Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/43

Rh But this touch shows that the land where he wandered was the Celtic Hades, the country of the dead beneath the ground, and seems to stamp the tale at once as at least pre-Christian.

Even in such an unpretending-looking story as "The King of Ireland's Son" (the third in this volume), there are elements which must be vastly old. In a short Czech story, "George with the Goat," we find some of the prince's companions figuring, only slightly metamorphosed. We have the man with one foot over his shoulder, who jumps a hundred miles when he puts it down; while the gun-man of the Irish story who performs two parts—that of seeing and shooting—is replaced in the Bohemian tale by two different men, one of whom has such sight that he must keep a bandage over his eyes, for if he removed it he could see a hundred miles, and the other has, instead of a gun, a bottle with his thumb stuck into it for a stopper, because if he took it out it would squirt a hundred miles. George hires one after the other, just as the prince does in the Irish story. George goes to try to win the king's daughter, as the Irish prince does, and, amongst other things, is desired to bring a goblet of water from a well a hundred miles off in a minute. "So," says the story, "George said to the man who had the foot on his