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shipmates, and armed with proof-sheets, I reached the southwest corner of Ireland, and made Berehaven. Our objects were various; but we chiefly sought fresh air and flat fish, and to live the life of a sailor who has nothing to do but sit and let the wind blow him along.' We cruised and fished, and read and smoked, between Valentia and Dublin, and sailed for Wales on the 24th of August. On the 17th of September I returned from London to Dublin, and travelled about first with the Geological Survey and then alone till October 28, when I left Londonderry. D. printed his observations; F. has published his; and matters geological noticed by C. are in the May number of the London Geological Journal. It seems to F. that readers of Fraser's Magazine may be interested in some notes relating to the work on which I have been engaged for some years, namely, the traditional Gaelic ballads and stories contained in those proof-sheets which were sent to press from Kerry, and were sent to libraries, bound, from Armagh, October 3, 1872. That which I noticed concerning dialects and tradition in Ireland I shall, therefore, tell here.

The very first man spoken to in Berehaven seemed to understand Scotch Gaelic ballads and scraps of tales, when repeated slowly and very articulately. We hammered out short sentences, but we could not converse in our common language because our dialects were different. It was like talking Danish in Sweden. We could have learned to converse in a very short time, but there was not even that.

According to numerous informants,

and accents differ greatly in the South of Ireland, even in neighbouring parishes, and on opposite horns of the same bay. But everywhere the sound of Gaelic spoken by the people was the familiar sound of Scotch Gaelic. English seemed to be commonly used, and was spoken by all men, but sometimes I found Irish English as difficult of comprehension as Irish Gaelic. I found that peasants, when I could get at them, knew something about many stories and ballads which I had in my proof-sheets, and which are well known in Scotland amongst the same classes. In Kenmare River I heard of a man who has a manuscript collection, which includes Amadan Mòr ('The Great Fool'). The 6 Battle of Ventry Harbour' is commonly sold in an English form by book-hawkers, and is considered to be part of the ancient history of Ireland. Manifestly, these people knew a great deal about their popular Celtic heroes; but questions about Fin Mac Cowl were regarded with suspicion. In regions where 'the Fenians' had been active a few years earlier, caution was natural. The small farmers, who are as polite and hospitable as their kind elsewhere, seemed pleased to meet a yachtsman who understood something of their language and their traditions. Whenever I got amongst them they clustered about me like tame bees. An old man at Valentia recognised scraps of Manus' and the 'Muileirteach.' In the harbour were men from Gairloch speaking Scotch Gaelic with the Ross-shire twang. At the slate quarry a Welshman was 'Boss.'

At the hill of Howth, on the opposite side of Ireland, fleets of herring fishers from Skye and from the outer Hebrides congregate yearly, and consort with the crews of Irish and Manx boats. In the South of Ireland, generally, I found dialects of a common Gaelic language, and versions of the common traditions which are current amongst the Celtic people of the western coasts and islands of the whole United Kingdom. I never found a trace of Mac Pherson's Ossian.

Passing through Wales on my way to London, I was struck on landing at Holyhead by the sudden change in accent, language, manner, and bodily build. For the broad Vowels of Gaelic, or the whistling brogue of the slender, active Gaelic and mixed races in Ireland, we had got to the short, even, clipped cadence of a Welsh parson preaching English, and the national face which Lavater drew, and caricaturists express by a billygoat's head upon the broad, sturdy bodies of Cymbri. Celtic still has the better of Saxon in these regions. Mural inscriptions are bilingual, and Welsh men, women, and children commonly speak, read, and write Welsh in North Wales. There was no time to seek traditions, but some few stories I did pick up of giants' bones and suchlike.

Returning to Ireland after three weeks, my first pilgrimage was to the inheritance of the daughter of Tadg, Mairenn Mong-Chaen, mother of Finn Mac Cumhall, who married Graine, daughter of Cormac Mac Art, Rex Hib. A.D. 227, according to Irish genealogists.

I went to the hill of AllenAlmhain. A great deal depends on the spelling of this word. A slight change makes it mean Scotland, or the hill of Allen, and so changes the nationality of the heroes of mythical history about whom Irish and Scotch have quarrelled for more

than a century.

Mac Pherson's Ossian sang of Fingal, Irish bards sang of Finn the son of Cumhall, and Irish antiquaries have his pedigree at their fingers' ends. The Hill of Allen is near the Curragh of Kildare, and in the central plain of Ireland. The base of the hill is 360 feet above the sea, and the top is about 360 feet higher. It is a rock thinly covered with green sward and whins, and it stands up boldly, shaped like a great ship keel uppermost. A modern tower is built on the top. In one direction the hill of Croghan near Tullamoore was seen, and the royal hill of Tara is visible in clear weather. When Ireland was submerged 500 feet, this was an island in a strait as wide as the Irish Channel. When the bogs were forests, and after the country was cleared, this must have contitinued to be a natural fortress, and fit station for a military outpost. The topography answers to descriptions of Fionn's abode in Gaelic ballads. But not one cairn or stone or pile of earth now marks the site of Fionn's palace at Almhain. If ever it stood there it must have been built of wattled sticks and burned. It is commonly said. of many an ancient Irish worthy,

He wove a house;' and the present lack of stone ruins proves the correctness of the saying. Aided by Mr. Hennessy (a very able Irish scholar, to whom I owe much knowledge, taken from ancient writings which few can read), we managed in this centre of Fenian topography to find something about Fionn, Oscar, and Diarmaid, but nothing about Goll Mac Morna, and the rest. The farmers had never even heard that Fionn had lived there. But an old man, now dead, had seen a big black dog, Bran or Branno, or some such name, as big as a small cow, come out from under these hanging rocks. He used to say that he had often seen armies

fighting and drilling over there down by the church. They were the Good people, the Fairies.

The natives who knew Irish tradition have been replaced by men with Lowland Scotch names, but the old story is still vaguely remembered about the centre of Ireland, though Gaelic is not the vernacular at Almhain.

The famous hill of Tara (Teamair) is about twenty miles distant.-A minute account of Tara, by Petrie, is in Vol. XVIII. Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, April and May 1837. That royal station was deserted in the sixth century. In the twelfth buildings were described in the manuscripts which Dr. Petrie quotes. The Ordnance Survey mapped the ground in this century. From all these authorities it seems that Irish high kings, who ruled over five sub-kings of Ulster, Leinster, Connaught, and two Munsters, and the cantred of Meath besides, dwelt in small houses on the hill of Tara, and had large wooden halls for feasts. These halls had fires in the midst upon the floor, tubs at the end, and tables with benches round the sides. At these tables ranks and professions sat in order of precedence, and there ate portions of meat assigned to them by rule. Members of one favoured profession had a shoulder of pork and lots of fat; men of a lower grade had a sheep's shank; and men of lower rank still got nothing but a 'crooked bone.' Golden ornaments and cups, bronze swords, and fine clothes these ancient courtiers had. But palaces of the sixth century were but large bothies, like the ancient Icelandic halls and modern barns. 'Long na Laech,' the warriors' ship-like hall, had 12 or 14 doors, seven on each side. It was 75 or perhaps 90 feet long by 46 broad. There is no reason why such a building should not be 'woven' with hurdles and

turf, and roofed with trees of the size which stalwart men turn heels over head when they toss the cabar ('rafter').

The oldest and best description of the most magnificent dwelling in ancient Ireland entirely agrees with traditional descriptions of kings' houses in current ballads and popular tales. The greatest heroes appear in tradition feasting in halls and casting bones at prisoners stretched, bound neck and heels, upon the floor, under the drippings of torches and the feet of great hounds. Celts never were stone masons till they took to building churches, but they have always been genealogists and tellers of tales which are popular history. The object of my pilgrimage to the hill of Allen and elsewhere was to judge for myself how far the topography agrees with that of ancient ballads which I have collected and collated in Scotland and know to belong to mythical history. The story was old in 1130. Are not these people named in the Book of the Dun Cow, and in other ancient Irish books, on which the light of photozincography shines to enlighten scholars?

There is an old Gaelic ballad relating to these localities, which I have translated from four Scotch versions Cormac sends his swift runner, Rochd Mac Fhiachair (who had but one leg) from Tara to the hill of Allen to challenge the Fenians to a race; and Fionn and all his men started against the one-legged runner, or hopper. They crossed the Curragh of Kildare. At Athlone, in the middle of Ireland, the trampling heroes made the hill of Howth quake in Dublin Bay, and they finished with a grand water-jump at Ballyshannon, at the fall of Hugh the Red.

He leaped Eas Ruagh, though it was great,
And the brink of it never touched his foot;
Mac Cubhail leaped over it in a trice,
And every man of the rest was stopped.

I will not pause here to ask what it all means, but I saw places meant by the composer of the ballad of Rochd, when I looked from the hill of Allen, at the horizon, over the wide central plain of Ireland, through the pass which leads to Easruagh at Donegal Bay. Thus far, indeed, all the topography of my collection of Heroic Gaelic Ballads, gathered in Scotland, before and after the publication of Mac Pherson's Ossian, seems to be Irish. Their story is Early Mythical Scoto-Irish History of the time of Cormac Mac AIL, high king of Ireland, A.D. 227.

An older and more elaborate story purports to relate in epic fashion the story of the great war which began about a bull, and was waged at first between the chiefs who reigned at Dundalk and Armagh B.C. 7. Fresh from the teaching of the Irish Academy, and the scholars of Dublin; armed with Gillies and brim-full of Gaelic lore, I went past Tara to Dundalk. There I hailed a car, and told the driver to convey me to Cuchullin's Forth.' What's that?' said the carman. The Castle of Cuchullin of Dundealgan,' I said. 'Pat,' said the carman, come here,' and he came; and more came; and we held a council of car-drivers and idlers in front of the hotel, in the main street; and nobody then or afterwards could be found in the town who had ever heard the name of the greatest of Irish heroes, who is celebrated all over the Scotch isles as the heir of Dundalk, and the champion of the Tain Bo Cuailgne. By the description of my Dublin friends, and by the Ordnance maps, I got at last to 'Burn's Folly in Castletown.' There is the great rath which I was told to seek as Cuchullin's Castle. It is a tall truncated cone to the south of the river, within sight of the bridge,

cut off from the plain to the south by a deep foss, overgrown with trees. It manifestly was a place of strength, facing northern passes now occupied by railways which carry goods to Armagh, Ulster, and Donegal, 'the black county of the Gall.' Α modern house on the top of Cuchullin's mound is so haunted that nobody can live in it; but nevertheless napery was drying quietly upon a clothes-line. This country is studded with ancient raths and forths, and ruined stone castles of later date, and with pre-historic stone monuments. The topography accords with that of tales about cattle - raids and wars between Ulster and the central plains; but the people and the language and the tradition have gone from the flourishing town of Dundalk. Towards the hilly peninsula which separates the bay from Carlingford loch, where people still speak Gaelic, I found an old dame who quoted the proverb, Cho laidir re Cuchullin, 'As strong as Cuchullin.'' alone saved the honour of the district, and knew something about tradition and Gaelic.

She

Passing north by the ancient war path to Newry (an Iubhar), it was difficult to find anybody who knew the old name or could show me the yew trees, or who knew anything about tradition of any kind. Nevertheless, there are the yew trees on the site of an ancient building and burial-ground. 'You are standing upon a grave,' said an apple-woman. I saw a man's bone dug up there when they were laying the gas-pipes last week.'

At Warren Point I got hold of a couple of old fishermen from the mountains on the other side. They understood Gillies when slowly read, and they recognised Bran's fight. Their dialect seemed to me Scotch Gaelic with a peculiar brogue. As usual, at first they would not