There was a child that was changed, and my mother brought it a nice bit of potato cake one time, for tradesmen often have nice things on the table. But the child wouldn't touch it, for they don't like the leavings of a smith. * * * * * Blacksmiths have power, and if you could steal the water from the trough in the forge, it would cure all things. * * * * * And as to forges, there's some can hear working and hammering in them through the night. XII MONSTERS AND SHEOGUEY BEASTS XII MONSTERS AND SHEOGUEY BEASTS _The Dragon that was the monster of the early world now appears only in the traditional folk-tales, where the hero, a new Perseus, fights for the life of the Princess who looks on crying at the brink of the sea, bound to a silver chair, while the Dragon is "put in a way he will eat no more kings' daughters." In the stories of today he has shrunk to eel or worm, for the persons and properties of the folk-lore of all countries keep being transformed or remade in the imagination, so that once in New England on the eve of George Washington's birthday, the decorated shop windows set me wondering whether the cherry tree itself might not be a remaking of the red-berried dragon-guarded rowan of the Celtic tales, or it may be of a yet more ancient apple. I ventured to hint at this in a lecture at Philadelphia, and next day one of the audience wrote me that he had looked through all the early biographies of Washington, and either the first three or the first three editions of the earliest--I have mislaid the letter--never mention the cherry tree at all._ _The monstrous beasts told of today recall the visions of Maeldune on his strange dream-voyage, where he saw the beast that was like a horse and that had "legs of a hound with rough sharp nails," and the fiery pigs that fed on golden fruit, and the cat that with one flaming leap turned a thief to a heap of ashes; for the folk-tales of the world have long roots, and there is nothing new save their reblossoming._ _I have been told by a Car-driver:_ I went to serve one Patterson at a place called Grace Dieu between Waterford and Tramore, and there were queer things in it. There was a woman lived at the lodge the other side from the gate, and one day she was looking out and she saw a woolpack coming riding down the road of itself.