Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/257

Rh and weds her, in spite of her being dumb. When she bears her first child, the Virgin appears, and promises to give her back her speech if she will confess her fault; she refuses, whereupon the Virgin carries off the child. This happens thrice, and the queen, accused of devouring her children, is condemned to be burnt. She repents, the flames are extinguished, and the Virgin appears with the three children, whom she restores to the mother. Can there have been any similar form of the forbidden chamber current in Ireland, and can there have been substitution of Grainne, Finn's wife, for the Virgin Mary, or, vice versa, can the latter have taken the place of an older heathen goddess?—A.N.]

Page 169. See Campbell's "Tales of the Western Highlands," vol. III., page 120, for a fable almost identical with this of the two crows.