"Are you a good chess-player?" said the king. "A trial will tell," said the stranger. "Our chess-board is in the queen's apartment, and we cannot disturb her at present," said the king. "It matters not, for I have a chess-board of no inferior kind here with me," said the stranger. "What do we play for?" said the king. "Whatever the winner demands," said the stranger. (They played then a game, which was won by the stranger.) "What is your demand now?" said the king. "Edain, your queen," said the stranger, "but I will not demand her till the end of a year." The king was astonished and confounded; and the stranger without more words speedily disappeared.

On that night twelve months, the story goes on to tell us, the king held a great feast at Teamair, surrounding himself and his queen with the great nobles and choicest warriors of his realm, and placing around his palace on the outside a line of experienced and vigilant guards, with strict orders to let no stranger pass them in. And thus secured, as he thought, he awaited with anxiety the coming night, while revelry reigned all round. As the middle of the night advanced, however, the king was horrified to see the former stranger standing in the middle of the floor, apparently unperceived by any one else. Soon he advanced to the queen, and addressed her by the name of Bé Finn, (fair woman), in a poem of seven stanzas. At the conclusion of this poem, the stranger put his arm around the queen's body raised her from her royal chair, and walked out with her, unobserved by any one but the king, who felt so overcome by some supernatural influence, that he was unable to offer any opposition, or even to apprise the company of what was going on. When the monarch recovered himself, he knew at once that it was some of the invisible beings who inhabited the hills and lakes of Erinn that played one of their accustomed tricks upon him. When daylight came accordingly, he ordered his chief Druid, Dallan, to his presence, and he commanded him to go forth immediately, and never to return until he had discovered the fate of the queen.

The Druid set out, and traversed the country for a whole year, without any success, notwithstanding that he had drawn upon all the ordinary resources of his art. Vexed and disappointed, at the close of the year he reached the

mountain (on the borders of the present counties of Meath and Longford) subsequently named after him Sliabh Dallain. Here he cut four wands of yew, and wrote or cut an Ogam; and it was revealed to him " through his keys of science and his ogam," that the queen Edain was concealed in the palace of the fairy chief, Midir, in the hill of Bri Leith (a hill lying to the west of Ardagh, in the present county of Longford). The Druid joyfully returned to Tara with the intelligence; and the monarch Eochaidh mustered a large force, marched to the fairy mansion of Bri Leith, and had the hill dug up until the diggers approached the sacred precincts of the subterranean dwelling; whereupon the wily fairy sent out to the hillside fifty beautiful women, all of the same age, same size, same appearance in form, face, and dress, and all of them so closely resembling the abducted lady Edain, that the monarch Eochaidh himself, her husband, failed to identify her among them, until at length she made herself known to him by unmistakable tokens,-upon which he returned with her to Tara.

This tale exhibits two curious and characteristic features of Irish Druidism; the first, that the Irish Druid's wand of divination was formed from the yew, and not from the oak, as in other countries; the second, that the Irish Druid called in the aid of actual characters, letters, or symbols, those, namely, the forms of which have come down to our own times cut in the imperishable monuments of stone, so well known as Ogam stones (many of which may be seen in the National Museum of the Royal Irish Academy).

The antiquity of this story of Eochaidh Airemh is unquestionable. There is a fragment of it in Leabhar nah-Uidhré, in the Royal Academy, a manuscript which was actually written before the year 1106; and it is there quoted from the book of Dromsnechta, which was undoubtedly written before or about the year 430.

THE OLD BOOKS OF ERINN.

From 'Lectures on Manuscript Materials of Irish History.'

Not only were the old Irish nobility, gentry, and people in general, lovers of their native language and literature, and patrons of literary men, but even the great Anglo-Norman nobles themselves who effected a permanent settlement among us appear from the first to have adopted what doubtless must have seemed to them the better manners, customs, language, and literature of the natives; and not only did they munificently patronize their professors, but became themselves proficients in these studies; so that the Geraldines, the Butlers, the Burkes, the Keatings, and others, thought, spoke, and wrote in the Gaedhlic, and stored their libraries with choice and expensive volumes in that language; and they were reproached by their own compatriots with having become" ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores

66 more Irish than the Irish themselves." So great indeed was the value in those days set on literary and historical documents by chiefs and princes, that it has more than once happened that a much-prized MS. was the stipulated ransom of a captive noble, and became the object of a tedious warfare; and this state of things continued to exist for several centuries, even after the whole framework of Irish society was shaken to pieces by the successive invasions of the Danes, the Norsemen, and the AngloNormans, followed by the Elizabethan, Cromwellian, and Williamite wars and confiscations, and accompanied by the ever-increasing dissensions of the native princes among themselves, disunited as they were ever after the fall of the supreme monarchy at the close of the twelfth century.

With the dispersion of the native chiefs, not a few of the great books that had escaped the wreck of time were altogether lost to us; many followed the exiled fortunes of their owners; and not a few were placed in inaccessible security at home. Indeed it may be said that after the termination of the great wars of the seventeenth century, so few and inaccessible were the examples of the old Gaedhlic literature, that it was almost impossible to acquire a perfect knowledge of the language in its purity.

With such various causes, active and long-continued, in

operation to effect its destruction, there is reason for wonder that we should still be in possession of any fragments of the ancient literature of our country, however extensive it may once have been. And that it was extensive, and comprehended a wide range of subjects-justifying the expressions of the old writers who spoke of "the hosts of the books of Erinn "-may be judged from those which have survived the destructive ravages of invasion, the accidents of time, and the other causes just enumerated. When we come to inquire concerning the fragments which exist in England and elsewhere, they will be found to be still of very large extent; and if we judge the value and proportions of the original literature of our Gaedhlic ancestors, as we may fairly do, by what remains of it, we may be justly excused the indulgence of no small feeling of national pride. . . .

The collection in Trinity College consists of over 140 volumes, several of them on vellum, dating from the early part of the twelfth down to the middle of the last century. There are also in this fine collection beautiful copies of the Gospels, known as the Books of Kells and Durrow, and Dimma's Book, attributable to the sixth and seventh centuries; the Saltair of St. Ricemarch, Bishop of St. David's in the eleventh century, containing also an exquisite copy of the Roman Martyrology; and a very ancient ante-Hieronymian version of the Gospels, the history of which is unknown, but which is evidently an Irish MS. of not later than the ninth century; also the Evangelistarium of St. Moling, Bishop of Ferns in the seventh century, with an ancient box; and the fragment of another copy of the Gospels, of the same period, evidently Irish. In the same library will be found, too, the chief body of our more ancient laws and annals: all, with the exception of two tracts, written on vellum; and, in addition to these invaluable volumes, many historical and family poems of great antiquity, illustrative of the battles, the personal achievements, and the social habits of the warriors, chiefs, and other distinguished personages of our early history. There is also a large number of ancient historical and romantic tales, in which all the incidents of war, or love, and of social life in general, are portrayed, often with considerable power of description and great brilliancy of language:

and there are besides several sacred tracts and poems, amongst the most remarkable of which is the Liber Hymnorum, believed to be more than a thousand years old. The Trinity College collection is also rich in Lives of Irish Saints, and in ancient forms of prayer; and it contains, in addition to all these, many curious treatises on medicine, beautifully written on vellum. Lastly, amongst these ancient MSS. are preserved numerous Ossianic poems relating to the Fenian heroes, some of them of very great antiquity.

The next great collection is that of the Royal Irish Academy. . . . The most valuable of these are original Gaedhlic compositions, but there is also a large amount of translations from the Latin, Greek, and other languages. A great part of these translations is, indeed, of a religious character, but there are others from various Latin authors of the greatest possible importance to the Gaedhlic student of the present day, as they enable him by refer ence to the originals to determine the value of many now obsolete or obscure Gaedhlic words and phrases.

Among these later translations into Irish we find an extensive range of subjects in ancient mythology, poetry, and history, and the classical literature of the Greeks and Romans, as well as many copious illustrations of the most remarkable events of the middle ages. So that any one well read in the comparatively few existing fragments of our Gaedhlic literature, and whose education had been confined solely to this source, would find that there were but very few, indeed, of the great events in the history of the world, the knowledge of which is usually attained through the classic languages or those of the middle ages, with which he was not acquainted. I may mention by way of illustration, the Irish versions of the Argonautic Expedition, the Destruction of Troy, the Life of Alexander the Great, the Destruction of Jerusalem, the Wars of Charlemagne, including the History of Roland the Brave, the History of the Lombards, the almost contemporary translation into Gaedhlic of the Travels of Marco Polo, etc., etc.

Passing over some collections of MSS. in private hands, at home, I may next notice that of the British Museum in London, which is very considerable, and contains much val