The confused sobs and cries, a sound that is now 



Hill-Tarn. a forlorn ecstasy and now the voice of the 

 abyss and of immeasurable desolation. Another, 

 that on the east, is an unscalable cone, from 

 whose crest, when sunrise flames the serrated 

 crags into a crown of burning bronze, the 

 golden eagle sways like a slow-rising and slow- 

 falling meteor. All day, save for a brief hour 

 at noon, shadow dwells about its knees, and 

 never lifts from the dark grassy lochan at its 

 feet. It is called Maol Athair-Uaibhreach, the 

 Hill of the Haughty Father : I know not why. 

 'The Haughty Father' is a Gaelic analogue 

 for the Prince of Darkness son of Saturn, 

 as he is called in an old poem : * God's Elder 

 Brother,' as he is named in a legend that I 

 have met or heard of once only a legend 

 that He was God of this world before 'Mac 

 Greinne ' (lit : Son of the Sun) triumphed 

 over him, and drove him out of the East and 

 out of the South, leaving him only in the 

 West and in the North two ancient forgotten 

 cities of the moon, that in the West below the 

 thunder of grey seas and that in the North 

 under the last shaken auroras of the Pole. 



It is not easy to reach this tarn of Maoldhu 



even when the hillways are known. The 



mountain-flanks have so vast a sweep, with 



such wide tracts of barren declivity, where the 



48 



