he bottom, and his will go up--at least it may!'

How Ian Direach Got the Blue Falcon

[From Cuentos Populares, por Antonio de Trueba.]

Long ago a king and queen ruled over the islands of the west, and they
had one son, whom they loved dearly. The boy grew up to be tall and
strong and handsome, and he could run and shoot, and swim and dive
better than any lad of his own age in the country. Besides, he knew
how to sail about, and sing songs to the harp, and during the winter
evenings, when everyone was gathered round the huge hall fire shaping
bows or weaving cloth, Ian Direach would tell them tales of the deeds of
his fathers.

So the time slipped by till Ian was almost a man, as they reckoned
men in those days, and then his mother the queen died. There was great
mourning throughout all the isles, and the boy and his father mourned
her bitterly also; but before the new year came the king had married
another wife, and seemed to have forgotten his old one. Only Ian
remembered.

On a morning when the leaves were yellow in the trees of the glen, Ian
slung his bow over his shoulder, and filling his quiver with arrows,
went on to the hill in search of game. But not a bird was to be seen
anywhere, till at length a blue falcon flew past him, and raising his
bow he took aim at her. His eye was straight and his hand steady, but
the falcon's flight was swift, and he only shot a feather from her wing.
As the sun was now low over the sea he put the feather in his game bag,
and set out homewards.

'Have you brought me much game to-day?' asked his stepmother as he
entered the hall.

'Nought save this,' he answered, handing her the feather of the blue
falcon, which she held by the tip and gazed at silently. Then she turned
to Ian and said:

'I am setting it on you as crosses and as spells, and as the fall of
the year! That you may always be cold, and wet and dirty, and that your
shoes may ever have pools in them, till you bring me hither the blue
falcon on which that feather grew.'

'If it is spells you are laying I can lay them too,' answered Ian
Direach; 'and you shall stand with one foot on the great house and
another on the castle, till I come back again, and your face shall be to
the wind, from wheresoever it shall blow.' Then he went away to seek the
bird, as his stepmother bade him; and, looking homewards from the hill,
he saw the queen standing with one foot on the great house, and the
other on the castle,