the fairy birds
From the eaves of her sunny summer-room.
If I am blessed with the lady's grace,
Fair Crede for whom the cuckoo sings,
In songs of praise shall ever live,
If she but repay me for my gift....
There is a vat of royal bronze,
Whence flows the pleasant; nice of malt;
An apple-tree stands over the vat,
With abundance of weighty fruit.
When Crede's goblet is filled
With the ale of the noble vat,
There drop down into the cup forthwith
Four apples at the same time.
The four attendants that have been named,
Arise and go to the distributing,
They present to four of the guests around
A drink to each man and an apple.
She who possesses all these things,
With the strand and the stream that flow by them,
Crede of the three-pointed hill,
Is a spear-cast beyond the women of Erin.
Here is a poem for her,--no mean gift.
It is not a hasty, rash composition;
To Crede now it is here presented:
May my journey be brightness to her!"

[Illustration: Colleen Bawn Caves, Klllarney.]

Tradition says that the heart of the yellow-haired beauty was utterly
softened and won, so that she delayed not to make Cael master of the
dwelling he so well celebrated; master, perhaps, of all the jewels of
Erin that her suitors had given her. Yet their young love was not
destined to meet the storms and frosts of the years; for Cael the
gallant fell in battle, his melodious lips for ever stilled. Thus have
these two become immortal in song.

We have seen Cailte with Ossin following Find in his wild ride through
the mountains of Killarney, and to Cailte is attributed the saying that
echoes down the ages: "There are things that our poor wit knows nothing
off!" Cailte was a great lover of the supernatural, yet there was in him
also a vein of sentiment, shown in his poem on the death of
Clidna--"Clidna the fair-haired, long to be remembered," who was
tragically drowned at Glandore harbor in the south, and whose sad wraith
still moans upon the bar, in hours of fate for the people of Erin.

In a gayer vein is the poem of Fergus the Eloquent, who sang the legend
of Tipra Seangarmna, the Fountain of the Feale River, which flows
westward to the sea from the mountains north of Killarney. The river
rises among precipices, gloomy caverns and ravines, and passes through
vales full of mysterious echoes ami