Etive,
where they lived happily by the chase. Naisi's two brothers went with
them, and thus the three sons of Usnach were all in Alba. Then the story
goes on to say that Fergus, one of Conor's nobles, goes to seek the
exiles, and Naisi and Deirdre, while playing at the chess, hear from the
shore 'the cry of a man of Erin.' It is against Deirdre's will that they
finally leave Alba with Fergus, who says, "Birthright is first, for ill
it goes with a man, although he be great and prosperous, if he does not
see daily his native earth."

So they sailed away over the sea, and Deirdre sang this lay as the
shores of Alba faded from her sight:--

"My love to thee, O Land in the East, and 'tis ill for me to leave thee,
for delightful are thy coves and havens, thy kind, soft, flowery fields,
thy pleasant, green-sided hills; and little was our need of departing."

Then in her song she went over the glens of their lordship, naming
them all, and calling to mind how here they hunted the stag, here they
fished, here they slept, with the swaying fern for pillows, and here the
cuckoo called to them. And "Never," she sang, "would I quit Alba were it
not that Naisi sailed thence in his ship."

They landed first under Fair Head, and then later at Rathlin Island,
where their fate met them at last, as Deirdre had prophesied. It is a
sad story, and we can easily weep at the thrilling moment when, there
being no man among the Ultonians to do the king's bidding, a Norse
captive takes Naisi's magic sword and strikes off the heads of the three
sons of Usnach with one swift blow, and Deirdre, falling prone upon the
dead bodies, chants a lament; and when she has finished singing, she
puts her pale cheek against Naisi's, and dies; and a great cairn is
piled over them, and an inscription in Ogam set upon it.

We were full of legendary lore, these days, for we were fresh from a
sight of Glen Ariff. Who that has ever chanced to be there in a pelting
rain but will remember its innumerable little waterfalls, and the great
falls of Ess-na-Crubh and Ess-na-Craoibhe? And who can ever forget the
atmosphere of romance that broods over these Irish glens?

We have had many advantages here as elsewhere; for kind Dr. La Touche,
Lady Killbally, and Mrs. Colquhoun follow us with letters, and wherever
there is an unusual personage in a district we are commended to his or
her care. Sometimes it is one of the 'grand quality,' and often it is
an Ossianic sort of pe