This famous story "which is known," as Dr. Cameron puts it, "over all the lands of the Gael, both in Ireland and Scotland,"[3] has been more fortunate than any other in the whole range of Irish literature, for it has engaged the attention of, and been edited from different texts by, nearly every great Celtic scholar of this century.[4] Yet I luckily discovered last year in the museum in Belfast by far the amplest and most graphic version of them all, bound up with some other pieces of different dates. It was copied at the end of the last or the beginning of the present century by a northern scribe, from a copy which must have been fairly old to judge from the language and from the glosses in the margin. I give here a literal translation of the opening of the story from this manuscript, and it is an admirable example of the later extension and embellishment of the ancient texts. THE OPENING OF THE FATE OF THE SONS OF USNACH, FROM A MS. IN THE BELFAST MUSEUM. "Once upon a time Conor, son of Fachtna, and the nobles of the Red Branch, went to a feast to the house of Feidhlim, the son of Doll, the king's principal story-teller; and the King and people were merry and light hearted, eating that feast in the house of the principal story-teller, with gentle music of the musicians, and with the melody of the voices of the bards and the ollavs, with the delight of the speech and ancient tales of the sages, and of those who read the keenes (?) (written on) flags and books; (listening) to the prognostications of the druids and of those who numbered the moon and stars. And at the time when the assembly were merry and pleasant in general it chanced that Feidhlim's wife bore a beautiful, well-shaped daughter, during the feast. Up rises expeditiously the gentle Cathfaidh, the Head-druid of Erin, who chanced to be present in the assembly at that time, and a bundle of his ancient ...? fairy books in his left hand with him, and out he goes on the border of the rath to minutely observe and closely scrutinise the clouds of the air, the position of the stars and the age of the moon, to gain a prognostication and a knowledge of the fate that was in store for the child who was born there. Cathfaidh then returns quickly to all in presence of the King and told them an omen and prophecy, that many hurts and losses should come to the province of Ulster on account of the girl that was born there. On the nobles of Ulster receiving this prophecy they resolved on the plan of destroying the infant, and the heroes of the Red Branch bade slay her without delay.