[Footnote 12: For division of labour between the sexes, see Frazer, _Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_, ii, 129. For prohibitions of the presence of males when specifically female work was being transacted, Plummer quotes Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, Eng. Trans., iv, 1778 ("Men shall not stay in the house while women are stuffing feathers in the beds, otherwise the feathers will prick through the bed-ticking"). O'Curry (_Manners and Customs_, iii, p. 121), commenting on this story, refers to times and seasons deemed unlucky for dyeing, at the time when he wrote; but the prohibition of the presence of males was forgotten.] [Footnote 13: Vafthrudnismal 41; Grimnismal 18. (_Edda_, ed. Hafn, 1787, vol. i, pp. 24, 48.)] [Footnote 14: F.M. Luzel, _Contes populaires de Basse-Bretagne_ (Paris, 1887), vol. i, p. 219 ff. Some other parallels are quoted by Plummer, VSH, i, p. cxliii, note 5.] [Footnote 15: There is evidence from various literary sources that cattle thus peculiarly coloured were accounted sacred in ancient Ireland.] [Footnote 16: There should be no hypermetric syllables, but I have been unable to avoid them.] [Footnote 17: _Horae Hebraicae_ in Evangel. Matt., xv, 36, following the tract _Berakoth_.] [Footnote 18: O'Donnell's _Life of St. Columba_, ed. O'Kelleher, p. 120.] [Footnote 19: For the story of Coirpre, see _Lismore Lives_, ed. Stokes, preface p. xvi; _Revue celtique_, xxvi, 368. For the story of Ambacuc, see _Silua Gadelica_, no. xxxi; _Eriu_, vol. vi, p. 159.] [Footnote 20: A fully illustrated description of this relic by Mr. E.C.R. Armstrong will be found in _Journal_, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. xlix, p. 132.] [Footnote 21: _Book of the Dun Cow_, printed in _Zeitschrift fuer Celtische Philologie_, iii, 218.] [Footnote 22: _Feilire Oengusso_, Henry Bradshaw Society edition, p. 12.] [Footnote 23: _Revue celtique_, xv, at p. 491.] [Footnote 24: I should here have quoted as a parallel the oft-described Indian rope-trick, which is alleged to be a hypnotic feat, had I not been recently assured by a relative who knows India well that no one has yet been discovered who has actually seen this trick performed, and that it is probably nothing more than a piece of folk-lore.] [Footnote 25: See his important series of papers, _Ueber directe Handelsverbindungen Westgalliens mit Irland im Altertum und frueher Mittelalter_, published in _Sitzungsberichte der koenigliche preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften_, 1909, vol. i.] [Footnote 26: _Life of Colman mac Luachain_, Todd Lectures Series, Royal Irish Academy, vol. xvii, p. 86.] [Footnote 27: Bede's _Life of Cuthbert_, Sec. xxxix.] [Footnote 28: This is evidently a mistranslation of _boban_, the translator having in mind the word _ban_, "white."] [Footnote 29: Henry Bradshaw Society edition, vol. i, p. 157.] [Footnote 30: Although the sense appears to run continuously from one stanza to the next in their present collocation.]