that what he struck was like a calf, but whatever it was, it was not fish!” A friend of mine is convinced that these terrible creatures, so common in lakes, were set there in old times by subtle enchanters to watch over the gates of wisdom.  He thinks that if we sent our spirits down into the water we would make them of one substance with strange moods Of ecstasy and power, and go out it may be to the conquest of the world.  We would, however, he believes, have first to outface and perhaps overthrow strange images full of a more powerful life than if they were really alive.  It may be that we shall look at them without fear when we have endured the last adventure, that is death.

1902.

ARISTOTLE OF THE BOOKS

The friend who can get the wood-cutter to talk more readily than he will to anybody else went lately to see his old wife.  She lives in a cottage not far from the edge of the woods, and is as full of old talk as her husband.  This time she began to talk of Goban, the legendary mason, and his wisdom, but said presently, “Aristotle of the Books, too, was very wise, and he had a great deal of experience, but did not the bees get the better of him in the end?  He wanted to know how they packed the comb, and he wasted the better part of a fortnight watching them, and he could not see them doing it.  Then he made a hive with a glass cover on it and put it over them, and he thought to see.  But when he went and put his eyes to the glass, they had it all covered with wax so that it was as black as the pot; and he was as blind as before.  He said he was never rightly kilt till then.  They had him that time surely!”

1902.

THE SWINE OF THE GODS

A few years ago a friend of mine told me of something that happened to him when he was a. young man and out drilling with some Connaught Fenians.  They were but a car-full, and drove along a hillside until they came to a quiet place.  They left the car and went further up the hill with their rifles, and drilled for a while.  As they were coming down again they saw a very thin, long-legged pig of the old Irish sort, and the pig began to follow them.  One of them cried out as a joke that it was a fairy pig, and they all began to run to keep up the joke.  The pig ran too, and presently, how nobody knew, this mock terror became real terror, and they ran as for their lives.  When they got to the car they made the horse gallop as fast as possible, but the pig still followed.  Then one of them put up his rifle to fire, but when he looked along the barrel he could see nothing.  Presently they turned a corner and came to a village.  They told the people of the village what had happened, and the people of the village took pitchforks and spades and the like, and went along the road with them to drive the pig away.  When they turned the comer they could not find anything.