this emerald carpet below the green shadowy The Clans 



roof of waving palms ; and as of all women in °f tne 



Grass 

 the world there could be but one, according to 



the old legend, worthy to be the supreme 

 bride of the Prophet, what poetic name for 

 her so fitting as this exquisite apparition of 

 the desert, so beautiful, so evernew in itself, 

 so welcome for its association with sweet 

 waters and shade and coolness. A Gaelic 

 poet calls the grass the Gift of Christ, literally 

 slender - greenness of Christ (uaineachd - caol 

 Chriosde), and another has written of how it 

 it came to be called Green-Peace — both from 

 an old tale (one of the many ebbed, forgotten 

 tales of the isles) that, when God had created 

 the world, Christ said " Surely one thing yet 

 lacks, My Father : soft greenness for the barren 

 mountain, soft greenness for rocks and cliffs, 

 soft greenness for stony places and the wilder- 

 ness, soft greenness for the airidhs of the poor." 

 Whereupon God said " Let thy tenderness be 

 upon these things, O my Son, and thy peace 

 be upon them, and let the green grass be the 

 colour of peace and of home " — and thereafter, 

 says the taleteller, the Eternal Father turned 

 to the Holy Spirit and said of the Son that 

 from that hour He should be named the 

 Prince of Peace, Prionnsa na Sioth-cainnt 

 canar ris. 



27 



