“Round Cormac, spring renews her buds: 
     In march perpetual by his side
   Down come the earth-fresh April floods,
     And up the sea-fresh salmon glide;

   “And life and time rejoicing run
     From age to age their wonted way;
   But still he waits the risen sun,
     For still ’tis only dawning day."[39]

   [39] These lines are taken from Sir S. Ferguson’s noble poem,
   The Burial of King Cormac, from which I have also borrowed
   some of the details of the foregoing narrative.

* * * * *

Notes on the Sources

The Story of the Children of Lir and The Quest of the Sons of Turenn are two of the three famous and popular tales entitled “The Three Sorrows of Storytelling.”  The third is the Tragedy of the Sons of Usna, rendered by Miss Eleanor Hull in her volume CUCHULAIN.  I have taken the two stories which are given here from the versions in modern Irish published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, with notes and translation.  Neither of them is found in any very early MS., but their subject-matter certainly goes back to very primitive times.

The Secret of Labra is taken from Keating’s FORUS FEASA AR EIRINN, edited with translation by the Rev. P.S.  Dineen for the Irish Texts Society, vol. i. p. 172.

The Carving of mac Datho’s Boar.  This is a clean, fierce, fighting story, notable both for its intensely dramatic denouement, and for the complete absence from it of the magical or supernatural element which is so common a feature in Gaelic tales.  It has been edited and translated from one MS. by Dr Kuno Meyer, in Hibernica Minora (ANECDOTA OXONIENSIA), 1894, and translated from THE BOOK OF LEINSTER (twelfth century) in Leahy’s HEROIC ROMANCES.

The Vengeance of Mesgedra.  This story, as I have given it, is a combination of two tales, The Siege of Howth and The Death of King Conor.  The second really completes the first, though they are not found united in Irish literature.  Both pieces are given in O’Curry’s MS. MATERIALS OF IRISH HISTORY, and Miss Hull has printed translations of them in her CUCHULLIN SAGA, the translation of the Siege being by Dr Whitly Stokes and that of the Death of Conor by O’Curry.  These are very ancient tales and contain a strong barbaric element.  Versions of both of them are found in the great MS. collection known as the BOOK OF LEINSTER (twelfth century).

King Iubdan and King Fergus is a brilliant piece of fairy literature.  The imaginative grace, the humour, and, at the close, the tragic dignity of this tale make it worthy of being much more widely known than it has yet become.  The original, taken from one of the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum, will be found with a translation in O’Grady’s SILVA GADELICA.  For the conclusion, I have in the main followed another version (containing the death of Fergus only), given in the SEANCUS MOR and finely versified by Sir Samuel Ferguson in his POEMS, 1880.