The way is strewn with lichens and mosses; rich green hollies and arbutus surround us on every side; the ivy hangs in sweet disorder from the rocks; and when we reach the innermost recess of the glen we can find moist green jungles of ferns and bracken, a very bending, curling forest of fronds:-- 'The fairy's tall palm-tree, the heath bird's fresh nest, And the couch the red deer deems the sweetest and best.' Carrantual rears its crested head high above the other mountains, and on its summit Shon the Outlaw, footsore, weary, slept; sighing, "For once, thank God, I am above all my enemies." You must go to sweet Innisfallen, too, and you must not be prosaic or incredulous at the boatman's stories, or turn the 'bodthered ear to them.' These are no ordinary hillsides: not only do the wee folk troop through the frond forests nightly, but great heroic figures of romance have stalked majestically along these mountain summits.

Every waterfall foaming and dashing from its rocky bed in the glen has a legend in the toss and swirl of the water.
Can't you see the O'Sullivan, famous for fleetness of foot and prowess in the chase, starting forth in the cool o' the morn to hunt the red deer?
His dogs sniff the heather; a splendid stag bounds across the path; swift as lightning the dogs follow the scent across moors and glens.

Throughout the long day the chieftain chases the stag, until at nightfall, weary and thirsty, he loses the scent, and blows a blast on his horn to call the dogs homeward.
And then he hears a voice: "O'Sullivan, turn back!" He looks over his shoulder to behold the great Finn McCool, central figure in centuries of romance.
"Why do you dare chase my stag ?" he asks.
"Because it is the finest man ever saw," answers the chieftain composedly.
"You are a valiant man," says the hero, pleased with the reply; "and as you thirst from the long chase, I will give you to drink." So he crunches his giant heel into the rock, and forth burst the waters, seething and roaring as they do to this day; "and may the divil fly away wid me if I've spoke an unthrue word, ma'am!" Come to Lough Lein as did we, too early for the crowd of sightseers; but when the 'long light shakes across the lakes,' the blackest arts of the tourist (and they are as black as they are many) cannot break the spell.
Sitting on one of these hillsides, we heard a bugle-call taken up and repeated in delicate, ethereal echoes,--sweet enough, indeed, to be worthy of the fairy buglers who are supposed to pass the sound along their lines from crag to crag, until it faints and dies in silence.

And then came the 'Lament for Owen Roe O'Neil.' We were thrilled to the very heart with the sorrowful strains; and when we issued from our leafy covert, and rounded the point of rocks from which the sound came, we found a fat man in uniform playing the bugle.

'Blank's Tours' was embroidered on his cap, and I have no doubt that he is a good husband and father, even a good citizen, but he is a blight upon the landscape, and fancy cannot breathe in his presence.