e kings of pagan Ireland lies on
the north bank of the Boyne and consists of a number of
sepulchral mounds, sometimes of great extent, containing, in
their interior, stone walled chambers decorated with symbolic
and ornamental carvings. The chief of these mounds, now known
as Newgrange, has been explored and described by Mr George
Coffey in his valuable work NEWGRANGE, published by the Royal
Irish Academy. _Brugh_=mansion.

So spake Cormac, and he died, and there was a very great mourning for
him in the land. But when the time came for his burial, the princes
and lords of the Gael vowed that he should lie in Brugh with Art, his
father, and Conn of the Hundred Battles, and many another king, in the
great stone chambers of the royal dead. For Ross-na-ree, they said, is
but a green hill of no note; and Cormac's expectation of the message
of the new God they took to be but the wanderings of a dying man.

Now Brugh-na-Boyna lay at the farther side of the Boyne from Sletty,
and near by was a shallow ford where the river could be crossed. But
when the funeral train came down to the ford, bearing aloft the body
of the King, lo! the river had risen as though a tempest had burst
upon it at its far-off sources in the hills, and between them and the
farther bank was now a broad and foaming flood, and the stakes that
marked the ford were washed clean away. Even so they made trial of the
ford, and thrice the bearers waded in and thrice they were forced to
turn back lest the flood should sweep them down. At length six of the
tallest and mightiest of the warriors of the High King took up the
bier upon their shoulders, and strode in. And first the watchers on
the bank saw the brown water swirl about their knees, and then they
sank thigh-deep, and at last it foamed against their shoulders, yet
still they braced themselves against the current, moving forward very
slowly as they found foothold among the slippery rocks in the
river-bed. But when they had almost reached the mid-stream it seemed
as if a great surge overwhelmed them, and caught the bier from their
shoulders as they plunged and clutched around it, and they must needs
make back for the shore as best they could, while Boyne swept down the
body of Cormac to the sea.

On the following morning, however, shepherds driving their flocks to
pasture on the hillside of Ross-na-ree found cast upon the shore the
body of an aged man of noble countenance, half wrapped