Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/312

 304 Kiino Meyer.

that stands out of the water remains as it was. But if you take wood of another kind than this, it does not change its nature, though you place it in this water.

This is the second wonder in Todd (p. 195), but told somewhat differently and with the addition that the wood must be seven years in the water. — Nainius, § 76. — Not in Giraldus. — There are several lakes called Zf^r/z Cuilinn (Holly-lake) in Ireland. See Oss. Soc. vi, p. 120.

7. There are also two springs in the mountain that is called BlaAina (Slieve Bloom), which is almost a waste, and those springs have a wonderful nature. The one spring has this nature, if you take either a white sheep or a neat or a horse or a man that has white hair, and you bathe any one of these in that water, they become forth- with coal-black. And this is the nature of the other spring, if a man washes himself therein, whatsoever colour he has, whether he was red or white or black, then he becomes snow-white of hair, as if he were an old man.

Both the Irish Alirabilia (p. 197) and Giraldus (ii, 7) tell quite a different wonder of a well in Slieve Bloom. But cf. the wonder of the well Galloon, co. Monaghan (Todd, p. 195), and of a well in Munster (Gir. ii, 7) which turns human hair grey.

8. There is also a lake in that land, which they call Loghica (?) in their tongue. In this lake is a small islet, as if it were a floating isle. It floats about the water and comes sometimes so close to the land that a man may step on to it. And that happens most often on the Lord's days. And this is the nature of that islet : if the man who steps on it is sick, whatever disease he may have, and he eats of the grass that grows on the islet, then he is cured at once. It is also part of its nature that no more ever get on to it at the same time than one, though many wish it, because the islet at once floats from the land when one man has got on to it. This nature also the islet has, that it floats for six years together in that lake ; and as soon as the six years are gone, then it floats to land at some place,