“ The ragged green man caught him and threw him. Bioultach took hold of him and tied him tightly, and brought the five slenders together, so that the toes of his feet gave conversation to the holes of his ears, and no conversation did they give him but the height of mischief and misfortune.
“Take might and mastery, Bioultach; I thought there was not a man in the world able to tie him.”
“Oh, Bioultach,” said the giant, “tightly, tightly have you tied me; ease the fastening a little at the knot.”
“Oh, Bioultach,” said the ragged green man, “it is better to sell than to buy.” ”

“ Bioultach came out. “Now, Bioultach, as we have come on two days unknown to the giant, he will send out two ball players, with hurls of gold and balls of silver; you will think they are the two champions you left behind at the Island of the Torrent. If any limb of their limbs touches you, or the ball, you are a grey flagstone, and over you heaps of ice and snow, as big as if you were there for a hundred years.” ”

“ They went to the court of the High King of Greece.
Bioultach rose in the morning, and he and Maunus went into the garden, and he began to ask Maunus how were his father and his mother and his sister, and how was Erin. But the High King of Greece had a daughter, and she was in [44] a cloister in the garden. Maunus saw her going by, as a whiz of wind would go. “Oh, Bioultach, do you see that beautiful woman?”
“I do not see. She does not concern us. Perhaps she will never come by again.”
“Oh, Bioultach, I have never seen a woman as beautiful as she.” ”

“ I am but a third of the world, and my brother is the half of the world, and the other is as strong as the world; and if you spare me, I and my brothers will be your helpers, and we will conquer the world.”
“That’s not what I will do,” said the son of the King of Scotland; “but I will cut the head off you.”
And he caught hold of his sword and cut the head off the giant. And the young girl all the time was watching the young champion; and she ran to him and kissed him, and asked him if he would come home with her, and he said he would not come. ”

“ Do not speak a word to her till she speaks to you; and take with you three pint bottles of ale and three sixpenny loaves, and do the thing she tells you; and when she runs to my father’s land, on a height above the court, she will shake herself, and the bells will ring, and my father will say Brown Allree is in the land. And if the son of a king or queen is there, bring him to me on your shoulders; but if it is the son of a poor man, let him come no further. ”

“ For centuries—we do not know how many—before the Norman invasion, the inhabitants had spoken Gaelic. The absence of political unity, the ceaseless wars and forays, must all have tended to fuse the population and obliterate original differences much more than a settled state of society. Yet they exist. The differences in folk-lore are not greater than other differences. Ethnologists know that the so-called Gaelic race is really a compound one, containing in addition to the true Celtic (Aryan) element probably two that are not Aryan—a Mongolian or Finnish element, and an Iberian element. ”

“ We have before our eyes, so far as Irish and Scotch folk-lore are similar, an example of how two branches of a race originally so closely united as almost to form one, have for some [xii] hundreds of years drifted or been forced apart, the process being thus unfolded to us in the full light of history by which a body of folk-lore, originally one, has separated into divisions showing distinct characteristics, while it retains the strongest tokens of its original unity. ”

“ And the old druid told him that unless he could succeed in banishing the hen-wife from the castle she would bring utter destruction on himself and the queen. “Go now, and there is not any way to banish her but the way I tell you. Send her word this night, and invite her to play cards with you; and when you win the first game tell her she must go to the Gruagach of the Apple and bring to you the sword of light that is with the King of Rye, and then she has not a single chance of returning. ”

“ When folk-lore is narrated by peasants in their own dialect, it seems desirable, for various reasons, that the tales should be recorded in that dialect, and not in some form of speech differing from it more or less widely. This being conceded, the question arises, when one takes to recording Irish folk-lore, how the object is to be attained. It needs but a very small acquaintance with the ordinary Irish orthography to perceive that, if it is adhered to, the object cannot be even aimed at. The greatest defect in the English language is admitted to be its extraordinary spelling. ”

“ But that tales of one country, or one race, should have had a peculiar ability to diffuse themselves, wanting to all others, is a proposition that tries one’s faith. Reverting again to the analogy already used, we know that there are animals common to India and Ireland whose original home was in neither country. There are men of the same Aryan descent by the Shannon and by the Indus whose ancestors had not their first common habitation by either river. ”

“ In others we trace the more picturesque fancy, the fierceness and sensuality, the greater sense of artistic elegance belonging to races [xx] whom the Aryan, in spite of his occasional faults of hardness and coarseness, has, on the whole, left behind him. But as the greatest results in the realm of the highest art have always been achieved in the case of certain blends of Aryan with other blood, I should hardly deem it extravagant if it were asserted that in the humbler regions of the folk-tale we might trace the working of the same law. ”

“ The man went in, and brought the healing water, and rubbed it to the wound; and Kaytuch [69] arose alive again; and he rubbed his eyes with his hands and said “Great was the sleep that was on me”; and she laughed and told him everything from the time the young king cut his head off. “I took you on board ship, and we were sailing for nine months before we came here; and I promised your help for a day to this man if he would bring you to life; but you will not go for a month until you grow strong.” ”

“ By the laws of the land she belonged to Blue Niall.
“Well,” said Maunus, “I will make laws for myself. Any man who will not go for a day and a year into the Bake-house, and suffer three drops of the molten torrent, he shall not get the woman. But any man of you two who goes there, he must get the woman and welcome.” ”

“ Now, Bioultach, I will [47] make a house, and I will put bars of iron on it from ground to roof, and I will put three iron doors in it, and seven locks on every door. I will put eight hundred men round it, and Splendour, my own son, and Splendour-of-the-Sun, and yourself at the three doors before Maunus goes in.”
When they were married, and were going into the fastness, Bioultach said to the king, “I think it is on the outside the danger will come first, and I would not like any one to be destroyed but myself; I will go on the outer side entirely.” ”

“ What current of distribution has carried one set of tales to Scotland, part of the same and part of a different set to Ireland, while Germany has received a much larger share of the latter than Ireland, though in the other she has been left poor? It is clearly not commercial intercourse that has been at work, nor exogamy, nor slavery. Some other agency has to be sought for.
In the case of ancient Greece we have an instance in which an exceptionally rich body of legend has been proved to consist of elements brought from divers nations and races. ”

“ I have already adverted to the differences of race which exist in Ireland, more or less masked by the long predominance of the Aryan Gael. Such differences are not confined to Ireland. It is now admitted that the apparent predominance of the Aryan over most of Europe is, to a great extent, one of language merely. Furthermore, the elements which make up our population are found everywhere ”

“ Now, turning to Ireland, we find that both classes of story meet upon Irish soil. Without making any allowance for the imperfect collection of our folk-lore, and the quantity that must have been lost owing to the lateness of our attempts to rescue it, it must be admitted that we have the domestic story fairly well developed. The two tales from Grimm that I have named, as well as many others, have the closest possible parallels in Kennedy, and I have myself met with additional examples on the coast of Connaught. ”

“ There will be no champion in the world as good as he,” said Mananaun.
This is the name that Mananaun baptized him with—the Dul Dauna. He brought him up with [9] feats of activity and championship. He and Mananaun were out one day on the sea, and they saw the fleet of Balar Beimann sailing. The Dul Dauna put a ring to his eye, and he saw his grandfather on the deck walking, but he did not know it was his grandfather. He (took) a dart from his pocket and flung it at him and killed him. ”

“ When they went on board ship, he told Finn he was to be killed that day. He said he was two-and-twenty-years old that day. “The man that killed me at first is to kill me again to-day. He will come as a bird in the air, and will put the same form on himself as mine, and I will ask him to come up on board the vessel, and there will be a great battle between myself and Londu.”
Londu came on board the vessel. His apprenticeship was over that day, and he was cousin to the woman whom Kaytuch had treated so, and taken the amber bracelet from her. The two went to battle on board the ship. ”

“ When, however, we come to parts of tales, such as special phrases, rhymes, etc., the evidence of a common origin is beyond question. There are plenty of minor examples in this volume; but here I would direct special attention to the three sea-runs which occur in “Bioultach,” “King Mananaun,” and “The Champion of the Red Belt,” found in Galway, Mayo, and Donegal respectively (see Note, pp. 253-4) . I think it difficult for any one who reads these and notes their likenesses and their differences, not to believe that they were originally composed by one person. ”