against the stress of storm by the same warm shelter, the same glow of the turf-piled hearth.

The Ulster of which I shall write in these few pages is the Ulster of four sea-bordering counties only, Donegal, Derry, Antrim, and Down, since beyond doubt these exceed the other five in attractions. Only let a word be said of two great lakes. Lough Erne, which belongs mainly to Fermanagh, though bordering Donegal in part, is to its champions the Cinderella of Irish waters, and some day it will come into its inheritance of fame. Lough Neagh, with its eighty miles of shore, divided among five counties, has never been seen by me but in tranquil loveliness, one vast sheet of shimmering blue; and whether at Antrim, where many memories have their monuments, or at Toomebridge, where the Bann flows out majestically, has seemed well worth a day's journey—the more because its beauty is set among lands not fertile, yet prosperously tilled and inhabited by people, not rich indeed, yet safely removed from the stress of poverty. Not far from it is Armagh, a cathedral city, richer in associations than any in Ireland. If I do not write of Armagh, it is because the oldest of these associations has its monument also at the southern gate of Ulster, where the division of the province is best marked.

Carlingford Lough, according to modern geography, marks that division, but in truth the lough's southern shore, the rocky promontory of Cooley, belongs to Ulster by all titles, though it be included in the modern county of Louth. A steamer will carry you from Holyhead to Greenore (where is a hotel with the inevitable golf links) and land you nominally in Leinster. But all that mountainous headland is inhabited by folk who still keep the Gaelic speech alive among them, and whose remote forbears owned in far distant times the overlordship of Ireland's most famous champion, when Ulster had a pagan chivalry, the Red Branch Circle, which is to Irish legend what the story of Arthur's knighthood is to British romance, or the tale of the Nibelungs to Germany. Cooley (in Irish, Cuailgne) was the fief of Cuchulain; and the Brown Bull of Cooley was the object of that great foray made by the rest of Ireland upon Ulster, which is related in the oldest and finest of all Celtic hero tales.

Cuchulain's dwelling was outside Cooley, outside Ulster proper; his stronghold was Dundealgan, the "Thorn Fort" which gives its name to Dundalk. It was an outpost guarding that pass in the hills, the gap of the north, through which the railway, leaving the plains of Leinster, winds into the mountainous and threatening regions of Armagh and Down.

NARROW WATER CASTLE, CARLINGFORD LOUGH

All the story of Cuchulain's hero-feats can be read in Lady Gregory's admirable version, Cuchulain of Muirthemne; but Cuchulain's fort you can see for yourself. It stands close to the town of Dundalk, visible from the railway, a flat-topped mount, surrounded by a trench some thirty feet deep, with a steep outer rampart surrounding this in its turn. The whole is now tree-covered. Mr. Tempest, an antiquary of Dundalk, whose exertions have saved this monument from the spade and plough, thinks that he has identified, a couple of miles south of Dundalk, the place where Cuchulain died. Cloghafarmore, the "Big Man's Stone", at Ratheddy is one of the "standing stones" found through Ireland, as through other Celtic countries, and tradition identifies it with the pillar to which Cuchulain made his way from his last fight. For ninety days, he and his charioteer Laeg, and his pair of horses, Black Sanglain and the Grey of Macha, had harassed and held back the host of Ireland, destroying champion after champion, singly or by groups, in fights at each ford, and raining missiles upon the main body with marvellous sling-throwing; but at last, encompassed and at bay, he had got his death-wound with his own charmed spear, which passed through the bodies of nine men in its last flight from his hand. When, flung back at him by Lugaidh, last survivor of the sons whose father Cuchulain had slain, it had ripped his body open, the wounded warrior, holding his bowels together with one hand, staggered to this pillar stone, and bound himself to it by his scarf, so that even in death and defeat he might still stand upright. So he stood propped, while the Grey of Macha, loosed from its harness, defended him with teeth and hoof, letting none approach, till men saw that on the hero's shoulder a raven had lighted. "It is not on that pillar birds were used to settle", said one of his foemen. Then the grey horse knew that life had ebbed away, and she left the body to its despoilers. But the man who struck off Cuchulain's head, and took it with him, had his own head struck off by a comrade of the Red Branch before he reached the plains of Liffey.

Such is the fierce temper of that old hero-cycle; but if its heroes are not to be outdone in fierceness neither are they in generosity. How much is legend, sheer invention, none can say: the great earthworks at Armagh, Cuchulain's fort at Dundealgan, and a hundred other things testify to a truth behind the tale. And it is fairly well established that the race which had its centre at Armagh was not the race which governed from Tara: the Red Branch was Pictish, Tara was Milesian. How distinct the racial types show where they have survived tolerably pure is hardly realized, save by some such chance as befell me, when, at an exhibition in Limerick, I was summoned to look at a strange foreign folk from the north. They were girls from an Irish-speaking district in Donegal—not far from Rosapenna—pretty girls, too, but among the big, buxom, oval-faced, soft-bodied Southerners their short profiles, their high cheek bones, and hard, bright colour showed as strange as if they had been from another quarter of the world.

All the subsequent stages in Irish history meet you about the shores of Carlingford—Carline-fiord; its name tells of Danish settlements. The old castle in Carlingford town was erected by de Courcy at King John's bidding; the monastery was Norman built too, by Richard de Burgo, Earl of Ulster, but the Norman rule in Ulster was closely limited to a few strongholds on the coast. The Narrow Water Castle, which Mr. Williams has drawn against its background of the steep richly wooded slopes which make the chief beauty of this beautiful lough, is on the site of a thirteenth-century fortress, but that was destroyed in the Great War of 1641, and this building dates from Charles II's reign. At Warrenpoint a tall obelisk records the name of Ross of Bladensburg, one of the many brilliant officers whom Ireland gave to Wellington's armies—with how many thousands of the unnamed peasants to fill the ranks that they led! All those wooded hills behind Rostrevor, the little watering-place that nestles snug among them, looking south to the sun and the hills of Cooley, speak of comfortable days and territorial dominion. Behind those same wooded hills lies the southernmost point of industrial Ulster, Newry town, with its whirring looms.

These are some of the stepping-stones to guide one through Irish history; yet how many more might be added! Where the road and rail strike north from Dundalk, as they rise to that pass which is the famous Gap, you reach Faughart, scene of the battle where Edward Bruce ended his disastrous adventure of conquest in Ireland. And on the plain below, William and Schomberg