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, there is something of the
absurd already coming into his legend. The stories of him show more than
any others how swiftly myths and traditions already in the air may
gather around a memory much loved and much spoken of. He died only sixty
years ago, and many who have seen and heard him are still living; and
yet he has already been given a miraculous birth, and the power of a