Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/317

Rh had ended his prayer, he went out and sat down a short distance from his house. There stood a large-sized willow-tree. He looked up into the branches of the tree as if expecting mercy and some comfort from there. Then at once he saw that apples had grown on that willow as if it were on an apple-tree in its proper time, and he took from it the three apples and brought them to the lad. When the lad had eaten of those apples, his disease began to lessen, and he was cured. And that willow-tree has ever since retained the gift which God gave to it then; for in every year it bears apples like an apple-tree, and these have ever since been called 'Saint Kevin's apples'. And they are taken throughout all Ireland so that men may eat thereof if they fall ill, and they seem to get relief thereby. These apples are good for all diseases of men, though they are not desirable to eat for the sake of sweetness.

Hitherto we have mentioned those things only which were done through holiness, and which remain to-day as witnesses of the event, and seem as wonderful now as on the first day when they were done. Yet there are other things which men hold certainly for true, and which we may now also show forth.

16. There is also in that land the place which is called Themer (Tara), and that place was once as it were the chief seat and king's castle; yet it is now deserted, because men dare not inhabit it. And the cause why that place became deserted is this. All the people of the land believed that the king who sat in that place would always give right judgments and none other. And though they