e motive occurs in the famous tale called _The
Sickbed of Cuchulain_. The idea is that some fairy potentate, whose
realm is invaded and oppressed, entices a mortal champion to come to
his aid and rewards him with magical gifts. But the eighteenth
century narrator whose MS. was edited by Mr S.H. O'Grady, apparently
had not the clue to the real meaning of his material, and after going
on brilliantly up to the point where Dermot plunges into the magic
well, he becomes incoherent, and the rest of the tale is merely a
string of episodes having no particular connexion with each other or
with the central theme. The latter I have here endeavoured to restore
to view. The _Gilla Dacar_ is given from another Gaelic version by Dr
P.W. Joyce in his invaluable book, OLD CELTIC ROMANCES.

_The Birth of Oisin_ I have found in Patrick Kennedy's LEGENDARY
FICTIONS OF THE IRISH CELTS. I do not know the Gaelic original.

_Oisin in the Land of Youth_ is based, as regards the outlines of this
remarkable story, on the LAOI OISIN AR TIR NA N-OG, written by Michael
Comyn about 1750, and edited with a translation by Thomas Flannery in
1896 (Gill & Son, Dublin). Comyn's poem was almost certainly based on
earlier traditional sources, either oral or written or both, but these
have not hitherto been discovered.

_The History of King Cormac_. The story of the birth of Cormac and his
coming into his kingdom is to be found in SILVA GADELICA, where it is
edited from THE BOOK OF BALLYMOTE, an MS. dating from about the year
1400.

The charming tale, of his marriage with Ethne ni Dunlaing is taken
from Keating's FORUS FEASA. From this source also I have taken the
tales of the Brehon Flahari, of Kiernit and the mill, and of Cormac's
death and burial. The _Instructions of Cormac_ have been edited and
translated by Dr Kuno Meyer in the Todd Lecture Series of the Royal
Irish Academy, xiv., April 1909. They are found in numerous MSS., and
their date is fixed by Dr Meyer about the ninth century. With some
other Irish matter of the same description they constitute, says Mr
Alfred Nutt, "the oldest body of gnomic wisdom" extant in any European
vernacular. (_FOLK-LORE_, Sept. 30, 1909.)

The story of Cormac's adventures in Fairyland has been published with
a translation by Standish Hayes O'Grady in the _TRANSACTIONS OF THE
OSSIANIC SOCIETY_, vol. iii., and is also given very fully by d'Arbois
de Jubainvilie in his CYCLE MYTHOLOGIQUE IRLANDAIS. The tale i