in our stonebreakers and cattle drivers Greek husbandmen or ancient
vinedressers of the Loire.

I noticed some time ago, when listening to many legends of the Fianna,
that is about Finn, their leader, the most exaggerated of the tales have
gathered; and I believe the reason is that he, being the greatest of the
"Big Men," the heroic race, has been most often in the mouths of the
people. They have talked of him by their fire-sides for two thousand
years or so; at first earlier myths gathered around him, and then from
time to time any unusual feats of skill or cunning shown off on one or
another countryside, till many of the stories make him at the last
grotesque, little more than a clown. So in Bible History, while lesser
kings keep their dignity, great Solomon's wit is outwitted by the
riddles of some countryman; and Lucifer himself, known in Kiltartan as
"the proudest of the angels, thinking himself equal with God," has been
seen in Sligo rolling down a road in the form of the _Irish Times_. The
gods of ancient Ireland have not escaped. Mananaan, Son of the Sea,
Rider of the Horses of the Sea, was turned long ago into a juggler doing
tricks, and was hunted in the shape of a hare. Brigit, the "Fiery
Arrow," the nurse of poets, later a saint and the Foster-mother of
Christ, does her healing of the poor in the blessed wells of to-day as
"a very civil little fish, very pleasant, wagging its tail."

Giobniu, the divine smith of the old times, made a new sword and a new
spear for every one that was broken in the great battle between the gods
and the mis-shapen Fomor. "No spearpoint that is made by my hand," he
said, "will ever miss its mark; no man it touches will ever taste life
again." It was his father who, with a cast of a hatchet, could stop the
inflowing of the tide; and it was he himself whose ale gave lasting
youth: "No sickness or wasting ever comes on those who drink at
Giobniu's Feast." Later he became a saint, a master builder, builder of
a house "more shining than a garden; with its stars, with its sun, with
its moon." To-day he is known as the builder of the round towers of the
early Christian centuries, and of the square castles of the
Anglo-Normans. And the stories I have given of him, called as he now is,
"the Goban Saor," show that he has fallen still farther in legend from
his high origin.

As to O'Connell, perhaps because his name, like that of Finn and the
Goban, is much in the mouths of the people, t