You know, dears, in the old countries there are many fine stories about things which happened so very long ago that nobody knows exactly how much of them is true.  Ireland is like that.  It is so old that even as long ago as four thousand years it had people who dug in the mines, and knew how to weave cloth and to make beautiful ornaments out of gold, and who could fight and make laws; but we do not know just where they came from, nor exactly how they lived.  These people left us some splendid stories about their kings, their fights, and their beautiful women; but it all happened such a long time ago that the stories are mixtures of things that really happened and what people said about them, and we don’t know just which is which.  The stories are called legends.  One of the prettiest legends is the story I am going to tell you about the Dagda’s harp.

It is said that there were two quite different kinds of people in Ireland:  one set of people with long dark hair and dark eyes, called Fomorians—­they carried long slender spears made of golden bronze when they fought—­and another race of people who were golden-haired and blue-eyed, and who carried short, blunt, heavy spears of dull metal.

The golden-haired people had a great chieftain who was also a kind of high priest, who was called the Dagda.  And this Dagda had a wonderful magic harp.  The harp was beautiful to look upon, mighty in size, made of rare wood, and ornamented with gold and jewels; and it had wonderful music in its strings, which only the Dagda could call out.  When the men were going out to battle, the Dagda would set up his magic harp and sweep his hand across the strings, and a war song would ring out which would make every warrior buckle on his armour, brace his knees, and shout, “Forth to the fight!” Then, when the men came back from the battle, weary and wounded, the Dagda would take his harp and strike a few chords, and as the magic music stole out upon the air, every man forgot his weariness and the smart of his wounds, and thought of the honour he had won, and of the comrade who had died beside him, and of the safety of his wife and children.  Then the song would swell out louder, and every warrior would remember only the glory he had helped win for the king; and each man would rise at the great table, his cup in his hand, and shout “Long live the King!”

There came a time when the Fomorians and the golden-haired men were at war; and in the midst of a great battle, while the Dagda’s hall was not so well guarded as usual, some of the chieftains of the Fomorians stole the great harp from the wall, where it hung, and fled away with it.  Their wives and children and some few of their soldiers went with them, and they fled fast and far through the night, until they were a long way from the battlefield.  Then they thought they were safe, and they turned aside into a vacant castle, by the road, and sat down to a banquet, hanging the stolen harp on the wall.