s death
She cries until the day?

Now Molly thinks her man has gone
A sailor lad to be;
She puts a candle at her door
Each night for him to see.

But he is off to Galway town,
(And who dare tell her this?)
Enchanted by a woman's eyes,
Half-maddened by her kiss.

So as we go by Molly's door
We look towards the sea,
And say, "May God bring home your lad
Wherever he may be."

I pray it may be Molly's self
The banshee keens and cries,
For who dare breathe the tale to her,
Be it her man who dies?

But there is sorrow on the way,
For I tonight have seen
A banshee in the shadow pass
Along the dark boreen.

THE SEVEN WHISTLERS: ALICE E. GILLINGTON

Whistling strangely, whistling sadly, whistling sweet and
clear,
The Seven Whistlers have passed thy house, Pentruan of
Porthmeor;
It was not in the morning, nor the noonday's golden
grace,
It was in the dead waste midnight, when the tide yelped
loud in the Race:
The tide swings round in the Race, and they're plaining
whisht and low,
And they come from the gray sea-marshes, where the gray
sea-lavenders grow,
And the cotton-grass sways to and fro;
And the gore-sprent sundews thrive
With oozy hands alive.
Canst hear the curlews' whistle through thy dreamings dark and drear,
How they're crying, crying, crying, Pentruan of Porthmeor?

Shall thy hatchment, mouldering grimly in yon church amid the sands,
Stay trouble from thy household? Or the carven cherub-hands
Which hold thy shield to the font? Or the gauntlets on the wall
Keep evil from its onward course as the great tides rise and fall?
The great tides rise and fall, and the cave sucks in the breath
Of the wave when it runs with tossing spray, and the
ground-sea rattles of Death;
"I rise in the shallows," 'a saith,
"Where the mermaid's kettle sings,
And the black shag flaps his wings!"
Ay, the green sea-mountain leaping may lead horror in its rear,
When thy drenched sail leans to its yawning trough, Pentruan
of Porthmeor!

Yet the stoup waits at thy doorway for its load of glittering ore,
And thy ships lie in the tideway, and thy flocks along the moore;
And thine arishes gleam softly when the October moonbeams wane,
When in the bay all shining the fishers set the seine;
The fishers cast the seine, and 'tis "Heva!" in the town,
And from the watch-rock on the hill the huers are shouting down;