The tossing its white crest, or of the green billow 



Sea-Spell, falling like a tower of jade in a seething flood. 

 But, first, I recall that old legend to which I 

 have alluded. Perhaps some folklorist may 

 recognise it as gathered out of the drift 

 common to many shores, may trace it even 

 to those Asian inlands where so many of our 

 most ancient tales mysteriously arose ; but I 

 have nowhere met with it in print, nor seen 

 nor heard allusion to it, other than in a crude 

 fashioning on the lips of simple Gaelic folk, 

 nor even there for years upon years. There 

 were once four cities (the Western Gael will 

 generally call them Gorias and Falias, Finias 

 and Murias), the greatest and most beautiful 

 of the cities of those ancient tribes of beauty, 

 the offspring of angels and the daughters of 

 earth. The fair women were beautiful, but 

 lived like flowers, and like flowers faded and 

 were no more, for they were filled with happi- 

 ness, as cups of ivory filled with sunlit dancing 

 wine, but were soulless. Eve, that sorrowful 

 loveliness, was not yet born. Adam was not 

 yet lifted out of the dust of Eden. Finias 

 was the gate of Eden to the South, Murias to 

 the West : in the North, Falias was crowned 

 by a great star : in the East, Gorias, the city 

 of gems, flashed like sunrise. There the death- 

 less clan of the sky loved the children of Lilith. 

 1 60 



