round, pressing closer and closer
as their interest in the story grew.

Some of the stories were new to me; some I had heard in other versions;
but all--even those like the 'Taming of the Shrew,' which have, one must
believe, been brought in from other countries--have taken an Irish
colouring. I began to listen, half interested and half impatient; for I
had never cared much for this particular kind of tale.

But as I listened, I was moved by the strange contrast between the
poverty of the tellers and the splendours of the tales. These men who
had failed in life, and were old and withered, or sickly, or crippled,
had not laid up dreams of good houses and fields and sheep and cattle;
for they had never possessed enough to think of the possession of more
as a possibility. It seemed as if their lives had been so poor and rigid
in circumstance that they did not fix their minds, as more prosperous
people might do, on thoughts of customary pleasure. The stories that
they love are of quite visionary things; of swans that turn into kings'
daughters, and of castles with crowns over the doors, and lovers'
flights on the backs of eagles, and music-loving water-witches, and
journeys to the other world, and sleeps that last for seven hundred
years.

I think it has always been to such poor people, with little of wealth or
comfort to keep their thoughts bound to the things about them, that
dreams and visions have been given. It is from a deep narrow well the
stars can be seen at noonday; it was one left on a bare rocky island who
saw the pearl gates and the golden streets that lead to the Tree of
Life.

One of the old men told me a story in Irish--another translating it as
he went on; for my ear was not practised enough to follow it
well:--'There was a farmer one time had one son only, and the son died,
and the father wouldn't go to the funeral, where he had had some dispute
with him.

'And, after a while, a neighbour died, and he went to his funeral. And a
while after that he was in the churchyard looking at the grave. And he
took up a skull that was lying there--one of four--and he said: "It's a
handsome man you may have been when you were young; and I'd like to know
something about you," he said. And the skull spoke, and it is what it
said: "I'll go spend to-morrow night with you, if you'll come and spend
another night with me." "I will do that," said the farmer.

'And on the way home he met with the priest, and he told him w