tales of Ireland? Would you hear a tale of courtship and love, of elopement, of jealousy, treachery, and death? Or would you rather hear of visions, dreams, and apparitions? Or if you prefer, I will tell you of feasts and banquets and of drunkenness, of cattle-spoils, sieges, battles, and conquests, or of adventures, voyages, and exile."

Such were the subjects of the tales composed by the makers of Irish literature, learnt by heart and recited by generations of professional story-tellers, and at a later date written down by monkish scribes. There were various ranks, so to speak, among these tales. Some were only to be recited before kings and chieftains, others before landholders, others again to peasants and villains. The oldest of them carry us back to a pre-Christian period, and give us a picture of life in these islands at a time of which many wrongly believe that nothing but bones and stones remain to us.

But to enlarge upon the historical value of these tales, or upon the interest which they must have for us as the early record of the civilization of a people so closely akin to us, would take us beyond the limits of this paper. While they have been, and will continue to be, studied by generations of historians, folklorists, archæologists, it is rather their literary and human qualities which will make them live in popular favor. They await the hand of the artist. the poet, and the painter; and, when thus interpreted, it is not unlikely that European literature may once again be influenced by Celtic genius as it was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The literary merits of these ancient tales have been dwelt *"Liadain and Curithir," p. 5.

on by many critics, berufen und unberufen; their art, fancy, pathos, dignity, purity and humor have been abundantly insisted upon. It is true that adverse criticism has not been absent. It has only lately been heard in the evidence of certain professors of Trinity College, Dublin, before the Board of Intermediate Education in Ireland.

But no one who has read a page of any of the books mentioned at the head of this article will deny the high degree of technical finish and the rare gift of narrative displayed. It is a world of barbaric grandeur, of unending strife, to which the earliest tales transport us, but a world also of noble though rugged ideals of chivalry, honor, loyalty, and love, of picturesque figures and scenes, and a world with al over which fancy has spread its magic.

Nor is there any lack of themes of perennial interest to humanity: the struggle of the individual with his passions, or against the trammels of law, of social conventions, of religion, or against fate itself, conflicts and tragedies of love and duty, of friendship and loyalty. If there is one trait which distinguishes this early literature from that of other nations in a similar stage of development, it is the type of womanhood revealed in it.

"As it belonged to Celtic romance," says Miss Hull, "to impose upon the mind of Europe a new type and ideal of womanhood, the type of Iseult and Elaine, of Guinevere and Enid, so it belonged to Ireland to create some of the earliest love-tales of Western Europe, the love-tales of Deirdre and Emer, of Etaine and Grainne. The love-tales of Ireland are not only among the most ancient in Western Europe, they have also a purity, a tenderness and a charm hardly to be found elsewhere. They are indeed a special production of the Gael. These sprightly, winsome, very human maidens belong to an order of things as unlike the Titanic women of the Northern Saga, as they are unlike the morbid, luxurious ladies of Southern romance."

If the reader wishes to see how Irish maidens and youths of those early centuries loved, let him turn to the "Wooing of Emer," to the "Children of Usnech," to "Dermot and Grainne," or to "Liadain and Curithir." The last tale, especially, by its pathos and its rare knowledge of the human heart, recalls the other great love-stories of the world's literature. It tells of the love of a poetess, who has taken the veil, for a young poet from whom her vows separate her for ever. Thus the plot is a conflict between love and religion. The lovers seek the direction of a saint, who gives them the choice between seeing each other without speaking, or speaking without seeing.

"Talking for us!" says the poet. "We have been looking at each other all our lives." So they converse, while one is enclosed in a cell, and the other wanders round it. Passionate words of love and longing and regret are exchanged:

"Beloved is the dear voice that I hear,

I dare not welcome it.

'Tis this the voice does to me,

It will not let me sleep."

At length the poet is banished by the saint, and, renouncing love, takes up the pilgrim's staff. The hapless Liadain follows, seeking him and wailing:

"Joyless

The bargain I have made!

The heart of him I loved I wrung.

I am Liadain

Who loved Curithir,

It is true as they say.

The music of the forest

Would sing to me when with Curithir,

Together with the voice of the purple sea."

But he crosses the sea, and Liadain returns to die on the flagstone on which he had been wont to pray. "Her soul went to heaven, and that flagstone was put over her face upon her tomb."

It must be evident that to present to the modern reader this old-world literature, the product of a civilization so unfamiliar to us, in a form that should be at once faithful and pleasing, is in itself a difficult task. But two things make it still more difficult. The first of these is the ob

scurity of the language, many words and idioms of which even the best living scholars seem still unable to explain satisfactorily, so that, at any rate for some time to come, no perfect and final rendering is possible. But the progress of Irish scholarship has of late been so rapid, and criticism by scholars of each other's work so keen, that a version made a few years ago can now be vastly improved.

Nevertheless, the inadequacy of our present knowledge raises a doubt whether the time has yet come for any one to attempt a free and yet faithful setting of this literature. It is easy to conjecture and guess; but it is also easy to go hopelessly astray. A second difficulty lies in the imperfect state of the different versions, due to careless copyists, clumsy redactors,, or unscrupulous interpolators. Hardly a single Irish story has come down to us in the form in which it was recited before an Irish audience; for in every case the tale has been committed to writing, not by those whose business it was to recite it, but by monks anxious to preserve the decaying legendary lore of their native land.

Hence, it must be the endeavor of the ideal translator, anxious to make these old stories live again, to produce a consecutive and harmonious narrative by preserving the essential unities of the original, supplying lacunæ, omitting needless reiterations, and lopping off later accretions. This he can only do by a collation and comparison of all existing versions, of which he will find, in nine cases out of ten, that the oldest are the purest and the best. If he have thus arrived at a fairly true conception of the original, he should beware of tampering with any characteristic details inherent in the character of the story and the age to which it belongs, however uncouth or little in keeping with the ephemeral ideas of modern taste and convention. Every author and artist, it is true, has the right to select the audience to whom he wishes to appeal; but, in the name of literary honesty and historic truth, these fine old tales, once recited before kings and queens, and still moving us by their intimate humanity, should never degenerate merely into stories for the nursery or the drawing-room. Reverence for their antiquity, no less than sympathy with their perfect art, should prevent any one from replacing features picturesque, if quaint, racy, if archaic, by dull and colorless adaptations.

The task of the scholar and literal translator is different and in some respects simpler, and one which, owing to the present state of scholarship, cannot for a long time to come be dispensed with. If the scholar truly understands and appreciates his author, and knows how to handle his mother tongue, he cannot fail to give us a version which, though possibly severe, will yet retain the first flavor of the original. In this kind of rendering Dr. Whitley Stokes has long been a recognized master. So early as 1874 he began, with his "Death of Cuchulinn," a brilliant series of translations of the chief masterpieces of Irish story-telling, which during recent years have followed each other in rapid succession. Whoever wishes to obtain at first hand an insight into the form and spirit of Irish legend should turn to these renderings, most of which are to be found scattered throughout the twenty-four volumes of the "Revue Celtique."

Among them we find the "Voyage of Mael Duin," rendered familiar by Tennyson's poem, which, however, bears only a remote relation to the original. It is a story full of fancy, imaginative power, and that natural magic which Matthew Arnold loved. It is the oldest known specimen of those fabulous voyages of which that of St. Brendan has become the most popular. Written down in the ninth century, it shows the influence of classical learning, some of its episodes being clearly taken from the "Eneid," as Professor Zimmer has shown in detail.

In the course of his voyage Mael Duin visits twenty islands, one more wonderful than another. They are evidently some of the "thrice fifty distant isles" lying in the mysterious uncrossed ocean to the west of Ireland, of which the "Voyage of Bran" speaks. There are the islands of the Enormous Ants, of the Fiery Beasts and the Golden Apples, of the Burning River, of the Wondrous Fountain, of the Laughers, and, most marvellous of all, the island of the Revolving Rampart of Fire.

"After that the voyagers sighted another island, which was not large; and a fiery rampart was round

about it; and that rampart kept revolving round the island. There was an open doorway in the side of that rampart. Now, whenever the doorway would come in its revolution opposite to them, they would see through it the whole island, and all that was therein, and all its indwellers, many beautiful human beings, wearing adorned garments and feasting, with golden vessels in their hands. And the wanderers heard their ale-music. And for a long space they were gazing at the marvel they beheld, and they deemed it delightful."

The "Second Battle of Moytura" is a good example of the mythological tale, of which sort, unfortunately, not many of equal antiquity seem to have been preserved. It is sufficiently barbarous to satisfy the most exacting student of primitive beliefs and practices. It gives an account of the mythical contest between the Tuath De Danann and the Fomorians, full of grotesque humor, of which the following passage may serve as an example:

"Then Lugh sent the Dagda to spy out the Fomorians and to delay them until the men of Ireland should come to the battle. So the Dagda went to the camp of the Fomorians and asked them for a truce of battle. This was granted to him as he asked. Porridge is then made for him by the Fomorians, and this was done to mock him, for great was his love of porridge. They fill for him the king's cauldron, five fists deep, into which went fourscore gallons of new milk and the like quantity of meal and fat. Goats and sheep and swine are put into it, and they are all boiled together with the porridge. The whole was spilt for him into a hole in the ground, and he was told that he would be put to death unless he consumed it all. He should eat his fill, so that he might not reproach the Fomorians with inhospitality.

"But the Dagda was more than equal to the task. 'He took his ladle, which was big enough for a man and a woman to lie on the middle of it, and he began to eat. As he put his ladleful into his mouth he would say, "Good food this," and after he had eaten it all he put his curved finger over the bottom of the hole among the mould and gravel to search for any remains. Sleep came upon him then after eating his porridge. As big as the cauldron of a house was his belly, so that the Fomorians laughed at it! Then he went away from them to the strand of Eba. Not easy was it for the hero to move along, owing to the bigness of his belly.'" The "Siege of Howth" is a saga of the Ulster heroic cycle, and a fine example of Irish story-telling at its best. We select an episode full of traits at once barbaric and refined, fierce and tender. The version is one which Miss Hull has made from Mr. Stokes' translation. Conall Cernach and Mesgegra meet in deadly combat:

"I claim my brothers from thee!" said Conall.

"I do not carry them (i. e., their skulls) in my girdle," said Mesgegra.

"That is a pity," said Conall.

"It were not champion-like," said Mesgegra, "to fight with me who have but one hand."

"My hand shall be tied to my side," said Conall. Triply was Conall Cernach's hand tied to his side. And each smote the other till the river was red with their blood. But the sword-play of Conall prevailed.

"I perceive that thou wilt not go, O Conall," said Mesgegra, "till thou takest my head with thee. Put thou my head above thy head, and add my glory to thy glory."

Then Conalı severed his head from him.

"After that Conall got alone into his chariot, and his charioteer into Mesgegra's chariot. They go forward then, into Uachtar Fine, till they meet fifty women; namely, Buan, Mesgegra's wife, with her maidens, coming southward from the border.

"Who art thou, O woman?" said Conall. "I am the wife of Mesgegra, the king."

"It hath been enjoined on thee to come with me," said Conall.

"Who hath enjoined me?" said the woman. "Mesgegra," said Conall.

"Hast thou brought a token with thee?" said she.