A Harvest of Irish Folk-Lore 329 



bit of folk-lore as one could wish to find! A 

 lovely country, of course, was that land of sprout- 

 ing life, and some queer customs did they have 

 there. The mode of " running for office " was es- 

 pecially worthy of mention. Once in seven years 

 all the champions and best men " met at the front 

 of the palace, and ran to the top of a hill two 

 miles distant. On the top of that hill was a chair, 

 and the man that sat first in the chair was king of 

 Tir na n-Og for the next seven years." This method 

 enabled them to dispense with nominating conven- 

 tions and campaign lies, but not with intrigue and 

 sorcery, as we find in the droll story of Oisin (or 

 Ossian), which concludes the Fenian series. 



The story of the Fisherman's Son and the Grua- 

 gach of Tricks is substantially the same with the 

 famous story of Farmer Weathersky, in the Norse 

 collection translated by Sir George Dasent. Gru- 

 agach (accented on the first syllable) means u the 

 hairy one," and, as Mr. Curtin cautiously observes, 

 " we are more likely to be justified in finding a 

 solar agent concealed in the person of the laughing 

 Gruagach or the Gruagach of Tricks than in many 

 of the sun myths put forth by some modern writ- 

 ers." He reminds one of Hermes and of Proteus, 

 and in the wonderful changes at the end of the 

 story we have, as in Farmer Weathersky, a vari- 



