over and over, ‘There is no such race living now, none so finely proportioned,’ or the like, and then said, ‘The present Queen[G] is a nice, pleasant-looking woman, but she is not like her. What makes me think so little of the ladies is that I see none as they be,’ meaning as the spirits. ‘When I think of her and of the ladies now, they are like little children running about without knowing how to put their clothes on right. Is it the ladies? Why, I would not call them women at all.’ The other day a friend of mine questioned an old woman in a Galway workhouse about Queen Maive, and was told that ‘Queen Maive was handsome, and overcame all her enemies with a hazel stick, for the hazel is blessed, and the best weapon that can be got. You might walk the world with it,’ but she grew ‘very disagreeable in the end—oh, very disagreeable. Best not to be talking about it. Best leave it between the book and the hearer.’ My friend thought the old woman had got some scandal about Fergus son of Roy and Maive in her head. And I myself met once with a young man in the Burren Hills who remembered an old poet who made his poems in Irish and had met when he was young, the young man said, one who called herself Maive, and said she was a queen ‘among them,’ and asked him if he would have money or pleasure. He said he would have pleasure, and she gave him her love for a time, and then went from him, and ever after he was very mournful. The young man had often heard him sing the poem of lamentation that he made, but could only remember that it was ‘very mournful,’ and that he called her ‘beauty of all beauties.’ 1902. FOOTNOTE: [G] Queen Victoria. ENCHANTED WOODS I