Afaj> 19, 1 881] 



NATURE 



51 



to what is technically known as Old Irish. It is some 

 consolation to Englishmen to know that English ortho- 

 graphy is not quite the worst in the world, and that 

 Tonald seldom writes, but that when he does he spells 

 more outrageously than the most wayward spelling-book 

 ever known in the land of the Southron. 



The philological articles in this review are very well 

 done, and will be found very instructive, and specially 

 adapted for beginners in the study of Celtic : but what 

 we presume would most attract the readers of Nature 

 in this number is the tale which it contains, published for 

 the first time. It was taken down some years ago in the 

 Island of Tiree, the Terra Etbica of Adamnan' s " Life 

 of St. Columba." This is a summary of it : — The King 

 of Ireland's heir was returning from hunting towards the 

 evening, when he was overtaken by a shower, out of 

 which came a big fellow with a fine steed and a marvel- 

 lously handsome woman. The big fellow challenged the 

 prince to play with him ; he did so, and the big fellow 

 was beaten, whereupon the prince took aw.iy his lady 

 companion. He met the same big fellow another day 

 and beat him again ; according to the woman's advice he 

 asked this time for the steed, which he took away with 

 him home. The woman told him he would be beaten the 

 next time, and how he was to act under his defeat. It 

 happened just as she had told him, the big fellow 

 laying him under charms, that he should have no rest or 

 peace until he discovered how the Tuairisgeul Mor met 

 with his death. He in his turn laid the big fellow under 

 a charm not to leave the spot until he should return from 

 the difficult expedition which was before him, and in which 

 ever so many kings' sons had perished in former times. 

 With the aid of the counsel of the woman he had taken 

 from the big fellow, and with the assistance of her three 

 wonderful brothers, to whom she recommended him, he 

 managed to execute the first part of his business. On 

 his way back on his horse, just as he had ridden through 

 a wide loch and cut it into two, he was met by a youth who 

 made unheard-of offers for the horse ; according to previous 

 advice he was to accept none of them, but to give away 

 the horse only for a grey old man the youth had at home. 

 The hero of the tale carries the grey old man on his 

 shoulders and is guided by him, but is always to do the 

 reverse of what he says. Each time this happened the 

 old man would say, " That gives longer life to you 

 and shorter life to me." At last they sat down in 

 a house, and the old man had to relate the tale 

 of his life, which was to yield the prince the in- 

 formation he was in quest of. He said that he 

 was one of the three sons of a king, who were turned 

 into wolves by their stepmother with her mallet of 

 Druidism. They avenged themselves on her by killing 

 her hens, until she got all the sportsmen in the land 

 assembled to destroy them, when they were driven to 

 shelter themselves under a big rock near the sea. There 

 two died, and the surviving one, seeing a ship not far off, 

 swam so near it that the captain ordered him to be 

 picked up. By and by he became a pet of the captain's, 

 v/ho took him home to his wife. Some time afterwards 

 she was confined of a boy, and the midwives, after 

 dressing the baby, went to sleep, while the wolf lay 

 quietly below the bed ; ere long he saw a big fist coming 

 in through the roof and snatching the baby away. When 



the midwives woke they smeared iblood on the animal, 

 and laid the blame on it of having devoured the child, in 

 order to clear themselves of neglect. The captain was 

 loath to kill his pet wolf. The same thing happened 

 another year ; but the third time the beast watched, and 

 beheld the fist coming in through the roof, when he 

 seized hold of it, and tore it off at the shoulder ; however, 

 the other hand seized the child, but the wolf gave chase, 

 and made its way into a little island with a cave in it 

 where he found that' the robber was a giant. The baby 

 was under his arm, and the children previously stolen 

 were playing in the cave. The giant being asleep, he got 

 at his throat, and so the Tuairisgeul IVIor found his death. 

 After relating how the three children were brought home 

 to their father, the captain, and how he himself recovered 

 his human form, the old man said : " 1 am not to live 

 any longer; throw me into yonder cauldron." The King 

 of Erin's son now returned to the hill, where the big 

 fellow who used to challenge him to play, lay with his 

 bones by this time bleached by the wind and the rain ; 

 but when the prince told him how the Tuairisgeul Mor 

 had been put to death he was gathered together, and rose 

 from the hillock alive and well, while the young prince 

 went home to marry the beautiful maiden who had 

 enabled him to overcome all the difficulties which had 

 met him. 



We have read various tales at different times containing 

 similar incidents, but the only one we shall mention here 

 is that of Pwyll, Prince of Dyved, in Lady Charlotte 

 Guest's " Mabinogion," where it is related how he lost his 

 first-born the night he was born ; and how another prince 

 of South Wales used to lose the colts of a remarkable 

 mare he had about the same time. .\\. last the latter 

 watched, and cut off the hand that was in the act of 

 seizing a colt through a window ; but what we wished to 

 come to was this — the time is specified in the Welsh tale, 

 namely the first day of May everj- year. Possibly this 

 may suggest to somebody who has made a study of such 

 legends what they really mean ; but we abstain from giving 

 any crude theories of our own on the matter. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Zwangsiiiassige LichteinpJinduHgcn durch Schall mid 

 %'erwandtc Erscheimtngen atif dcm Ccbicte der anderen 

 Stiin(se»tpjindi(ngeit (Sensations of Light generated by 

 Sound, and related Phenomena in the Sensations of 

 other Organs of Sense). By E. Bleuler and K. Lehmann 

 8vo, pp. 96. (Leipzig : Fues's Verlag, 1881.) 

 As the authors (two medical students of Zurich) were 

 conversing on chemistry in the autumn of 1878, Bleuler 

 bei g asked what was the appearance of cctones (sub- 

 stances of which acetone or naphtha is the type), got out 

 of the difficulty at once by saying, " They are yellow, 

 because their name contains an 0." Lehmann, astonished, 

 inquired what such an apparently absurd answer meant, 

 and then found that from childhood Bleuler, on hearing, 

 or even thinking of any vowel or word, immediately saw 

 a colour, and that many of his relatives were in the same 

 condition. Such was the origin of this investigation, and 

 it is remarkable for having been carried on by one who 

 always saw the colours (Bleuler) and one who never saw 

 them (Lehmann). Such appearances of colour generated 

 by sound are here called pholisms, while sensations of 

 sound generated by colour are termed phonisms, and 

 both are called " secondary sensations or perceptions," 



