out through the sleeve holes of her shift. Her soft hands were as white as the snow of a single night and her eyes as blue as any blue flower, and her lips as red as berries of the rowan tree, and her body as white as the foam of a wave. The bright light of the moon was in her face, the highness of pride in her eyebrows, a dimple of delight in each of her cheeks, the light of wooing in her eyes, and when she walked she had a step that was steady and even, like the walk of a queen."

Here is Cuchulain as Findabair saw him for the first time. "I see in the chariot a dark sad man, comeliest of the men of Ireland. A pleated crimson tunic about him, fastened at his breast with a brooch of inlaid gold, a long-sleeved linen cloak on him with a white hood embroidered in flame-red gold. His eyebrows as black as the blackness of a spit, seven lights in his eyes, seven colors about his head, love and fire in his look. Across his knees there lies a gold hilted sword, there is a blood red spear ready to his hand, a sharp tempered blade with a shaft of wood. Over his shoulders a crimson shield with a rim of silver overlaid with shapes of beasts in gold.

"That is truly a drop before the downpour,' said Maeve. 'I know well who that man is.' And it is what she said: 'Like the sound of an angry sea, like a great moving wave, with the madness of a wild beast that is vexed, he leaps through his enemies in the crash of battle, they hear their death in his shout. He heaps deed upon deed, head upon head. His is a name to be put in songs. As fresh malt is ground in the mill. so shall we be ground by Cuchulain.""

The spirit of nature, and the love of a close observer of all its moods, comes out at every turn. "Though it was early when the songs and music of the birds began in the woods it was earlier yet when Conchubar, king of Ulster, rose up with his little company of near friends in the fresh spring morning of the fresh and pleasant month of May and the dew was heavy on every bush and flower as they went out towards the green hill where Deirdre was living."

There is not only the sense of the bright and beautiful and the terrible in the Irish folk lore, but there is a mystic note. Everywhere lies enchantment. Conchubar's shield is known as "The moaning one" and its mournful tone resounds through the brazen palace every time danger threatens the men of Ireland. Time after time Cuchulain struggles with witches and his

valor is sung to sleep by strange queens who seem to be a mixture of the Lorelei and the three queens who glide through the King Arthur story. Conaire meets a woman with the evil eye. Long hair she had and a grey woollen cloak and her mouth was drawn to one side of her head. "Well, woman," said Conaire, "if you have the Druid sight, what is it you see for us?" "It is what I see for you," she said, "that nothing of your skin or of your flesh will escape from the place you are in, except what the birds will bring away in their claws."

All of the heroes saw strange sights in the night watches, but here is one that came to Cuchulain.

"When midnight was come he heard a noise, and by the light of the cold moon he saw nine grey shapes coming towards him over the marsh. 'Stop,' said Cuchulain, 'who is there? If they are friends let them not stir; if they are enemies let them come on.' Then they raised a great shout at him, and Cuchulain rushed at them and attacked them so that the nine fell dead to the ground, and he cut their heads off and made a heap of them and sat down again to keep the watch."

I have made no attempt to tell the story of any of the adventures through which the heroes pass. Most of them are concerned with the courting of princesses and quests for apparently unobtainable things. In some of the stories there are delicious bits of character drawing. You feel the personality of Emer from the moment you first see Cuchulain courting her in the garden. Her pride is shown at the feast of Bricrin of the Bitter Tongue, where she makes good her claim to go first into the drinking hall; and her absolute barbaric simplicity comes out in her willingness to sing her own praises. "There is no woman comes up to me in appearance, in shape, in wisdom; there is no one comes up to me for goodness of form or brightness of eye. . . Your fine heroes of Ulster are not worth a stalk of grass compared to my husband Cuchulain, . . he is like the clear red blood and they are worth no more than a stalk of grass.' Her jealousy of Fand later on in the story is as perfect a study psychologically of that emotion as could be found. The power of a woman's tears, which all novel writers love to discourse about for pages, is shown in these brief lines, "I was at one time in esteem with you and I would be so again if it were pleasing to you.' And grief came upon her and overcame her. By my word, now,' said Cuchulain, 'you are pleasing

66

to me, and will be pleasing as long as I live.'" Fand's renunciation is generous. "O Emer the man is yours, and well may you wear him for you are worthy; what my arm cannot reach that I may at least wish well to. A pity it is to give love to a Farewell to you, beau

man, and he to take no heed of it. tiful Cuchulain; I go away from you with a kind heart. Though I do not come back again, let me have your good will; all things are good in comparison with a parting."

This is not the place for lengthy analysis of character, but these quotations may serve to show the depth of emotion in them all, for perhaps the part which strikes us as most impossible, in these days when people set their teeth and try to hide any vestige of feeling, is the way they are able to say everything they think without hesitation.

Maeve, the beautiful fierce queen with power both of nobility and treachery, Deirdre, the mother of Cuchulain, may not altogether live up to modern ethical codes any more than do the heroes, but there is a breezy bigness about them all and a naïve frankness that is as refreshing as new wine.

To one who has followed Cuchulain through all his battles and seen him when the "hero light burned around his head, and his appearance was not that of a man but of a god," who has seen him take his salmon leap against enchanted monsters and Druid shields, nothing could be more full of deep pathos than his death.

"There was a pillar-stone west of the lake, and his eye lit on it, and he went to the pillar-stone, and he tied himself to it with his breast-belt, the way he would not meet his death lying down, but would meet it standing up. Then his enemies came round about him, but they were in dread of going close to him for they were not sure but he might be still alive.

"It is great shame for you,'" said Erc, son of Cairbre, "not to strike the head off that man in revenge for his striking the head off my father.' . . Then a bird came and settled on his shoulder. It is not on that pillar birds used to settle,' said Erc. Then Lugaid came and lifted up Cuchulain's hair from his shoulders, and struck his head off, and the men of Ireland gave three great heavy shouts and the sword fell from Cuchulain's hand, and as it fell it struck off Lugaid's right hand, so that it fell to the ground. Then they cut off Cuchulain's hand, in satisfaction for it, and the light faded away from about

Cuchulain's head and left it as pale as the snow of a single night."

It is impossible to mourn over Cuchulain or any of the heroes of the old tales. All who have read his adventures have had their turn at being heroes and queens and soothsayers, if the child in them is great enough to respond to the old spirit of play make-believe. Everyone has stepped out of the world of facts into a world of as real people as the world of facts presents. Everyone has had the "light of wooing" come into his eyes, and the "light of battle" blaze around his head and can cry with Laeg after his visit to the land of the Sidhe: "If all Ireland were mine, and I king over the happy hills, I would give it and that would be no small thing to live forever in the place I have been in."

CANDACE THURBER,

THE SADNESS OF NATURE

The shadows in the fragrant vale are deepening,
From pine-topped peaks the mellow light has fled,
Scarlet and gold are paling from the meadows
To paint the sky with splendor overhead.
The valley, like a princess in a story,
Has hid her jewels in a gown of grey.
And wistfully she sees the lingering glory
Fade from the western pathway of the day.
Beyond the distant silhouette of mountains
The sunset rose melts into darkening sky.
Flushed in the trembling silence of the twilight
Yearning I sorrow, though I know not why.
Afar upon the mountain's jagged shoulder,

Soft-couched, between the straggling roots I lie ;
Above me, through the dark, the whispering branches
I see the yellow moon ride high.

Between the tree-trunks, rising black and spectral,

I gaze far, far below, through misty beams
Held fast in cobweb bonds of silver slumber
The dimpled valley of the Sun-Prince dreams.
Mysterious melody of swaying pine tops,

Mysterious beauty of the flooded sky;
Above the stillness of the sleeping forests
Yearning I sorrow, though I know not why.

ELEANOR HENRIETTE ADLER.

SKETCHES

THE WORLD'S KISS

This morning I beheld the world

Between the boughs of garden-green;

Blue sky where one white dove was seen;

Clear mountains, capped with green; green-curled.
I plucked a poppy, pink as dawn,
And held it up against the sky;
I could not tell you what went by ;
What from my deepest heart was born.
Yet something flew across my face,
And I cried out, it seemed so fair!—
Then I awoke, I standing there,
The poppy in my hand's stiff place.
Oh, tell me what went out from me?
The sky was blue-skies often are!
The earth of men lay still and far;
There was not any soul to see.
I cannot understand-how this,
A poppy, pink against the sky,
Should make my heart leap up and fly
As poets tell me doth a kiss.

The world has kissed me, I conclude.
Ah, noble world! I pray again
The lips of thee, not lips of men,

Which I have never understood!

FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS.

Brother Young and the Umbrella

The Valley children had a long walk to school, but in the morning, when the wind came tearing down from the gap at the Pali, there was a strange exhilaration about it, and a wild spirit would fill them as they ran and danced down the road, a wildness that made them seem a fitting part of the scurrying clouds and of the rough saw-edged ridges on each side of the Valley,- a wildness that made the first hour of school the hardest part of the day for gentle Miss