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 her "beauty of all beauties."


1902.




ENCHANTED WOODS


I

Last summer, whenever I had finished my day's work, I used to go
wandering in certain roomy woods, and there I would often meet an old
countryman, and talk to him about his work and about the woods, and
once or twice a friend came with me to whom he would open his heart
more readily than to me, He had spent all his life lopping away the
witch elm and the hazel and the privet and the hornbeam from the paths,
and had thought much about the natural and supernatural creatures of
the wood. He has heard the hedgehog--"grainne oge," he calls him--
"grunting like a Christian," and is certain that he steals apples by
rolling about under an apple tree until there is an apple sticking to