The Essential Celtic Folklore Collection. Lady Gregory

hush!" said the fair chronicler. "As you hope for favour or information in our fair counties of Galway or Mayo, never dare to question the truth of a legend--never venture a 'perhaps' for the purpose of making a tale more reasonable, nor endeavour to substitute the reign of common sense In hopes of superseding the empire of the fairies. Go to-morrow to the Cave of Cong, and if you return still an unbeliever, I give you up as an irreclaimable infidel."

      A White Trout

      A Legend of Cong

      THE next morning I proceeded alone to the cave, to witness the natural curiosity of its subterranean river, my interest in the visit being somewhat increased by the foregoing tale. Leaving my home at the little village of Cong I bent my way on foot through the fields, if you may venture to give that name to the surface of this immediate district of the couuty Mayo, which, presenting large flat muses of limestone, intersected by patches of verdure, gives one the idea much more of a burial-ground covered with monumental slabs than a formation of Nature. Yet (I must make this remark en passant) such is the richness of the pasture in these little verdant interstices, that cattle are fattened upon it in a much shorter time than on a meadow of the most cultured aspect; and though to the native of Leinster this land (if we may 'be pardoned a premeditated bull) would appear all stones, the Mayo farmer knows it from experience to be a profitable tenure. Sometimes deep clefts occur between these laminae of limestone rock, which, closely overgrown with verdure, have not infrequently occasioned serious accidents to man. and beast; and one of these chasms, of larger dimensions than usual, forms the entrance to the celebrated cave in question.

      Very rude steps of unequal height, partly natural and partly artificial, lead the explorer of its quiet beauty, by an abrupt descent, to the bottom of the cave, which contains an enlightened area of some thirty or forty feet, whence a naturally vaulted passage opens, of the deepest gloom. The depth of the cave may be about equal to its width at the bottom; the mouth is not more than twelve or fifteen feet across; and pendent from its margin clusters of ivy and other parasite plants bang and cling in all the fantastic variety of natural festooning and tracery. It is a truly beautiful and poetical little spot, and particularly interesting to the stranger from, being unlike anything else one has ever seen, and having none of the noisy and vulgar pretence of regular show-places, which calls upon you every moment to exclaim "Prodigious!"

      An elderly and decent-looking woman had just filled her pitcher with the deliciously cold and clear water of the subterranean river that flowed along its bed of small, smooth, and many-coloured pebbles, as I arrived at the bottom; and perceiving at once that I was a stranger, she paused, partly perhaps with the pardonable pride of displaying her local knowledge, but more from the native peasant politeness of her country, to become the temporary Cicerone of the cave. She spoke some word of Irish, and hurried forth on her errand a very handsome and active boy, of whom she informed me she was the great-grandmother.

      "Great-grandmother! "I repeated, in unfeigned astonishment.

      "Yes, your honour," she answered, with evident pleasure sparkling In her eyes, which time had not yet deprived of then, brightness, or the soul-subduing influence of this selfish world bereft of their kind-hearted expression.

      "You are the youngest woman I have ever seen," said I, "to be a great-grandmother."

      "Troth, I don't doubt you, sir," she answered.

      "And you seem still in good health, and likely to live many a year yet," said I.

      "With the help of God, sir," said she reverently.

      "But," I added, "I perceive a great number of persons about here of extreme age. Now, how long generally do the people in this country live?"

      "Troth, sir," said she, with the figurative drollery of her country, "we live here as long as we like."

      "Well, that is no inconsiderable privilege," said I; "but you, nevertheless, must have married very young?"

      "I was not much over sixteen, your honour, when I had my first child at my breast."

      "That was beginning early," said I.

      "Thrue for you, sir; and faith, Noreen (that's my daughter, sir)--Noreen herself lost no time either; I suppose she thought she had as good a right as the mother before her--she was married at seventeen, and a likely couple herself and her husband was. So you see, sir, it was not long before I was a granny. Well, to make the saying good, 'As the ould cock crows, the young bird cherrups,' and faiks, the whole breed, seed, and generation tuk after the owld woman (that's myself sir); and so, in coorse of time, I was not only a granny, but a grate granny; and, by the same token, here comes my darling Paudeen Bawn, with what I sent him for."

      Here the fine little fellow I have spoken of, with his long fair hair curling about his shoulders, descended into the cave, bearing some faggot of bogwood, a wisp of straw, and a lighted sod of turf.

      "Now, your honour, it's what you'll see the pigeon-hole to advantage."

      "What pigeon-hole!" said I.

      "Here where we are," she replied.

      "Why is it so called?" l inquired.

      "Because, sir, the wild pigeons often build in the bushes and the ivy that's round the mouth of the cave, and in here too," said she, pointing into the gloomy depth of the interior.

      "Blow that turf, Paudeen; "and Paudeen, with distended cheeks and compressed lips, forthwith poured a few vigorous blasts on the sod of turf, which soon flickered and blazed, while the kind old woman lighted her faggots of bogwood at the flame.

      "Now, sir, follow me," 'said my conductress.

      "I am sorry you have had so much trouble on my account," said I. "Oh, no throuble in life, your honour, but the greatest of pleasure;" and so saying, she proceeded into the cave, and I followed, carefully choosing my steps by the help of her torch-light along the slippery path of rock that overhung the river. When she had reached a point of some little elevation, she held up her lighted pine branches, and waving them to and fro, asked me could I see the top of the cave.

      The effect of her figure was very fine, illumined as it was in the midst of utter darkness by the red glare of the blazing faggots; and as she wound them round her head, and shook their flickering sparks about, it required no extraordinary stretch of imagination to suppose her, with her ample cloak of dark drapery, and a few straggling tresses of grey hair escaping from the folds of a rather Eastern head-dress, some sibyl about to commence an awful rite, and evoke her ministering spirits from the dark void, or call some water-demon from the river, which rushed unseen along, telling of its wild course by the turbulent dash of its waters, which the reverberation of the cave rendered still more hollow.

      She shouted aloud, and the cavern - echoes answered to her summons. "Look!" said she--and she lighted the wisp of straw, and flung it on the stream. It floated rapidly away, blazing in wild undulations over the perturbed surface of the river, and at length suddenly disappeared altogether. The effect was most picturesque and startling; it was even awful. I might almost say sublime!

      Her light being nearly expired, we retraced our steps, and emerging from the gloom, stood beside the river, in the enlightened area I have described.

      "Now, sir," said my old woman, "we must thry and see the white throut; and you never seen a throut o' that colour yet, I warrant."

      I assented to the truth of this.

      "They say it's a fairy throut, yer honour, and tells mighty quare stories about it."

      "What are they?" I inquired.

      "Troth, it's myself doesn't know the half o' them--only partly; but sthrive and see it before you go, sir, for there's them that says it isn't lucky to come to the cave and lave it without seein' the white throat. And if you're a bachelor, sir, and didn't get a peep at it, throth, you'd never be married, and sure that 'id be a murther."

      "Oh,"