In the very centre is the Forradh, or Place of Meeting, and on it is our own Lia Fail, Stone of Destiny. The one in Westminster Abbey, carried away from Scotland by Edward I., is thought by many scholars to be unauthentic, and we hope that ours may prove to have some historical value. The only test of a Stone of Destiny, as I understand it, is that it shall 'roar' when an Irish monarch is inaugurated; and that our Lia Fail was silent when we celebrated this impressive ceremony reflects less upon its own powers, perhaps, than upon the pedigree of our chosen Ard-ri.
The arbour under the mountain ash is the Fairy Palace of the Quicken Tree, and on its walls is suspended the Horn of Foreknowledge, which if any one looks on it in the morning, fasting, he will know in a moment all things that are to happen during that day.
The clump of willows is the Wood of the Many Sallows (a willow-tree is familiarly known as a 'sally' in Ireland). Do you know Yeats's song, put to a quaint old Irish air?
'Down by the sally gardens my love and I did meet, She passed the sally gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree, But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.'
The summer-house is the Greenan; that is, grianan, a bright, sunny place. On the arm of a tree in the Greenan hangs something you might (if you are dull) mistake for a plaited garland of rushes hung with pierced pennies; but it really is our Chain of Silence, a useful article of bygone ages, which the lord of a mansion shook when he wished an attentive hearing, and which deserved a better fate and a longer survival than it has met. Jackeen's Irish terrier is Bran,--though he does not closely resemble the great Finn's sweet-voiced, gracefully-shaped, long-snouted hound; the coracle lying on the shore of the little lough--the coracle made of skin, like the old Irish boats--is the Wave-Sweeper; and the faithful mare that we hire by the day is, by your leave, Enbarr of the Flowing Mane. No warrior was ever killed on the back of this famous steed, for she was as swift as the clear, cold wind of spring, travelling with equal ease and speed on land and sea, an' may the divil fly away wid me if that same's not true.
We no longer find any difficulty in remembering all this nomenclature, for we are 'under gesa' to use no other. When you are put under gesa to reveal or to conceal, to defend or to avenge, it is a sort of charm or spell; also an obligation of honour. Finola is under gesa not to write to Alba more than six times a week and twice on Sundays; Sheela is bound by the same charm to give us muffins for afternoon tea; I am vowed to forget my husband when I am relating romances, and allude to myself, for dramatic purposes, as a maiden princess, or a maiden of enchanting and all-conquering beauty. And if we fail to abide by all these laws of the modern Dedannans of Devorgilla, which are written in the Speckled Book of Salemina, we are to pay eric-fine. These fines are collected with all possible solemnity, and the children delight in them to such an extent that occasionally they break the law for the joy of the penalty. If you have ever read the Fate of the Children of Turenn, you remember that they were to pay to Luga the following eric-fine for the slaying of their father, Kian: two steeds and a chariot, seven pigs, a hound whelp, a cooking-spit, and three shouts on a hill. This does not at first seem excessive, if Kian were a good father, and sincerely mourned; but when Luga began to explain the hidden snares that lay in the pathway, it is small wonder that the sons of Turenn felt doubt of ever being able to pay it, and that when, after surmounting all the previous obstacles, they at last raised three feeble shouts on Midkena's Hill, they immediately gave up the ghost.
The story told yesterday by Sheela the Scribe was the Magic Thread--Clue, or the Pursuit of the Gilla Dacker, Benella and the Button Boy being the chief characters; Finola's was the Voyage of the Children of Corr the Swift-Footed (the Ard-ri's pseudonym for American travellers); while mine, to be told to-morrow, is called the Quest of the Fair Strangers, or the Fairy Quicken Tree of Devorgilla.