s were paling one by one.

AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel tree and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;
Although the rushes and the fowl of the air
Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.

NOTES

THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE.

The powerful and wealthy called the gods of ancient Ireland the Tuatha
De Danaan, or the Tribes of the goddess Danu, but the poor called them,
and still sometimes call them, the Sidhe, from Aes Sidhe or Sluagh
Sidhe, the people of the Faery Hills, as these words are usually
explained. Sidhe is also Gaelic for wind, and certainly the Sidhe have
much to do with the wind. They journey in whirling winds, the winds that
were called the dance of the daughters of Herodias in the Middle Ages,
Herodias doubtless taking the place of some old goddess. When the
country people see the leaves whirling on the road they bless
themselves, because they believe the Sidhe to be passing by. They are
almost always said to wear no covering upon their heads, and to let
their hair stream out; and the great among them, for they have great and
simple, go much upon horseback. If any one becomes too much interested
in them, and sees them over much, he loses all interest in ordinary
things. I shall write a great deal elsewhere about such enchanted
persons, and can give but an example or two now.

A woman near Gort, in Galway, says: 'There is a boy, now, of the
Cloran's; but I wouldn't for the world let them think I spoke of him;
it's two years since he came from America, and since that time he never
went to Mass, or to church, or to fairs, or to market, or to stand on
the cros