I passed one day through a wood in West
Munster; I brought home with me a red berry of the yew-tree,
which I planted in my kitchen-garden, and it grew there till it
was as tall as a man. Then I took it up, and re-planted it on
the green lawn before the house, and it grew there until a
hundred champions could find room under its foliage, to be
sheltered there from wind and rain, and cold and heat. I
remained so, and my yew remained so, spending our time alike,
until at last all its leaves fell off from decay. When afterwards
I thought of turning it to some profit, I went to it, and cut it
from its stem; and I made of it seven vats, and seven keeves, and
seven stans, and seven churns, and seven pitchers, and seven
milans, and seven medars, with hoops for all. I remained so with
my yew vessels until their hoops all fell off from decay and old
age. After that I re-made them; but could only get a keeve out
of the vat, and a stan out of the keeve, and a mug out of the
stan, and a cilorn out of the mug, and a milan out of the cilom,
and a medar out of the milan; and I leave it to Almighty
God that I do not know where their dust is now, after their
dissolution with me from decay." *

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* De Jubainville, _Irish Mythological Cycle;_ when also Fintan's
poem quoted above.
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Now here is a strange relic of the Secret Teaching that comes
down with this legend of Fintan. Each of the four Cardinal
Points, it was said, had had its Man appointed to record all the
wonderful events that had taken place in the world.* One of them
was this Fintan, son of Bochra, son of Lamech, whose duty was to
preserve the histories of Spain and Ireland, and the West in
general. As we have seen, Spain is a glyph for the Great Plain,
the Otherworld.

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* See _The Secret Doctrine,_ for the Thesophical teaching.
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From this universal euhemerization,--this loving preservation and
careful cooking of the traditions by the Christian redactors of
them,--we get certain results. One is that ancient Ireland
remains for us in the colors of life: every figure flashes
before our eyes in a golden mellow light of morning, at once
extremely real and extremely magical: not the Greek heroic age
appears so flooded with dawn-freshness, so realistic, so minutely
drawn, nor half so lit with glamor. Another result is that,
while strange gleams of Esotericism shine through,--as in that
about the Four Recorders of the Four Cardinal Points,-