A GARDEN DIARY 187 
King of Ossory, a man of sense amongst his 
people, beat upon his head, and spake thus: 
‘That reptile is the bearer of doleful news to 
Ireland.” Giraldus is careful, however, to 
assure us that ‘“‘no man will venture to suppose 
that this reptile was ever born in Ireland, for 
the mud there does not, as in other countries, 
contain the germs from which frogs are bred” ; 
indeed, in another part of the TZopographia 
f{ibernica we learn that frogs, toads, and snakes, 
if accidentally brought to Ireland, on being cast 
ashore, immediately “turning on their backs, do 
burst and die.” This statement is corroborated 
by a still more illustrious authority, that of 
the Venerable Bede, whom Giraldus quotes as 
follows : “ No reptile is found there” (in Ireland), 
“neither can any serpent live in it, for, though 
oft carried there out of Britain, so soon as the 
ship draws near the land, and ¢he scent of the 
ay from off the shore reaches them, immediately 
they die.” So efficacious was the very dust 
of Ireland that on “gardens or other places in 
foreign lands being sprinkled with it, immediately 
all venomous reptiles are driven away.” So, too, 
with fragments of the skins and bones of animals 
born and bred in Ireland; indeed, parings from 
Irish manuscripts, and scraps of the leather with 
which Irish books were bound, were amongst 
the accredited cures for snakebite until well on 
in the Middle Ages. Of his own personal 
