I find that I have unintentionally changed the old story of Conchubar’s death. He did not see the crucifixion in a vision, but was told about it. He had been struck by a ball, made of the dried brain of a dead enemy, and hurled out of a sling; and this ball had been left in his head, and his head had been mended, the ‘Book of Leinster’ says, with thread of gold because his hair was like gold. Keating, a writer of the time of Elizabeth, says, ‘In that state did he remain seven years, until the Friday on which Christ was crucified, according to some historians; and when he saw the unusual changes of the creation and the eclipse of the sun and the moon at its full, he asked of Bucrach, a Leinster Druid, who was along with him, what was it that brought that unusual change upon the planets of Heaven and Earth. “Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” said the Druid, “who is now being crucified by the Jews.” “That is a pity,” said Conchubar; “were I in his presence I would kill those who were putting him to death.” And with that he brought out his sword, and rushed at a woody grove which was convenient to him, and began to cut and fell it; and what he said was, that if he were among the Jews, that was the usage he would give them, and from the excessiveness of his fury which seized upon him, the ball started out of his head, and some of the brain came after it, and in that way he died. The wood of Lanshraigh, in Feara Rois, is the name by which that shrubby wood is called.’ I have imagined Cuchulain meeting Fand ‘walking among flaming dew.’ The story of their love is one of the most beautiful of our old tales. I have founded the man ‘who drove the gods out of their Liss,’ or fort, upon something I have read about Caolte after the battle of Gabra, when almost all his companions were killed, driving the gods out of their Liss, either at Osraighe, now Ossory, or at Eas Ruaidh, now Asseroe, a waterfall at Ballyshannon, where Ilbreac, one of the children of the goddess Danu, had a Liss. But maybe I only read it in Mr. Standish O’Grady, who has a fine imagination, for I find no such story in Lady Gregory’s book. I have founded ‘the proud dreaming king’ upon Fergus, the son of Roigh, the legendary poet of ‘the quest of the bull of Cuailgne,’ as he is in the ancient story of Deirdre, and in modern poems by Ferguson. He married Nessa, and Ferguson makes him tell how she took him ‘captive in a single look.’ ‘I am but an empty shade, Far from life and passion laid; Yet does sweet remembrance thrill All my shadowy being still.’