that fear fell on the clerks, but Patrick met with and asked their chieftain’s name.  “I am Keelta,” he answered, “son of Ronan of the Fianna.”  “Was it not a good lord you were with,” said Patrick, “Finn, son of Cumhal?” And Keelta said, “If the brown leaves falling in the wood were gold, if the waves of the sea were silver, Finn would have given them all away.”  “What was it kept you through your lifetime?” said Patrick.  “Truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our hands, and fulfilment in our tongues,” said Keelta.  Then Patrick gave them food and drink and good treatment, and talked with them.  And in the morning the two angels who guarded him came to him, and he asked them if it were any harm before God, King of heaven and earth, that he should listen to the stories of the Fianna.  And the angels answered, “Holy Clerk, these old fighting men do not remember more than a third of their tales by reason of the forgetfulness of age, but whatever they tell write it down on the boards of the poets and in the words of the poets, for it will be a diversion to the companies and the high people of the latter times to listen to them."[8] So spoke the angels, and Patrick did as he bade them, and the stories are in the world to this day.

   [8] This is quoted with a few omissions, from Lady Gregory’s
   delightful version, in her Book of Saints and Wonders, of an
   episode in The Colloquy of the Ancients (Silva Gadelica).

STOPFORD A. BROOKE

ST PATRICK’S DAY, 1910

COIS NA TEINEADH

(By the Fireside.)

   Where glows the Irish hearth with peat
     There lives a subtle spell—­
   The faint blue smoke, the gentle heat,
     The moorland odours, tell

   Of long roads running through a red
     Untamed unfurrowed land,
   With curlews keening overhead,
     And streams on either hand;

   Black turf-banks crowned with whispering sedge,
     And black bog-pools below;
   While dry stone wall or ragged hedge
     Leads on, to meet the glow

   From cottage doors, that lure us in
     From rainy Western skies,
   To seek the friendly warmth within,
     The simple talk and wise;

   Or tales of magic, love and arms
     From days when princes met
   To listen to the lay that charms
     The Connacht peasant yet.

   There Honour shines through passions dire,
     There beauty blends with mirth—­
   Wild hearts, ye never did aspire
     Wholly for things of earth!

   Cold, cold this thousand years—­yet still
     On many a time-stained page
   Your pride, your truth, your dauntless will,
     Burn on from age to age.

   And still around the fires of peat
     Live on the ancient days;
   There still do living lips repeat
     The old and deathless lays.