longing of the wind of the west. But that I The 

 have told, and am more fully telling, elsewhere. Cuckoo's 

 Two summers ago, on the Sound of Morven, 

 I was told a fragmentary legend of Conlay 

 (Connleach), the son of Cuchulain, when a 

 youth in Skye, and how he went to Ireland 

 and, all unwitting, fought to the death with 

 his father — as in the Greek tale of Oidipous, as 

 in the Persian tale of Sohrab : and, unknowing 

 relevancy or keeping to the ancestral word, 

 the teller emphasised this old myth-tale of the 

 cuckoo that knows not and is not known by 

 its own offspring, by adding, * Aye, it was a 

 meeting of cuckoos, that : father and son, the 

 one not knowing the other any more than a 

 cuckoo on the wind knows father or mother, 

 brother or sister.' 



Of all the cuckoo-tales there is none lovelier 

 than that told of our Gaelic hero in 'The 

 Wooing of Blathmaid.' This sleeping queen 

 or lost princess, whose name signifies 

 'Blossom,' lives on a remote island. With the 

 Gaelic teller this island will be the Isle of Man, 

 home of Mananan, that ancient god whose cold 

 hands grope blindly along the shores of the 

 world : with the Swede or Finn or Esth it will 

 be that other city set among cold forgotten 

 waters, that other Mana. Cuchulain loves 

 Blathmaid, and their wooing is so sweet that 



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