urs were "wild with her," she told
me, because she did not wait to find out if there was a message, for
they were sure it was Queen Maive, who often shows herself to the
pilots. I asked the old woman if she had seen others like Queen Maive,
and she said, "Some of them have their hair down, but they look quite
different, like the sleepy-looking ladies one sees in the papers. Those
with their hair up are like this one. The others have long white
dresses, but those with their hair up have short dresses, so that you
can see their legs right up to the calf." After some careful
questioning I found that they wore what might very well be a kind of
buskin; she went on, "They are fine and dashing looking, like the men
one sees riding their horses in twos and threes on the slopes of the
mountains with their swords swinging." She repeated over and over,
"There is no such race living now, none so finely proportioned," or the
like, and then said, "The present Queen[FN#7] is a nice, pleasant-
looking woman, but she is not like her. What makes me think so little
of the ladies is that I see none as they be," meaning as the spirits.
"When I think of her and of the ladies now, they are like little
children running about without knowing how to put their clothes on
right. Is it the ladies? Why, I would not call them women at all." The
other day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a Galway
workhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that "Queen Maive was
handsome, and overcame all her enemies with a bawl stick, for the hazel
is blessed, and the best weapon that can be got. You might walk the
world with it," but she grew "very disagreeable in the end--oh very
disagreeable. Best not to be talking about it. Best leave it between
the book and the hearer." My friend thought the old woman had got some
scandal about Fergus son of Roy and Maive in her head.

[FN#7] Queen Victoria.

And I myself met once with a young man in the Burren Hills who
remembered an old poet who made his poems in Irish and had met when he
was young, the young man said, one who called herself Maive, and said
she was a queen "among them," and asked him if he would have money or
pleasure. He said he would have pleasure, and she gave him her love for
a time, and then went from him, and ever after he was very mournful.
The young man had often heard him sing the poem of lamentation that he
made, but could only remember that it was "very mournful," and that he
called h