the Archbishop of Cashel, because no one in Ireland had received the crown of martyrdom.  “Our people may be barbarous,” the prelate answered, “but they have never lifted their hands against God’s saints; but now that a people have come amongst us who know how to make them (it was just after the English invasion), we shall have martyrs plentifully."’ The giants were the old pagan heroes of Ireland, who grew bigger and bigger, just as the gods grew smaller and smaller.  The fact is they did not wait for offerings; they took them vi et armis.

Some of the prettiest stories are those that cluster round Tir-na-n-Og.  This is the Country of the Young, ’for age and death have not found it; neither tears nor loud laughter have gone near it.’  ’One man has gone there and returned.  The bard, Oisen, who wandered away on a white horse, moving on the surface of the foam with his fairy Niamh lived there three hundred years, and then returned looking for his comrades.  The moment his foot touched the earth his three hundred years fell on him, and he was bowed double, and his beard swept the ground.  He described his sojourn in the Land of Youth to Patrick before he died.’  Since then, according to Mr. Yeats, ’many have seen it in many places; some in the depths of lakes, and have heard rising therefrom a vague sound of bells; more have seen it far off on the horizon, as they peered out from the western cliffs.  Not three years ago a fisherman imagined that he saw it.’

Mr. Yeats has certainly done his work very well.  He has shown great critical capacity in his selection of the stories, and his little introductions are charmingly written.  It is delightful to come across a collection of purely imaginative work, and Mr. Yeats has a very quick instinct in finding out the best and the most beautiful things in Irish folklore.  I am also glad to see that he has not confined himself entirely to prose, but has included Allingham’s lovely poem on The Fairies: 

   Up the airy mountain,
      Down the rushy glen,
   We daren’t go a-hunting
      For fear of little men;
   Wee folk, good folk,
      Trooping all together;
   Green jacket, red cap,
      And white owl’s feather!

   Down along the rocky shore
      Some make their home,
   They live on crispy pancakes
      Of yellow tide-foam;
   Some in the reeds
      Of the black mountain lake,
   With frogs for their watch-dogs
      All night awake.

   High on the hill-top
      The old King sits;
   He is now so old and gray
      He’s nigh lost his wits. 
   With a bridge of white mist
      Columbkill he crosses,
   On his stately journeys
      From Slieveleague to Rosses;
   Or going up with music,
      On cold starry nights,
   To sup with the Queen
      Of the gay Northern Lights.

All lovers of fairy tales and folklore should get this little book.  The Horned Women, The Priest’s Soul, {411} and Teig O’Kane, are really marvellous in their way; and, indeed, there is hardly a single story that is not worth reading and thinking over.