St. bow, muttered, "Weel, I juist think naethin 

 Bridget ava ' o ' thon rainbows ... ye can see one 

 Shores wnenever y ou ta ^ the trouble to look for 

 them hereaboots." He saw them daily, or so 

 frequently that for him all beauty and strange- 

 ness had faded from these sudden evanescent 

 Children of Beauty. Beauty has only to be 

 perceptible to give an immediate joy, and it is 

 no paradoxical extravagance to say that one 

 may receive the thrilling communication from 

 ' the little flame of God ' by the homely road- 

 side as well as from these leaning towers built 

 of air and water with a mysterious alchemy 

 reveals to us on the cloudy deserts of heaven. 

 ' Man is surprised,' Emerson says, * to find that 

 things near and familiar are not less beautiful 

 and wondrous than things remote.' Certainly 

 no Gaelic lover of St. Bride's Flower, of the 

 Flower of February, but rejoices to see its 

 welcome face after the snow and sleet of 

 winter have first sullenly receded, if only for 

 a time, and to know that St. Bride of the 

 Shores wears it at her breast, and that when 

 she throws it broadcast the world is become 

 a green place again and the quickening sun- 

 light a gladsome reality. 



In these desolate far isles where life is so 

 hard, where the grey winds from the north 

 and east prevail for weeks at a time on the 



