my duty. You'll see me no
more." And no more they did, and right sorry they were for having been
in such a hurry to reward the ungrateful pooka.

PATRICK KENNEDY.

The King's Son

Who rideth through the driving rain
At such a headlong speed?
Naked and pale he rides amain
Upon a naked steed.

Nor hollow nor height his going bars,
His wet steed shines like silk,
His head is golden to the stars
And his limbs are white as milk.

But, lo, he dwindles as the light
That lifts from a black mere,
And, as the fair youth wanes from sight,
The steed grows mightier.

What wizard by yon holy tree
Mutters unto the sky
Where Macha's flame-tongued horses flee
On hoofs of thunder by?

Ah, 'tis not holy so to ban
The youth of kingly seed:
Ah! woe, the wasting of a man
Who changes to a steed.

Nightly upon the Plain of Kings,
When Macha's day is nigh,
He gallops; and the dark wind brings
His lonely human cry.

THOMAS BOYD.

Murtough and the Witch Woman

In the days when Murtough Mac Erca was in the High Kingship of Ireland,
the country was divided between the old beliefs of paganism and the new
doctrines of the Christian teaching. Part held with the old creed and
part with the new, and the thought of the people was troubled between
them, for they knew not which way to follow and which to forsake. The
faith of their forefathers clung close around them, holding them by many
fine and tender threads of memory and custom and tradition; yet still
the new faith was making its way, and every day it spread wider and
wider through the land.

The family of Murtough had joined itself to the Christian faith, and his
three brothers were bishops and abbots of the Church, but Murtough
himself remained a pagan, for he was a wild and lawless prince, and the
peaceful teachings of the Christian doctrine, with its forgiveness of
enemies, pleased him not at all. Fierce and cruel was his life, filled
with dark deeds and bloody wars, and savage and tragic was his death, as
we shall hear.

Now Murtough was in the sunny summer palace of Cletty, which Cormac, son
of Art, had built for a pleasure house on the brink of the slow-flowing
Boyne, near the Fairy Brugh of Angus the Ever Young, the God of Youth
and Beauty. A day of summer was that day, and the King came forth to
hunt on the borders of the Brugh, with all his boon companions around
him. But w