Page:The poem-book of the Gael - Hull.djvu/31

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INTRODUCTION
xxvii
“Scarce is there on the firm earth, whether it be man or woman, one that can tell why thy name abroad is known as the Dripping Ancient Hazel."'Twas Balor that besought Lugh before his beheading: 'Set my head above thy own comely head and earn my blessing.'"That blessing Lugh Longarm did not earn; he set up the head above a wave of the east in a fork of hazel before him."A poisonous milk drips down out of that hardened tree; through the baneful drip, it was not slight, the tree split right in two."For full fifty years the hazel stood, but ever it was a cause of tears, the abode of vultures and ravens."Manannan of the round eye went into the wilderness of the Mount of White-Hazel; there he saw a shadeless tree among the trees that vied in beauty."Manannan sets workmen without delay to dig it out of the firm earth. Mighty was the deed!"From the root of that tree arises a poisonous vapour; there were killed by it (perilous the consequence) nine of the working folk."Now I say to you, and let the prophecy be sought out: Around the mighty hazel without reproach was found the cause of many a woe.
••••••
"It was from that shield that Eitheor of the smooth brown face was called 'Son of Hazel,'—for this was the hazel that he worshipped."[1]

Or take again the strange mythological poem of the "Crane-bag,” made out of the skin of a wandering haunted crane, which had once been a woman; condemned for "two hundred white years" to dwell in "the house of Manannan," i.e. in the wastes of the ocean, ever seeking and never finding land. When the wanderings came to

  1. ↑ Duanaire Finn, edited by John MacNeill, pp. 34, 134 (Irish Texts Society, 1904).
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