nd, he gave in to
the teaching of St. Patrick ("Sure how would he stand up against it?"
said Charlie), and was converted to Christ. But all the mass of rhymed
verse which relates the dialogues between Oisin and Patrick, the tales
of Finn and his heroes which Oisin told to the Saint, the fierce answers
with which the old warrior met the Gospel arguments--all this was only
vaguely familiar to him. I was looking for a man who had it by heart.

The search for the repositories of this knowledge leads sometimes into
strange contrasts. One friend of mine lay stretched for long hours on
top of a roof of sticks and peat-scraws which was propped against the
wall of a ruined cabin, while within the evicted tenant, still clinging
to his home as life clings to the shattered body, lay bedridden on a
lair of rushes, and chanted the deeds of heroes; his voice issuing
through the vent in the roof, at once window and chimney, from the
kennel in which was neither room nor light for a man to sit and record
the verses. My own chance was luckier and happier. It came on a day when
a party of us had set out in quest of a remote mountain lough. Our way
led along the river, and as we drove up to where the valley contracted,
and the tillage land decreased in extent and fertility, the type of the
people changed. They were Celts and Catholics, evident to the least
practised eye. A little further still from civilisation we reached the
fringe that was Gaelic not merely in blood; the kindly woman whose
cottage warmed and sheltered us when we returned half-foundered from
plunging through bogs was an Irish speaker. She had no songs herself,
but if I wanted them her neighbour, James Kelly, was the best of
company, and would keep me listening the length of a night.

I pushed my bicycle through a drizzle of misty rain up the road over
mountainous moor, before I saw his cottage standing trim and white under
its thatch in a screen of trees, and as I was nearing it, the boy with
me showed me James down in a hollow, filling a barrow with turf. He
stopped work as I came down, and called off his dog, looking at me
curiously enough, for, indeed, strangers were a rarity in that spot,
clean off the tourist track, and away from any thoroughfare. One's
presence had to be explained out of hand, and I told him exactly why I
had come. He looked surprised and perhaps a little pleased, that his
learning should draw students. But he made no pretence of ignorance; the
only