. . . 232

The Three Wishes 235

GIANTS—

The Giant's Stairs 260

A Legend of Knockmany ...... 2G6

KINGS, QUEENS, PRINCESSES, EARLS, ROBBERS—

The Twelve WUd f^tQ&^ 280

The Lazy Beauty and her Aunts .... 2S6

The Haughty Princess ... . . 290

The Enchantment of Gearoidh larla .... 294

Munachar and Manachar ...... 296

Donald and his Neighbours ..... 299

The Jackdaw ... 303

The Story of Conn-eda 306

INTRODUCTION.

DR. CORBETT, Bishop of Oxford and Norwich, lamented long ago the departure of the Enghsh (airies. ** In Queen Mary's time" he wrote—

" When Tom came home from labour, Or Cis to milking rose, Then merrily, merrily went their tabor. And merrily went their toes."

But now, in the times of James, they had all gone, for " they were of the old profession," and " their songs were Ave Maries." In Ireland they are still extant, giving gifts to the kindly, and plaguing the surly. " Have you ever seen a fairy or such like ?" I asked an old man in County Sligo. "x\mn't I annoyed with them," was the answer. " Do the fishermen along here know anything of the mermaids ? " I asked a woman of a village in County DubUn. " Indeed, they don't like to see them at all," she answered, " for they always bring bad weather." " Here is a man who believes in ghosts," said a foreign sea-captain, pointing to a pilot of my acquaintance. " In every house over there," said the pilot, pointing to his native village of Rosses, "there are several." Certainly that now old and much respected dogmatist, the Spirit of the Age, has in no

manner made his voice heard down there. In a little while, for he has gotten a consumptive appearance of late, he will be covered over decently in his grave, and another will grow, old and much respected, in his place, and never be heard of down there, and after him another and another and another. Indeed, it is a question whether any of these personages will ever be heard of outside the newspaper offices and lecture-rooms and drawing-rooms and eel-pie houses of the cities, or if the Spirit of the Age is at any time more than a froth. At any rate, whole troops of their like will not change the Celt much. Giraldus Cambrensis found the people of the western islands a trifle paganish. " How many gods are there ? " asked a priest, a little while ago, of a man from the Island of Innistor. " There is one on Innistor; but this seems a big place," said the man, and the priest held up his hands in horror, as Giraldus had, just seven centuries before. Remember, ] am not blaming the man ; it is very much better to believe in a number of gods than in none at all, or to think there is only one, but that he is a little sentimental and impracticable, and not constructed for the nineteenth century. The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much— indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are averse to sitting down to dine thirteen at table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, or seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tail.