on the day of Aura."

From the cliffs of Antrim we can see on any clear day the Sea of
Moyle and the bonnie blue hills of Scotland, divided from Ulster at

this point by only twenty miles of sea path. The Irish or Gaels or
Scots of 'Uladh' often crossed in their curraghs to this lovely

coast of Alba, then inhabited by the Picts. Here, 'when the tide
drains out wid itself beyant the rocks,' we sit for many an hour,

perhaps on the very spot from which they pushed off their boats.
The Mull of Cantire runs out sharply toward you; south of it are

Ailsa Craig and the soft Ayrshire coast; north of the Mull are blue,
blue mountains in a semicircle, and just beyond them somewhere,

Francesca knows, are the Argyleshire Highlands. And oh! the pearl
and opal tints that the Irish atmosphere flings over the scene,

shifting them ever at will, in misty sun or radiantshower; and how
lovely are the too rare bits of woodland! The ground is sometimes

white with wild garlic, sometimes blue with hyacinths; the primroses
still linger in moist, hidden places, and there are violets and

marsh marigolds. Everything wears the colour of Hope. If there are
buds that will never bloom and birds that will never fly, the great

mother-heart does not know it yet. "I wonder," said Salemina, "if
that is why we think of autumn as sad--because the story of the year

is known and told?"
Long, long before the Clandonnell ruled these hills and glens and

cliffs they were the home of Celtic legend. Over the waters of the
wee river Margy, with its half-mile course, often sailed the four

white swans, those enchanted children of Lir, king of the Isle of
Man, who had been transformed into this guise by their cruel

stepmother, with a stroke of her druidical fairy wand. After
turning them into four beautiful white swans she pronounced their

doom, which was to sail three hundred years on smooth Lough
Derryvara, three hundred on the Sea of Erris--sail, and sail, until

the union of Largnen, the prince from the north, with Decca, the
princess from the south; until the Taillkenn** should come to Erinn,

bringing the light of a pure faith, and until they should hear the
voice of a Christian bell. They were allowed to keep their own

Gaelic speech, and to sing sweet, plaintive, fairy music, which
should excel all the music of the world, and which should lull to

sleep all who listened to it. We could hear it, we three, for we
loved the story; and love opens the ear as well as the heart to all

sorts of sounds not heard by the dull and incredulous. You may hear
it, too, any fine soft day if you will sit there looking out on Fair

Head and Rathlin Island, and read the old fairy tale. When you put
down the book you will see Finola, Lir's lovely daughter, in any

white-breasted bird; and while she covers her brothers with her
wings, she will chant to you her old song in the Gaelic tongue.

** A name given by the Druids to St. Patrick.
'Ah, happy is Lir's bright home today

With mirth and music and poet's lay;
But gloomy and cold his children's home,

For ever tossed on the briny foam.
Our wreath-ed feathers are thin and light

When the wind blows keen through the wintry night;
Yet oft we were robed, long, long ago,

In purple mantles and robes of snow.
On Moyle's bleak current our food and wine

Are sandy seaweed and bitter brine;
Yet oft we feasted in days of old,

And hazel-mead drank from cups of gold.
Our beds are rocks in the dripping caves;

Our lullaby song the roar of the waves;
But soft, rich couches once we pressed,

And harpers lulled us each night to rest.
Lonely we swim on the billowy main,

Through frost and snow, through storm and rain;
Alas for the days when round us moved

The chiefs and princes and friends we loved!'+
+Joyce's translation.

The Fate of the Children of Lir is the second of Erin's Three
Sorrows of Story, and the third and greatest is the Fate of the Sons

of Usnach, which has to do with a sloping rock on the north side of
Fair Head, five miles from us. Here the three sons of Usnach landed

when they returned from Alba to Erin with Deirdre--Deirdre, who was
'beautiful as Helen, and gifted like Cassandra with unavailing

prophecy'; and by reason of her beauty many sorrows fell upon the
Ultonians.

Naisi, son of Conor, king of Uladh, had fled with Deirdre, daughter
of Phelim, the king's story-teller, to a sea-girt islet on Lough

Etive, where they lived happily by the chase. Naisi's two brothers
went with them, and thus the three sons of Usnach were all in Alba.

Then the story goes on to say that Fergus, one of Conor's nobles,
goes to seek the exiles, and Naisi and Deirdre, while playing at the

chess, hear from the shore 'the cry of a man of Erin.' It is
against Deirdre's will that they finally leave Alba with Fergus, who

says, "Birthright is first, for ill it goes with a man, although he
be great and prosperous, if he does not see daily his native earth."

So they sailed away over the sea, and Deirdre sang this lay as the
shores of Alba faded from her sight:-

"My love to thee, O Land in the East, and 'tis ill for me to leave
thee, for delightful are thy coves and havens, thy kind, soft,

flowery fields, thy pleasant, green-sided hills; and little was our
need of departing."

Then in her song she went over the glens of their lordship, naming
them all, and calling to mind how here they hunted the stag, here

they fished, here they slept, with the swaying fern for pillows, and
here the cuckoo called to them. And "Never," she sang, "would I

quit Alba were it not that Naisi sailed thence in his ship."
They landed first under Fair Head, and then later at Rathlin Island,

where their fate met them at last, as Deirdre had prophesied. It is
a sad story, and we can easily weep at the thrilling moment when,

there being no man among the Ultonians to do the king's bidding, a
Norse captive takes Naisi's magic sword and strikes off the heads of

the three sons of Usnach with one swift blow, and Deirdre, falling
prone upon the dead bodies, chants a lament; and when she has

finished singing, she puts her pale cheek against Naisi's, and dies;
and a great cairn is piled over them, and an inscription in Ogam set

upon it.
We were full of legendary lore, these days, for we were fresh from a

sight of Glen Ariff. Who that has ever chanced to be there in a
pelting rain but will remember its innumerable little waterfalls,

and the great falls of Ess-na-Crubh and Ess-na-Craoibhe? And who
can ever forget the atmosphere of romance that broods over these

Irish glens?
We have had many advantages here as elsewhere; for kind Dr. La

Touche, Lady Killbally, and Mrs. Colquhoun follow us with letters,
and wherever there is an unusualpersonage in a district we are

commended to his or her care. Sometimes it is one of the 'grand
quality,' and often it is an Ossianic sort of person like Shaun

O'Grady, who lives in a little whitewashed cabin, and who has, like
Mr. Yeats's Gleeman, 'the whole Middle Ages under his frieze coat.'

The longer and more intimately we know these peasants, the more we
realise how much in imagination, or in the clouds, if you will, they

live. The ragged man of leisure you meet on the road may be a
philosopher, and is still more likely to be a poet; but unless you

have something of each in yourself, you may mistake him for a mere
beggar.

"The practical ones have all emigrated," a Dublin novelist told us,
"and the dreamers are left. The heads of the older ones are filled

with poetry and legends; they see nothing as it is, but always
through some iridescent-tinted medium. Their waking moments, when

not tormented by hunger, are spent in heaven, and they all live in a