have written than all his oratorios, ^* and the "O'Dona-
hue of Kerry." Round these men stories tended to
group themselves, sometimes deserting more ancient
heroes for the purpose. Round poets have they gath-
ered especially, for poetry in Ireland has always been
mysteriously connected with magic.

These folk-tales are full of simplicity and musical oc-
currences, for they are the literature of a class for whom
every incident in the old rut of birth, love, pain, and
death has cropped up unchanged for centuries: who have
steeped everything in the heart: to whom everything is
a symbol. They have the spade over which man has
leaned from the beginning. The people of the cities
have the machine, which is prose and a parvenu. They
have few events. They can turn over the incidents of a
long life as they sit by the fire. With us nothing has
time to gather meaning, and too many things are occur-
ring for even a big heart to hold. It is said the most
eloquent people in the world are the Arabs, who have
only the bare earth of the desert and a sky swept bare
by the sun. "Wisdom has alighted upon three things,"
goes their proverb ; "the hand of the Chinese, the brain
of the Frank, and the tongue of the Arab." This, I take
it, is the meaning of that simplicity sought for so much
in these days by all the poets, and not to be had at
any price.

The most notable and typical story-teller of my ac-
quaintance is one Paddy Flynn, a little, bright-eyed, old
man, living in a leaky one-roomed cottage of the village
of B-----, "The most gentle--i.e., fairy--place in the
whole of the County Sligo," he says, though others
claim that honor for Drumahair or for Drumcliff. A
very pious old man, too ! You may have some time to
inspect his strange figure and ragged hair, if he happen
to be in a devout humor, before he comes to the doings

-xii-