And Fair, Fierce Women - Page 2

overcame all her enemies with a bawl stick, for the hazel
is blessed, and the best weapon that can be got. You might walk the
world with it," but she grew "very disagreeable in the end--oh very
disagreeable. Best not to be talking about it. Best leave it between
the book and the hearer." My friend thought the old woman had got some
scandal about Fergus son of Roy and Maive in her head.

[FN#7] Queen Victoria.

And I myself met once with a young man in the Burren Hills who
remembered an old poet who made his poems in Irish and had met when he
was young, the young man said, one who called herself Maive, and said
she was a queen "among them," and asked him if he would have money or
pleasure. He said he would have pleasure, and she gave him her love for
a time, and then went from him, and ever after he was very mournful.
The young man had often heard him sing the poem of lamentation that he
made, but could only remember that it was "very mournful," and that he
called her "beauty of all beauties."

1902.