Altar to God Almighty, and she also caused to nurse or foster too [two] young orphans. But so it was, we never saw nor heard neither the like of that day nor comparable to its glory and solace. And she gave the second inviting proclamation (to every one that came not that day) on the feast day of the Assumption of our Blessed Lady Mary in harvest, at or in the Rath-Imayn, and so we have been informed that that second day in Rath-Imayn was nothing inferior to the first day.” We know something of the manner of these national festivals, for the Irish were long practised in the organizing of general conventions, and their poets have left us some curious details. One tells of a company of the Tyrone poets gathered in 1577 at O’Neill’s house, where the poets sat ranged along a hall hung with red on either side of the chief, and standing up beside the host pledged him in ale quaffed from golden goblets and beakers of horn; and having told their song or story for a price, took their gifts of honour. Another describes a greater company, such an assembly as that of Margaret, invited in 1351 to the castle of William O’Kelly. “The chroniclers of comely Ireland, it is a gathering of a mighty host, the company is in the town; where is the street of the chroniclers? “The fair, generous-hearted host have another spacious avenue of white houses for the bardic companies and the jugglers. * * * * * “Such is the arrangement of them, ample roads between them; even as letters in their lines. “Each thread of road, bare, smooth, straight, firm, is contained within two threads of smooth, conical roofed houses. “The ridge of the bright-furrowed slope is a plain lined with houses, behind the crowded plain is a fort, as it were a capital letter.” The castle itself was worthy of one born into the Irish inheritance, of the great lineage of their race: far off it is recognised, the star-like mass of stone, its outer smoothness like vellum--a castle which was the standard of a mighty chieftain; bright is the stone thereof, ruddy its timber. “Close is the joining of its timber and its lime-washed stone; there is no gaping where they touch; the work is a triumph of art. “There is much artistic ironwork upon the shining timber: on the smooth part of each brown oaken beam workmen are carving animal figures. “On the smooth wall of the warm mansion--amazing in its beauty--is the track of a slender, pointed pen; light, fresh, narrow. “The bardic companies of pleasant-meadowed Fóla, and those of Scotland--a distant journey--will be acquainted with one another after arriving in William’s lofty castle. “Herein will come the seven grades who form the shape of genuine poesy; the seven true orders of poets, their entrance is an omen of expenditure. “Many coming to the son of Donnchadh from the north, no less from the south, an assembly of scholars: a billeting from west and east, a company seeking for cattle.