ingham.

Mrs. Mullarkey cannot spoil this paradise for us. When I wake in the
morning, the fuchsia-tree outside my window is such a glorious mass of
colour that it distracts my eyes from the unwashed glass. The air is
still; the mountains in the far distance are clear purple; everything
is fresh washed and purified for the new day. Francesca and I leave the
house sleeping, and make our way to the bogs. We love to sit under a
blossoming sloe-bush and see the silver pools glistening here and there
in the turf cuttings, and watch the transparent vapour rising from the
red-brown of the purple-shadowed bog fields. Dinnis Rooney, half awake,
leisurely, silent, is moving among the stacks with his creel. How the
missel thrushes sing in the woods, and the plaintive note of the curlew
gives the last touch of mysterious tenderness to the scene. There is a
moist, rich fragrance of meadowsweet and bog myrtle in the air; and how
fresh and wild and verdant it is!

'For there's plenty to mind, sure, if on'y ye look to the grass
at your feet,
For 'tis thick wid the tussocks of heather, an' blossoms and
herbs that smell sweet
If ye tread thim; an' maybe the white o' the bog-cotton waves
in the win',
Like the wool ye might shear off a night-moth, an' set an ould
fairy to spin;
Or wee frauns, each wan stuck 'twixt two leaves on a grand
little stem of its own,
Lettin' on 'twas a plum on a tree.' [*]

* Jane Barlow.

As for Lough Lein itself, who could speak its loveliness, lying like a
crystal mirror beneath the black Reeks of the McGillicuddy, where, in
the mountain fastnesses, lie spell-bound the sleeping warriors who, with
their bridles and broadswords in hand, await but the word to give Erin
her own! When we glide along the surface of the lakes, on some bright
day after a heavy rain; when we look down through the clear water on
tiny submerged islets, with their grasses and drowned daisies glancing
up at us from the blue; when we moor the boat and climb the hillsides,
we are dazzled by the luxuriant beauty of it all. It hardly seems
real--it is too green, too perfect, to be believed; and one thinks of
some fairy drop-scene, painted by cunning-fingered elves and sprites,
who might have a wee folk's way of mixing roses and rainbows,
dew-drenched greens and sun-warmed yellows; showing the pictur