heroes and humanised deities are co-mingled and perpetuated.

On fragments of these folk-tales the poet Macpherson reared his Ossianic
epic, in imitation of the Iliad and Paradise Lost.

The "Death of Cuchullin" is a rendering in verse of an Irish prose
translation of a fragment of the Cuchullin Cycle, which moves in the
Bronze Age period. Cuchullin, with "the light of heroes" on his
forehead, is also reminiscent of Achilles. One of the few Cuchullin
tales found in Scotland is that which relates his conflict with his son,
and bears a striking similarity to the legend of Sohrab and Rustum.
Macpherson also drew from this Cycle in composing his Ossian, and
mingled it with the other, with which it has no connection.

The third great Celtic Cycle--the Arthurian--bears close resemblances,
as Campbell, of "The West Highland Tales," has shown, to the Fian Cycle,
and had evidently a common origin. Its value as a source of literary
inspiration has been fully appreciated, but the Fian and Cuchullin
cycles still await, like virgin soil, to yield an abundant harvest for
the poets of the future.

Notes on the folk-beliefs and tales will be found at the end of this
volume.

Some of the short poems have appeared in the "Glasgow Herald" and
"Inverness Courier"; the three tales appeared in the "Celtic Review."

CONTENTS.

Preface

The Wee Folk

The Remnant Bannock

The Banshee

Conn, Son of the Red

The Song of Goll

The Blue Men of the Minch

The Urisk

The Nimble Men

My Gunna

The Gruagach

The Little Old Man of the Barn

Yon Fairy Dog

The Water-Horse

The Changeling

My Fairy Lover

The Fians of Knockfarrel

Her Evil Eye

A Cursing

Leobag's Warning

Tober Mhuire

Sleepy Song

Song of the Sea

The Death of Cuchullin

Lost Songs

OTHER POEMS.

The Dream

Free Will

Strife

Sonnet

"Out of the Mouths of Babes"

Notes

THE WEE FOLK.

In the knoll that is the greenest,
And the grey cliff side,
And on the lonely ben-top
The wee folk bide;
They'll flit among the heather,
And trip upon the brae--
The wee folk, the green folk, the red folk and grey.

As o'er the moor at midnight
The wee folk pass,
They whisper 'mong the rushes
And o'er the green grass;
All through the marshy places
They glint and pass away--
The light folk, the lone folk, the folk that will not stay.

O many a fairy milkmaid
With the one eye blind,
Is 'mid th