is wife were there in the morning, and "Loose me,"
said he; "I am swifter than you, and I'll overtake them." They released
the old white garraun then, and the old white garraun, the fox, the
lion, and the army of Dublin pursued the tailor and his wife, and it was
not long before they came up with them.

When the tailor saw them coming, he got out of the coach with his wife,
and he sat down on the ground.

When the old white garraun saw the tailor sitting on the ground, he
said, "That's the position he was in when he made the hole for me, that
I couldn't get out of, when I went down into it. I'll go no nearer to
him."

"No!" said the fox, "but that's the way he was when he was making the
thing for me, and I'll go no nearer to him."

"No!" says the lion, "but that's the very way he had, when he was making
the plough that I was caught in. I'll go no nearer to him."

They all left him then and returned. The tailor and his wife came home
to Galway.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] From _Beside the Fire_, Douglas Hyde (David Nutt).

HOW THE SEA BECAME SALT

This story was told long ago by our Northern forefathers who brought it
with them in their dragon ships when they crossed the North Sea to
settle in England. In those days men were apt to invent stories to
account for things about them which seemed peculiar, and loving the sea
as they did, it is not strange that they had remarked the peculiarity of
the ocean water and had found a reason why it is so different from the
water in the rivers and steams.

This is not the only story that has come down to tell us how people of
old accounted for the sea being salt. There are many such stories, each
different from the other, all showing that the same childlike spirit of
inquiry was at work in different places, striving to find an answer to
this riddle of nature.

* * * * *

There sprang from the sons of Odin a race of men who became mighty kings
of the earth, and one of these, named Frode, ruled over the lands that
are called Denmark.

Now about this time were found in Denmark two great millstones, so large
that no one had the strength to turn them. So Frode sent for all the
wise men of the land and bade them examine the stones and tell him of
what use they were, since no one could grind with them.

And after the wise men had looked closely at them and read the magic
letters which were cut upon their edge, they said that the millstones
wer