“Let not a man with many friends be your steward,
  Nor a woman with sons and foster-sons your housekeeper,
  Nor a greedy man your butler,
  Nor a man of much delay your miller,
  Nor a violent, foul-mouthed man your messenger,
  Nor a grumbling sluggard your servant,
  Nor a talkative man your counsellor,
  Nor a tippler your cup-bearer,
  Nor a short-sighted man your watchman,
  Nor a bitter, haughty man your doorkeeper,
  Nor a tender-hearted man your judge,
  Nor an ignorant man your leader,
  Nor an unlucky man your counsellor.”

Such were the counsels that Cormac mac Art gave to his son Cairbry.  And Cairbry became King after his father’s abdication, and reigned seven and twenty years, till he and Oscar, son of Oisin, slew one another at the battle of Gowra.

V

CORMAC SETS UP THE FIRST MILL IN ERINN

During the reign of Cormac it happened that some of the lords of Ulster made a raid upon the Picts in Alba[29] and brought home many captives.  Among them was a Pictish maiden named Kiernit, daughter of a king of that nation, who was strangely beautiful, and for that the Ulstermen sent her as a gift to King Cormac.  And Cormac gave her as a household slave to his wife Ethne, who set her to grinding corn with a hand-quern, as women in Erinn were used to do.  One day as Cormac was in the palace of the Queen he saw Kiernit labouring at her task and weeping as she wrought, for the toil was heavy and she was unused to it.  Then Cormac was moved with compassion for the women that ground corn throughout Ireland, and he sent to Alba for artificers to come over and set up a mill, for up to then there were no mills in Ireland.  Now there was in Tara, as there is to this day, a well of water called The Pearly, for the purity and brightness of the water that sprang from it, and it ran in a stream down the hillside, as it still runs, but now only in a slender trickle.  Over this stream Cormac bade them build the first mill that was in Ireland, and the bright water turned the wheel merrily round, and the women in Tara toiled at the quern no more.

   [29] Scotland.

VI

A PLEASANT STORY OF CORMAC’S BREHON

Among other affairs which Cormac regulated for himself and all kings who should come after him was the number and quality of the officers who should be in constant attendance on the King.  Of these he ordained that there should be ten, to wit one lord, one brehon, one druid, one physician, one bard, one historian, one musician and three stewards.  The function of the brehon, or judge, was to know the ancient customs and the laws of Ireland, and to declare them to the King whenever any matter relating to them came before him.  Now Cormac’s chief brehon was at first one Fithel.  But Fithel’s time came to die, and his son Flahari,[30] a wise and learned man, trained by his father in all the laws of the Gael, was to be brehon to the High King in his father’s stead.  Fithel then called his son to his bedside and said:—­