AN IRISH WONDER BOOK.* OLD-WORLD geographies, as Dr. Joyce points

out, generally contained a chapter on the Mirabilia, or wonders, whether natural, preternatural, or artificial, of each of the countries described; yet in spite of the claims of all other climes front the days of Herodotns down to those of the latest of our tellers of travellers' tales—De Rongemont and Cook— he dryly maintains that for such marvels "no other country in Europe," at any rate, "is fit to hold a candle to Ireland." Certainly it would be hard to beat his records of strange hap. penings in "The Island of Saints," though there are incidents in the "Voyage of Maildun," his own "Wonders beyond Thule," which not only eclipse those of Antonins Diogenee, but are at any rate more grotesquely strange than the marvels which he now sets before us. For example :— "As soon as it was light they saw land and made toward it. While they were casting lots to know who should go and explore the country they saw great flocks of ants coming down to the beach, each of them as large as a foal. The people judged by their numbers and by their eager, hungry look that they were bent on eating both ship and crow, so they turned their vessel round and sailed quickly away."

"Their multitudes countless, prodigious their size; Were never such ants seen or heard of before.

They struggled and tumbled and plunged for the'prize, And fiercely the famine fire blazed from their eyes, As they ground with their teeth the red sand of the shore."

What an opportunity for Lord Avebury bad he been living at the time. He certainly would have beaten no cowardly retreat from the contemplation of these Brobdingnag eeitones praedatores.

• The Wonders of Ireland and other Papers on Irish Subjects. By P. W. Joyce,

LL,D, London, of and Co. [28. ed.] Yet many of Dr. Joyce's "New Wonders of Old Ireland" will hold their own even against such marvels as these, though some of them are at the great disadvantage of being now quite credible. Thus we have a fresh set of wonderful islands, and in especial Inishglora, off the coast of Mayo, whose air and soil preserve dead bodies from decay. There they were left lying in the open air retaining their looks unchanged and growing their nails and hair quite naturally, "so that a person was able to recognize not only his father and grandfather but even his ancestors to a remote generation." The italics are ours. Nennius, as well as Giraldus and the author of the Norse " Kongs Skuggio " are the chroniclers of this wonder. . Were these incorruptible bodies mummies of their forbears laid out in sight of their descendants at periodical tribal gatherings I) The Irish are reputed to have come from the East, and one of their early colonies may have embalmed its dead, and so set this wonder-story going. The tidal well of Corann is fabled to have been started by St. Patrick, who when driving the demon reptiles into the Atlantic, and thus working one of the Irish wonders, was so overcome by the foul fiery breath of one of them that in an agony of despair lie struck his fist "against the solid rock, whereupon a well of sweet water burst forth from it." "That this well ebbed and flowed, keeping time with the sea, is of course the creation of the people's imagination," writes Dr. Joyce, "but it is a fact known beyond doubt that it some- times rises and falls in a remarkable and unaccountable way." We are here reminded of the intermittent flow of hot and cold water between two African wells described by Herodotus, yet discredited by his critics, as was his account of the pygmies, until the existence of both marvels has been satisfac- torily established. Herodotus no doubt was occasionally imposed upon by the Egyptian priests and others for their own purposes, and Giraldus Cambrensis, one of the authorities for his Irish Wonders quoted by Dr. Joyce, had good reason for taking some of them for granted and applying others to suit the purposes of the Norman invaders. Thus, as a Churchman, Gerald Barry supports such tales of wonder as that of "St. Colmfin's duoks," which not only refused to be boiled, but avenged any injury or disrespect to the Church or clergy by deserting their pond, which thereupon became putrid, and so useless for man or beast. Not till the offender was punished did the ducks return and their pond become clear and wholesome again. As a good Churchman Giraldus also records this charming story, which bird-lovers are at liberty to believe if they can : "On one occasion St. Kevin of Glendalough had his hands stretched out in prayer, palms up, through the little window of his cell, when a black- bird laid her eggs in one palm and sat on them. When the saint at last observed the bird, after his prayer, be remained motionless in pity ; and in gentleness and patience he held on till the young ones were hatched and flow away."

Again, Giraldus professed to hold the popular belief in "the man-wolves of Ossory," who according to ancient Irish writings were human beings who passed seven years of their lives as wolves, ravaging sheepfolds and devouring cattle in pairs, and then returning to their human forms, whilst another wolf couple took their place for a similar period. Gerald Barry is never wanting in a good story when it serves his purpose, and he tells "a very circumstantial one" about a wolf who came up to a benighted priest and his youthful companion, and addressing them "in very good Gaelic" told them there was no danger to them from him and his comrades ; then, after spending the night in converse with them by their fire, thus answered an inquiry of the priest as to whether, in his opinion, the hostile people "the Anglo-Normans "who had lately landed in Ireland would hold the country for any length of time. "The anger of the Lord has fallen on an evil genera- tion, and on account of the sins of our nation and the monstrous vices of the people He has given them into the bands of their enemies. This foreign race shall be quite secure and invincible so long as they shall walk in the ways of the Lord and keep His Commandments, but we know that the path leading to sinful pleasures is easy and human nature is prone to follow ill example ; so if this strange people shall hereafter learn our wicked habits from living amongst us, they will no doubt, like us, draw down upon themselves the vengeance of Divine Pro- vidence." The sanctimonious wolf then wont off with himself. Of course Giraldus, as Dr, Joyce pithily puts it, invented this story, "for the doubly pious purpose of favouring his Anglo- Norman friends and having a good hearty slap at the Irish people." But the wolf's prophecy as to what would happen if the Normans became more Irish than the Irish is curiously suggestive.

Sabbatll-breaking aviators should be warned by the following wonder which took place in the reign of King Congalach, who ruled over Ireland A.D. 944 to 956, according to the Irish annalists. "On a Sunday, while the people were at Mass in Clonmacnoise, there dropped from the air, hanging from a rope, an anchor, the fluke of which caught in an arch of the church door. The astonished people looked upwards along the rope and saw a ship floating on top. One of the crew leaped overboard and dived and swam down to loosen the anchor, when some of the congregation seized and held him while he struggled to free himself, till the Bishop, who happened to be just then present, directed them to let him go; for, as he said, if held down he would die as if held under water. They let him go and up he floated, when the crew cut the rope at top and the ship sailed away out of sight." The chronicler gravely adds, of course as he heard the story : "And the anchor has since lain in Clonmacnoise church as a witness that the event really occurred." Dr. Joyce appears to have been reading Mr. Wells when he was transcribing this story, for he suggests that the original narrator of this wonder must have believed "the crew of the ship to have been the inhabitants of the upper air • . . who had ventured for once on an unusual voyage of discovery down to the earth."

The last wonder described by Dr. Joyce is "The Lia Fail," or Coronation Stone of Tara, on which the ancient kings of Ireland were crowned, and "which uttered a shout whenever a king of the true Scotia or Irish race stood or sat on it." This stone, so ran the tradition, was brought out of Loehlann or Scandinavia by the Dodannan conquerors, and served as their Coronation Stone and that of the Milesians, who in turn conquered them. Scottish writers affirm that when the Scotic princes, Fergus, Angus, and Lorne, the three eons of Era of Dalriada in North Antrim, conquered Western Scot- land in A.D. 503, Fergus, with the consent of the King of Ireland, caused the Lia Fail to be brought over to Alban (Scotland) and had himself crowned on it, there being an ancient prophecy that into whatever land the Lia Fail was brought, there a prince of the Scotic or Irish race should be crowned, a prophecy which Hector Boece, the Scottish writer, presents in this Latin form :—

"Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocunque locatum Invenfent lapidem regnare tenentur ibidom."

On account of this prophecy, writes Dr. Joyce, "the stone received the name of Lia Fail, which, according to the Scotch authorities, means "The Stone of Destiny," and upon a stone supposed to be the true Lia Fail the Scottish kings were crowned at Scone and the kings of England since the time of our Edward I. have been crowned in Westminster Abbey.

Unfortunately for the truth of this legend Dr. Petrie has proved that the Lia Fail was in Tara four centuries after the time of the alleged removal to Scotland. Antiquaries of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries affirm that the stone was in Tara, and indeed the poet-scholar, Kineth O'Hartigan, who died in the year 975, visited Tara with the object of describing it. "After mentioning in detail several monu- ments," which he found still existing there "be states that he was actually standing on the Lia Fail:—

" The stone which is under my two feet, From it is called Inis Fail;

Between two strands of strong tide, The Plain of Pal (as a name) for all Erin."

Fal was the proper name of the stone of which the genitive form is "Fail," as it appears in "Lia Fail." The word "Lia" means a, stone, and "Lie. Fail" is literally "the Stone of Far

Dr. Petrie attempts, in his essay on Tara, to identify, as the true Lia Fail, a pillar stone now standing on the Forradh of Tara, as the present writer can vouch, taken, as he asserts, from "The Mound of Hostages" and placed to mark the grave of some rebels killed in 1798. But Dr. Joyce con- troverts Dr. Petrie's view, having been assured by one of the men who helped in the removal of the stone in question that it was not brought from "The Mound of Hostages," where the true Lia Fail was recorded to have stood, but from the bottom of the trench surrounding the Forradh itself, where it had been lying prostrate for generations. Furthermore, Dr. Joyce wisely observes that the pillar steno believed by Dr. Petrie to be the Irish Coronation Stone is of a size and shape "very unsuitable for standing on during the cere- monies of installation and coronation ; and seeing that the stone weighs considerably more than a ton it would be im- practicable to carry it about, as the legends say the Dedannans carried the Lia Fail in their overland journeys in Scandinavia, Scotland, and Ireland, and on oversea voyages in their hide- covered wicker boats." Dr. Joyce's conclusion, therefore, is that the true Lia Fail 'remains still in Tara buried and hidden somewhere in the soil—probably in the position where the old writers place it, on the north side of The Mound of Hostages."

Here is an opportunity for such energetic Irish antiquaries as Sir Henry Bellingham or Mr. Francis Joseph Bigger ; indeed, what have they been about not to have unearthed the true Lie Fail before King George's Coronation, and there put it to the test which the Westminster stone has ignominiously failed to stand ? For there is certainly no record of that impostor having " let out a shout," since kings of the true Scotia and Irish race have been crowned upon it in the Abbey.

Dr. Joyce's volume contains other good things besides the wonders of Ireland. His genius for investigation has enabled him to identify some of Spenser's Irish rivers whose names have hitherto puzzled the poet's commentators, He gives us two striking folk-tales of horror in "The Destruction of Tiernume " and " Fergus O'Mara and the Demons," his short biographies of Ireland's three patron saints, St. Patrick, St. Brigit, and St. Columkille, and of her scholar saint Donatus, Bishop of Fiesole, are good reading, as are his contrasted sketches of an Irish and a Norman warrior— Cabal O'Conor of the Red Hand and Sir John de Courey—and, lastly, he tells a pathetic tale of his native Glenosheen in the dialect of the Limerick peasantry of seventy years ago which might have been written by William Carleton himself, so human is its interest, so vivid is its colouring.