emora alta remotis
Incolitis lucis. Vobis auctoribus umbrae,
Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi,
Pallida regna petunt: _regit idem spiritus artus
Orbe alio_: longae, canitis si cognita, vitae
Mors media est.

The passage certainly seems to me to imply a different conception from
the ordinary classical views of the life after death, the dark and
dismal plains of Erebus peopled with ghosts; and the passage I have
italicised would chime in well with the conception of a continuance of
youth (_idem spiritus_) in Tir-nan-Og (_orbe alio_).

One of the most pathetic, beautiful, and typical scenes in Irish legend
is the return of Ossian from Tir-nan-Og, and his interview with St.
Patrick. The old faith and the new, the old order of things and that
which replaced it, meet in two of the most characteristic products of
the Irish imagination (for the Patrick of legend is as much a legendary
figure as Oisin himself). Ossian had gone away to Tir-nan-Og with the
fairy Niamh under very much the same circumstances as Condla Ruad; time
flies in the land of eternal youth, and when Ossian returns, after a
year as he thinks, more than three centuries had passed, and St.
Patrick had just succeeded in introducing the new faith. The contrast
of Past and Present has never been more vividly or beautifully
represented.

II. GULEESH.

_Source_.--From Dr. Douglas Hyde's _Beside the Fire_, 104-28, where it
is a translation from the same author's _Leabhar Sgeulaighteachta_. Dr
Hyde got it from one Shamus O'Hart, a gamekeeper of Frenchpark. One is
curious to know how far the very beautiful landscapes in the story are
due to Dr. Hyde, who confesses to have only taken notes. I have omitted
a journey to Rome, paralleled, as Mr. Nutt has pointed out, by the
similar one of Michael Scott (_Waifs and Strays_, i. 46), and not
bearing on the main lines of the story. I have also dropped a part of
Guleesh's name: in the original he is "Guleesh na guss dhu," Guleesh of
the black feet, because he never washed them; nothing turns on this in
the present form of the story, but one cannot but suspect it was of
importance in the original form.

_Parallels_.--Dr. Hyde refers to two short stories, "Midnight Ride" (to
Rome) and "Stolen Bride," in Lady Wilde's _Ancient Legends_. But the
closest parallel is given by Miss Maclintock's Donegal tale of "Jamie
Freel and the Young Lady," reprinted in Mr. Yeats' _Irish Folk and
Fairy Tales_, 52-9. I