Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/265

 Collecta7iea. 237

house beside the road, and they were very poor people entirely. Well, there was a gentleman living at Cappagh Castle at that time, and his name was Osborne, and he was wanting a wife. So he thought that it would be a great honour to get one of the MacGraths, although they were so poor. So he rode up to Mrs. MacGrath's house one morning, and rapped at the door. So Mrs. MacGrath came out and welcomed him, and she asked him in. But he said he would not come in until he knew would he get what he wanted, and that was her eldest daughter's hand in marriage. So of course Mrs. MacGrath was glad to have a rich gentleman coming after her daughter, and so she approved readily. So she called out her eldest daughter, and she refused to marry him, and she said she was too poor to marry a rich gentleman, and that it would not be proper for her to marry anybody after the man who would have been her husband had been killed. So the second daughter was brought, and she refused him too on the same account ; also on account that the Osborne blood hadn't been long enough in the country. And the third one then came, and her name was Deas Marin Soidin Pilip, which means in English "Sweet Mary Silken Philip," because ye know 'Silken Philip ' was her father's name. Well, she accepted him, and they married and lived for a long time at Cappagh Castle, and she was very charitable and good to the poor.

30. Fionn MacCumhall and Saint Pddraic."^

Fionn MacCumhall was travelling of a day, and he heard some noises in a lios'— by the side of the road, and he got down off his horse. Well, there was a small stream flowing round the lios^ and a woman washing clothes by it ; so he spoke to the woman, and was making love with her. And she told him to come across the streaih to her. And when he did come across, the stream appeared to him to be a very large river entirely, and he couldn't be coming back over it. So he had to remain there, and he was three hundred years awaiting there in the lios with the fairies. But he enjoyed himself so well there that he did not feel the time,

^*Cf. supra, p. Ill, 11. 8-9, as regards the probable origin of this story (of which the latter part is usually told about Oisin).

— A green mound supposed to be a dwelling-place of the fairies.