Scores of peasants may be found who have actually seen him, and half the population believe in his seven-year visits. Many curious stories of which O'Donaghue is the hero have been invented in the generations that have passed by imaginative mothers to entertain their children. When I asked a thoughtful jaunting car driver if he believed in the periodical appearance of the ancient lord of the lake, he answered: "Wall, I dunno', I dunno'; me mither tould me the tale wid her own blessed lips; me wife has tould it jist the same to our own children, and I am shure The O'Donaghue isn't in Killarney the rist of the toime, and why shouldn't he have the pleasure of comin' for one noight?" St. Patrick never came to Killarney, but the legend is that he climbed up to the top of the tallest mountain, stretched out his hands over the lakes and said: "I bless all beyint the reeks" (mountains). Fin MacCool kept his tubs of gold in the lake near Muckross Abbey and his dog Bran watched them. "One day a brute of an Englishman, an' a great diver intirely, came over to git the goold, and when he wint down into the wather the dog Bran sazed him by the trousers and shook the life out of him until he died, and his ghost has been wanderin' around there ivir sence." The shore of the lake under the windows of Ross Castle is strewn with curious-looking flat stones. They are the books of his library which The O'Donaghue threw out of the window when he was mad one day, and they turned to rocks. When The O'Donaghue was a slip of a boy and was sitting in front of the castle an old woman came running along shrieking that the O'Sullivans had come through the pass from County Cork and were stealing the cattle. "The O'Donaghue, thin only thirteen years old, bedad, seizes an oulde sword and kills every mother's son of the thaving blaggards, an' sticks their bodies up agin the wall as a warning to all the ruffians of the clans beyant the mountains. "When The O'Donaghue was a young man and went into his first battle he slew six hundred of his enemies in a single day. He fought so long and became so tired that his legs and arms would have fallen off his body if they hadn't been held together by his armor.