or on some lapwing-haunted pasture-edge, or The Wild 

 in the heathy wilderness, on the wild-apple in Apple, 

 bloom, is to know one of the most thrilling 

 experiences of the Spring. As a rule the wild- 

 apple stands solitary. Seen thus, it has often 

 something of the remote element of dreamland. 

 I came once, in the heart of a beechwood, on 

 a single tree of laburnum, in full glory of dense 

 unfallen gold. How did it come to be there, 

 what wind had first brought it on the tides of 

 birth, what friendly nurture had led the seed- 

 ling to the sapling and the sapling to lovely 

 youth ? I wondered ; but most I wondered 

 at the sudden beauty, at the unexpected 

 revelation of vistas other than those of the 

 woodland, at the unloosening of the secret 

 gates of dreams and the imagination. Faerie 

 stood open. Angus Og, the Celtic Apollo 

 Chrusokumos, the golden Balder of the Gael, 

 stood yonder just a moment ago, surely? 

 Yonder, in the sunlit greenness, Midir of the 

 Dew it was who passed swiftly among the bat- 

 wings of disguising shadows ? Was that 

 Findabair going like a moonbeam, there in 

 the sea-caverns of the green leaf? Or was it 

 Fand, whose laughter the storm-thrush caught, 

 long, long ago ? Surely that was an echo of 

 old forgotten song in the gloom of the beeches ? 

 Could it be Fedelm of the Sidhe, ' the young 



129 K 



