cresses along with them. A couple of days after that, we were eating and drinking, and not a word out of anyone’s mouth, when what should be directed into the glen but a cow, and she going astray. When she looked around her and saw all the wildness, she uttered the most awful lowing my two ears ever heard. We all sprang up and looked at her. When she had finished her lowing, and when the echo had answered her seven times from the mountain, she turned on her heels and ran away as far as it was in her legs. Every person bent down again, and the voice of man or beast did not awake in the place for seven years from that day. Then a little old man who had been long there raised his head. “I hear the lowing of a cow,” said he.
Everyone looked at him, and nobody spoke.
Seven years now passed before that man got a rejoinder. At last a little boy opened his mouth, and said, “Where did you hear her?”
Everyone looked at the boy, and no one loosened his own mouth.
After seven years a big grey man raised up his head and looked angrily at the first person who broke the silence. Then he looked angrily at the boy. Then after a long pause the thing he said was—“The glen is bothered with ye?”
C. And what did you do then, Michael?
M. Loneliness came on me. I had spent seven years waiting for the utterance of the little grey man. Then I was for seven years waiting to hear from somebody the boy’s question. Then when I expected that the big man would say something good, what he did was to put a stop altogether to the conversation.
C. On my word it was no wonder for him to do so. It was ye that had the noisy conversation. Ye gave the poor man a headache.
M. I got lonesome then and came home.
Notes.
PEADAR UA LAOGHAIRE.
ANECDOTA FROM IRISH MSS.
XII.
Translation—continued.
“Ye are welcome!” saith the warrior. “Ye shall have my good. Do ye likewise give me your good, even praying to God for me.” So it is done. They go, and they went round the place of the burial and martyrdom of Peter and Paul. They come again from the East. Then a place is sought to be vacated for them. “There is a small hermitage here. A miserable hermit is in it. Tell him to go out,” saith the king. “I give thanks to God,” saith the hermit. “My earthly king throws me out, and my heavenly king enters. Come in now, O clerics!” “May it be lucky!” saith the cleric. “What do they say?” saith the king. “That it may be lucky for them.” “Out of the land with them!” saith the king. “They are heathen. They shall not drink even the water of the land.” They go thence that day’s journey, till they came to a city there. The bishop, even their leader, was washing his hands in the river on the next morning, when he saw a wooden chest (floating) against the current of the stream towards him. It bounded upwards, so that it was in the bosom of the cleric. “Take this with thee to the king, O lad,” saith the cleric. “I know not what it is that is in it.” Thereupon it is brought to him. It is opened by him, and he saw in it six bars of silver, and a bar of red gold among them. He put them into a scale. There was not the weight of a pig’s bristle (fleshworm ?) in anyone of them beyond another. “Well,” saith he, “let the clerics be called to us.” Thereupon they come. “Well, O clerics, here is the decision of our quarrel. These seven bars here, viz,, the six bars of silver, they are the six days of the week. The bar of gold, that is the Lord’s Day. This is what I see, none of them is heavier than another. Now, this is the meaning of it. As none of these bars is heavier than another, so is none of the days of the week luckier than another. For it is the same king that gave them, and
