CHAPTER XLVL 



An old Fingalian Hero His keenness of Sight and sharpness of Ear Foresters and Keepers 

 Foxhunters Donald MacDonald His Dogs Sandy MacArthur the Mole-catcher. 



THE hero of one of our most popular old Fingalian tales is described 

 as very marvellously gifted. In order to secure the hand of a 

 beautiful Scandinavian princess, whose locks are as the beams of 

 the setting sun, about the time the summer sea is flecked and 

 barred with gold, and with whom he has long been in love, he has 

 to undertake the most strange and startling adventures; and 

 not the least important of his qualifications for combating the 

 frequent difficulties of his position is a preternatural acuteness of 

 eye and ear, of sight and hearing. His keenness of sight, for 

 instance, is indicated by his being able to count the beats of the 

 swallow's wings in all the gyrations of its flight over the summer 

 grove ; and as for his acuteness of ear, enough is said when the 

 veracious chronicler does not hesitate to assert that his hero could 

 hear the grass grow 1 ? "We, in our unheroic and degenerate day, 

 cannot boast of anything like this. We are content to know that 

 the swallow skims the pool with a swiftness due to a motion of 

 wing too rapid to be detected in its separate beats by the acutest eye, 

 and that the grass does grow, and at times with marvellous rapidity, 

 albeit the stir and tumult of its upward rush is inaudible to human 

 ears. But if we cannot hear the grass grow, we can safely aver that 

 in such exceptionally splendid seasons as this [July 1875], and 

 without fear of being charged with any very culpable exaggeration, 

 we can see it grow, not only from day to day, but almost literally 



