"Well, my poor prince had nothing for it but to walk back to the Castle; and through it and round it he walked, and the finest of eating and drinking he got, and a bed of bog-down to sleep on, and fine walks he took through gardens and lawns, but not a sight could he get, high or low, of Seven Inches. Well, I don't think any of us would be tired of this fine way of living for ever. Maybe we would. Any how the prince got tired of it before a week, he was so lonesome for his true love; and at the end of a month he didn't know what to do with himself.

"One morning he went into the treasure room, and took notice of a beautiful snuffbox on the table that he didn't remember seeing there before. He took it in his hands, and opened it, and out Seven Inches walked on the table. 'I think, prince,' says he, 'you're getting a little tired of my castle?' Ah!' says the other; if I had my princess here, and could see you now and then, I'd never see a dismal day.' Well, you're long enough here now, and you're wanting there above. Keep your bride's crowns safe; and whenever you want my help, open this snuff-box. Now take a walk down the garden, and come back when you're tired.'

"Well the prince was going down a gravel walk with a quickset hedge on each side, and his eyes on the ground, and he thinking on one thing and another. At last he lifted his eyes, and there he was outside of a smith's bawn-gate that he often passed before, about a mile away from the palace of his betrothed princess. The clothes he had on him were as ragged as you please, but he had his crowns safe under his old cloak.

"So the smith came out, and says he: 'It's a shame for a strong, big fellow like you to be on the sthra, and so much work to be done. Are you any good with hammer and tongs? Come in and bear a hand, and I'll give you diet, and lodging, and a few thirteens when you earn them.' 'Never say't twice,' says the prince; 'I want nothing but to be employed.' So he took the sledge, and pounded away at the redhot bar that the smith was turning on the anvil to make into a set of horse-shoes.

"Well, they weren't long powdhering away when a sthronshuch of an idle tailor came in; and when the smith asked him what news he had, he got the handle of the bellows and began to blow, and to let out all he heard for the last two days. There was so many questions and answers at first, that if I told them all, it would be bedtime afore I'd be done. So here is the substance of the discourse; and before he got far into it, the forge was half filled with women knitting stockings, and men smoking.

"Yous all heard how the two princesses were unwilling to be married till the

youngest would be ready with her crowns and her sweetheart. But after the windlass loosened accidentally when they were pulling up her bridegroom that was to be, there was no more sign of a well, or a rope, or a windlass, than there is on the palm of your hand. So the buckeens that wor coortin, the eldest ladies, wouldn't give peace or ease to their lovers nor the king till they got consent to the marriage, and it was to take place this morning. Myself went down out o'curosity; and to be sure I was delighted with the grand dresses of the two brides, and the three crowns on their heads

gold, silver, and copper, one inside the other. The youngest was standing by mournful enough, in white, and all was ready. The two bridegrooms came in as proud and grand as you please, and up they were walking to the altar rails, when, my dear, the boards opened two yards wide under their feet; and down they went among the dead men and the coffins in the vaults. Oh, such screeching as the ladies gave! and such running and racing, and peeping down as there was; but the clerk soon opened the door of the vault, and up came the two heroes, and their fine clothes covered an inch thick with cobwebs and mould.

"So the king said they should put off the marriage; For,' says he, 'I see there is no use in thinking of it till my youngest gets her three crowns, and is married along with the others. I'll give my youngest daughter for a wife to whoever brings three crowns to me like the others; and if he doesn't care to be married some other one will, and I'll make his fortune.' 'I wish, says the smith, 'I could do it; but I was looking at the crowns after the princesses got home, and I don't think there's a black or a white smith on the face o' the earth could imitate them.' 'Faint heart never won fair lady,' says the prince. 'Go to the palace and ask for a quarter of a pound of gold, a quarter of a pound of silver, and

quarter of a pound of copper. Get one crown for pattern; and my head for a pledge, I'll give you out the very things that are wanted in the morning.' 'Ubbabow!' says the smith, are you in earnest?' 'Faith, I am so,' says he. 'Go! worse than lose you can't.'

6

"To make a long story short, the smith got the quarter of a pound of gold, the quarter of a pound of silver, and the quarter of a pound of copper, and gave them and the pattern crown to the prince. He shut the forge door at night-fall; and the neighbours all gathered in the bawn, and they heard him hammering, hammering, hammering, from that to daybreak; and every now and then he'd pitch out through the window, bits of gold, silver, and copper; and the idlers scrambled for them, and cursed one another, and prayed for good luck for the workman.

"Well, just as the sun was thinking to

rise, he opened the door, and brought out the three crowns he got from his true-love, and such shouting and huzzaing as there was. The smith asked him to go along with him to the palace, but he refused; and so off set the smith and the whole townland with him; and wasn't the king rejoiced when he saw the crowns. 'Well,' says he to the smith, 'you're a married man; what's to be done?' Faith, your majesty, I didn't make them crowns at all; it was a big shuler of a fellow that took employment with me yesterday.' 'Well, daughter, will you marry the fellow that made these crowns?" Let me see them first, father.' So when she examined them she knew them right well, and guessed it was her true-love that sent them. 'I will marry the man that these crowns came from,' says she.

"Well,' says the king to the eldest of the two princes, go up to the smith's forge, take my best coach, and bring home the bridegroom.' He was very unwilling to do this, he was so proud, but he did not wish to refuse. When he came to the forge, he saw the prince standing at the door, and beckoned him over to the coach.

Are you the fellow,' says he, 'that made them crowns?' 'Yes,' says the other. "Then,' says he, maybe you'd give yourself a brushing, and get into that coach: the king wants to see you. I pity the princess. The young prince got into the carriage, and while they were on the way, he opened the snuff-box, and out walked Seven Inches and stood on his thigh. 'Well,' says he, what trouble is on you now?" Master,' says the other, 'please to let me be back in my forge, and let this carriage be filled with paving stones.' No sooner said than done. The prince was sitting in his forge, and the horse wondered what was after happening to the carriage.

"When they came into the palace yard, the king himself opened the carriage door, to pay respect to his new son-in-law. As soon as he turned the handle, a shower of small stones fell on his powdered wig and his silk coat, and down he fell under them. There was great fright and some tittering, and the king, after he wiped the blood from his forehead, looked very cross at the eldest prince. My Liege,' says he, I'm very sorry for this accidence, but I'm not to blame. I saw the young smith get into the carriage, and we never stopped a minute since.' 'It's uncivil you were to him. Go,' says he, to the other prince, and bring the young smith here, and be polite.' 'Never fear,' says he.

"But there's some people that couldn't be good-natured if they were to be made heirs of Damer's estate. Not a bit civiler was

the new messenger than the old, and when the king opened the carriage door the second time it's a shower of mud that came out on him; and if he didn't fume, and splutter, and shake himself, it's no matter. 'There's no use,' says he, 'going on this way;' the fox never got a better messenger than himself."

6

"So he changed his clothes, and washed himself, and out he set to the smith's forge Maybe he wasn't polite to the young prince, and asked him to sit along with himself. The prince begged to be allowed to sit in the other carriage; and when they were half way, he opened his snuff-box. Master,' says he, I'd wish to be dressed now according to my rank.' You shall be that,' says Seven Inches; and, now, I'll bid you farewell. Continue as good and kind as you always were; love your wife, and that's all the advice I will give you.' So Seven Inches vanished; and when the carriage door was opened in the yard-not by the king though, for a burnt child dreads the fire out walks the prince as fine as hands and pins could make him, and the first thing he did was to walk over to his bride, and embrace her very heartily.

"Every one had great joy but the two other princes. There was not much delay about the marriages that were all celebrated on the one day. Soon after the two elder couples went to their own courts, but the youngest pair staid with the old king, and they were as happy as the happiest married couple you ever heard of in a story."

The next tale was one which was repeated oftenest in our hearing during our country experience. It probably owed its popularity to the bit of a rhyme, and the repetition of the adventures of the three sisters, nearly in the same words. It may seem strange that this circumstance, which would have brought ennui and discomfort on our readers, should have recommended it to the fireside audiences. Let it be considered that they expected to sit up to a certain hour, and that listening to a story was the pleasantest occupation they could fancy for the time. Length, then, in a tale was a recommendation, and these repetitions contributed to that desirable end.

"THE CORPSE WATCHERS.

"There was once a poor woman that had three daughters, and one day the eldest said, 'Mother, bake my cake, and kill my cock, till I go seek my fortune.' So she did,

and when all was ready, says her mother to her, 'Which will you have half of these with my blessing, or the whole with my curse?' 'Curse, or no curse,' says she, 'the whole is little enough.' So away she set, and if the mother didn't give her her curse, she didn't give her her blessing.

"She walked and she walked till she was tired and hungry, and then she sat down to take her dinner. While she was eating it, a poor woman came up, and asked for a bit. The dickens a bit you'll get from me,' says she: 'it's all too little for myself;' and the poor woman walked away very sorrowful. At nightfall she got lodging at a farmer's, and the woman of the house told her that she'd give her a spade-full of gold and a shovel-full of silver, if she'd only sit up, and watch her son's corpse that was waking in the next room. She said she'd do that; and, so, when the family were in their bed, she sat by the fire, and cast an eye from time to time on the corpse that was lying under the table.

"All at once the dead man got up in his shroud, and stood before her, and said, 'All alone, fair maid!' She gave him no answer; and when he said it the third time, he struck her with a switch, and she became grey flag.

About a week after, the second daughter went to seek her fortune; and she didn't care for her mother's blessing no more nor her sister, and the very same thing happened her. She was left a grey flag by the side of

her sister.

"At last, the youngest went off in search of the other two, and she took care to carry her mother's blessing with her. She shared her dinner with the poor woman on the road, and she told her that she would watch over her.

"Well, she got lodging in the same place as the others, and agreed to mind the corpse. She sat up by the fire with the dog and cat, and amused herself with some apples and nuts that the mistress gave her. She thought it a pity that the man under the table was a corpse: he was so hand

some.

"But at last he got up, and says he, All alone, fair maid!" and she wasn't long about an answer:

All alone I'm not.

I've little dog Douse and Pussy, my cat ;
I've apples to roast, and nuts to crack,
And all alone I am not."

"Ho, ho!' says he, 'you're a girl of courage, though you wouldn't have enough to follow me. I am now going to cross the quaking bog, and go through the burning forest. I must then enter the cave of terror, and climb the hill of glass, and drop from the top of it into the Dead Sea.' 'I'll follow you,' says she, for I engaged to mind you.' He thought to prevent her, but she was as stiff as he was stout.

"Out he sprung through the window, and she followed him till they came to the 'Green Hills,' and then says he:

"Open, open, Green Hills, and let the
Light of the Green Hills through ;'
'Ay,' says the girl, and let the fair
maid, too.'

"They opened, and the man and woman passed through, and there they were, on the edge of a bog.

The

"He trod lightly over the shaky bits of moss and sod; and while she was thinking of how she'd get across, the old beggar appeared to her, but much nicer dressed, touched her shoes with her stick, and the soles spread a foot on each side. So she easily got over the shaky marsh. burning wood was at the edge of the bog, and there the good fairy flung a damp thick cloak over her; and through the flames she went, and a hair of her head was not singed. Then they passed through the dark cavern of horrors, where she'd have heard the most horrible yells only that the fairy stopped her ears with wax. She saw frightful things with blue vapours round them, and felt the sharp rocks, and the slimy backs of frogs and snakes.

"When they got out of the cavern, they were at the mountain of glass; and then the fairy made her slippers so sticky with a tap of her rod, that she followed the young corpse easily to the top. There was the deep sea a quarter of a mile under them; and so the corpse said to her, 'Go home to my mother, and tell her how far you came to do her bidding: farewell.' He sprung head foremost down into the sea, and after" him she plunged, without stopping a mo

ment to think about it.

"She was stupified at first, but when they reached the waters she recovered her thoughts. After piercing down a great depth, they saw a green light towards the bottom. At last, they were below the sea, that seemed a green sky above them; and, sitting in a beautiful meadow, she half asleep, and her head resting against his side. She couldn't keep her eyes open, and she couldn't tell how long she slept; but when she woke she was in bed at his house, and he and his mother sitting by her bedside, and watching her.

"It was a witch that had a spite to the young man, because he wouldn't marry her, and 30 she got power to keep him in a state between life and death, till a young woman would rescue him just by doing what she had just done. So at her request, her sisters got their own shape again, and were sent back to their mother, with their spades of gold and shovels of silver. Maybe they were better after that, but I doubt it much. The youngest got the young gentleman for her husband. I'm sure she deserved him, and if they didn't live happy, THAT WE MAY."

The succeeding story is met with, in some shape or other, in almost every popular collection. It happened, however, that we never met with it in a complete form, except from the recital of Mrs. Kelly, of the Duffrey, a lady in heart and deed, though a farmer's wife. The reader will find the word serenade doing duty for "surround;" but the circumstance having remained fixed in our memory, we have not ventured on a supposed improvement. The scarcity of proper names is a remarkable feature in these old monuments. We have always, even at the risk of tautology and circumlocution, respected this particular institution. Contrary to what might be expected by an unreflecting person, the most popular stories are always the oldest. The genuine household tale, as old, probably, as Nimrod, is more cherished than the Ossianic stories, which may, perhaps, boast twelve hundred years. Finn M'Cuil, Cuchullin, and Öscur, are preferred to "Brian of the tributes ;" and he is dearer to the peasant's heart than Sarsfield or Hugh O'Neill. This circumstance has attracted the attention of many a writer interested in popular legends, among others, Mr. O'Grady, editor of the Pursuit of Diarmuidh and Grainne," in the Ossianic Transactions; and J. F. Campbell, collector of the "West Highland Legends." If John Windele, of Cork, or William Hackett, have leisure, why do they not make a tour of a year or two among the Irish-speaking folk of south and west Ireland, and collect from peasant or fisherman, all they recollect of ancient fictional lore; and publish it faithfully and unimproved, even as J. F. Campbell has done. And if Mr. Windele and Mr. Hackett, have not leisure, is there no gentle man furnished with means and know ledge of the native tongue, that will do it? Even now, many a curious bit of legendary lore can be collected, which will be lost in a dozen of years.

"THE BROWN BEAR OF NORWAY.

"There was once a king in Ireland, and he had three daughters, and very nice princesses they were. And one day that their father and themselves were walking in the lawn, the king began to joke on them, and to ask them who would they like to be

married to. 'I'll have the King of Ulster for a husband,' says one; and I'll have the King of Munster,' says another; and,' says the youngest, I'll have no husband but the Brown Bear of Norway. For a nurse of her's used to be telling her of an enchanted prince that she called by that name, and she fell in love with him, and his name was

the first name on her lips, for the very night before she was dreaming of him. Well, one laughed, and another laughed, and they joked on the princess all the rest of the evening. But that very night she woke up out of her first sleep in a great hall that was lighted up with a thousand lamps; the richest carpets were on the floor, and the silver, and the place was all full of grand walls were covered with cloth of gold and company, and the very beautiful prince she saw in her dreams was there, and it wasn't a moment till he was on one knee before

her, and telling her how much he loved her, and asking her wouldn't she be his queen. Well, she hadn't the heart to refuse him, and married they were the same evening.

'Now, my darling,' says he, when they were left by themselves, 'you must know that I am under enchantment. A sorceress, that had a beautiful daughter, wished me for her son-in-law; and because I didn't keep mother got power over me; and when I rethe young girl at the distance I ought, the fused to marry her daughter she made me take the form of a bear by day, and I was to continue so till a lady would marry me of her own free will, and endure five years of great trials after.'

"Well, when the princess woke in the morning, she missed her husband from her side, and spent the day very sorrowful. But as soon as the lamps were lighted in the grand hall, where she was sitting on a sofa covered with silk, the folding-doors flew open, and he was sitting by her side the next minute. So they spent another evening so happy, and he took an opportunity of warning her that whenever she began to tire of him, or not to have confidence in him, they would be parted for ever, and he'd be obliged to marry the witch's daughter.

"So she got used to find him absent by

day, and they spent a happy twelvemonth together, and at last a beautiful little boy was born; and as happy as she was before,

she was twice as happy now, for she had her child to keep her company in the day when she couldn't see her husband.

"At last one evening when herself, and her husband, and her child, were sitting with the window open, because it was a sultry night, in flew an eagle, took the infant's sash in his beak, and up in the air with him. She screamed, and was going to throw herself out through the window after him, but the prince caught her, and looked at her very seriously. She bethought of what he said soon after their marriage, and she stopped the cries and complaints that