were adorned. You would think it was a shower of pearls that was in her mouth. She had three tresses: two tresses round her head above, and a tress behind. A shuttle of white metal, with an inlaying of gold, was in her hand. The maiden was armed, and there were two black horses in her chariot." And here is Olwen, the Cymric maiden: " Clothed in a robe of flame-coloured silk, and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold, on which were precious emeralds and rubies. More yellow was her head than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and fingers than the blossom of the wood-anemone in the spray of the meadow-fountain . . . Her bosom was more snowy than the breast of the white swan, her cheek was redder than the reddest roses. Whoso beheld her was filled with her love." The father of this maid is the "Head of the Giants," and resembles Irish "Balor," in that men have to lift his brows to let him see, and in that he is wounded through the eyeball by one of his own kin. But the dread power of "Balor," whose glance gave death, is absent from the Welsh giant. To return to the description of the two maidens, it will be seen that the observation of form, so noticeable in the Gaelic extract, is lacking in the Welsh. "Her face," says the scribe, picturing Fedelm in the "CattleRaid of Cooley," was narrow below, and broad above." It has been contended that in ancient Gaelic tales, it is colour which determines all beauty: but I cannot see how such a contention will be upheld. Granted that the colour-note is oftenest struck, it by no means follows that form is forgotten. It hardly could be so among a people who chose their king for the excel· lence of his form, whose laws deposed him for personal blemish.

In Miss Faraday's translation of the "Cattle-Raid of Cooley," this Gaelic ideal of beauty comes very forcibly before us. It should be noted that it is, according to modern character-reading from physiology, a noble ideal. The broad brow; the light chin; the shining "wide grey eyes; " the eyebrow, marked but not over-heavy; the lip, red, but not over-full; the slender form, the tapering finger-these make beauty of the artistic type, and these attributes are enumerated over and over again, in the long accounts given by scouts and watchers concerning companies and approaching heroes seen afar. On the other hand, I do not think we get such a definitely artistic type in

the Cymric tales. There are exquisite comparisons, as in the account of Olwen, but what Mr. Alfred Nutt calls "the miniature painting" of the Gaelic one does not find.

And this brings me towards my conclusion. It has been claimed that the Cymric stories are developments of the Gaelic. In order to support such a claim, this little essay has been, perhaps, over-loaded with quotation; but for that, it may be pleaded that the beauty of the extracts will obtain their pardon. But it is not in any sense to be understood that the Welsh tales are placed above the Gaelic in value. Rather, the contrary will be advanced. The tales of the Cymric saga, though more graceful, more delicately fanciful, and almost altogether free from the grossness that is inevitably present in sagas that are pagan of the pagan, have not, to my mind, the vastness and grandeur of the Gaelic prototypes. They flow gently, not in fierce torrents and floods of words. I have not met in The Mabinogion any sweep of words like these regarding the comrade sons of Conchobar of Ulster. They are "two heroes, two splendid flames, two points of battle, two warriors, two pillars of fight, two dragons, two fires, two battle soldiers, two champions of combat, two rods, two bold ones, two darlings of Ulad, about the King." Or this forceful comparison of a warrior to a sea over rivers . . . a fierce glow of fire; his rage towards foes is insupportable." And of another Ulster hero, Fergus declares: "He is a head of strife, who has so come; he is a half of battle, he is a warrior for valour, he is a wave of a storm that drowns, he is a sea over boundaries." The Cymric tales are mystic, but not terrible. Mac Roth, the messenger of Maeve and Ailill, speaks thus: "I saw a heavy mist that filled the glens and valleys, so that it made the hills between them like islands in lakes. Then there appeared to me sparks of fire out of this great mist; there appeared to me a variegation of every different colour in the world, I saw then lightning, and din and thunder, and a great wind that almost took the hair from my head, and threw me on my back. Yet the wind of the day was not great!' To him answers Fergus: "This is what it means. This is the Ulstermen coming out of their sickness. (Their debility had kept them from battle.) It is they who have come into the wood. The throng, and the greatness, and the violence of the heroes, it is that which has shaken the wood; it is before

"

them that the wild beasts have fled into the plain. The heavy mist that you saw, which filled the valleys, was the breath of these warriors, which filled the glens so that it made the hills between them like islands in lakes. The lightning and the sparks of fire and the many colours which you saw, O Mac Roth, are the eyes of the warriors from their heads, which have shone upon you like sparks of fire. The thunder, and the din, and the noise that you have heard, was the whistling of the swords and of the ivory-hilted weapons, the clatter of arms, the creaking of the chariots, the beating of the hoofs of the horses, the strength of the warriors, the roar of the fighting-men, the noise of the soldiers, the great rage and anger and fierceness of the heroes going in madness to the battle, for the greatness of the rage and the fury."

Surely, this passage bursts and thunders, itself, like the onset of any host, almost making the heart tremble with its terror. And with it, fittingly, shall be ended this plea for the high place of the Gael in the making of the literature of Western Europe.

ALICE FURLONG.

PASSIO CHRISTI

IN the sea of Thy blessed compassion,

Lord, plunge my soul !

Cleanse and strengthen my heart by thy Passion;
Christ, make me whole.

Heal my wounds and from my baseness sift me;
Lord, make me good!

Help me, save me, hear me, oh! uplift me
By Thy sweet Rood!

Lord, by Thy Cross I Thy child cry to Thee
In this my grief.

Now in my sorrow come Thou unto me,

And bring relief!

AGNES M. BLUNDELL.

AMEN CORNER

X.-THE PRAISES OF ST. MATTHEW

T. MATTHEW, whose feast is kept on the 21st day of
September, deserves in a very special degree our venera-

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tion and our confidence, for he unites in himself three of the highest dignities and noblest offices that God can confer on any of His human creatures: he was at the same time, apostle, evangelist, and martyr. The mere union of these titles, even if we knew nothing about the saint's special manner of earning them, would be enough to show that he must on earth have had such treasures of grace and merit, and must now have in heaven, such glory and such power as to entitle him in a pre-eminent degree to our reverence and trustful love.

The magnificent array of titles of honour which have gradually gushed forth from the Church's heart in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and which we call the Litany of Loretto, ends with a series of eight invocations proclaiming her Queen of all the various orders of created rational beings, all the ranks of the blessed inhabitants of heaven. The Mother of Jesus is saluted as Queen of the Angels who adored her Divine Infant as their God. Regina Angelorum, ora pro nobis. She is Queen of all the heavenly host; and she is Queen also of God's human creatures, of whom she herself is one. The saints of the old Law looked forward to her who was promised in the first moment of the Fall, the Woman whose seed was to crush the serpent's head, the Mother of Him who was to come; and so in her Litany we next salute the Blessed Virgin as Queen of the Patriarchs and Queen of the Prophets, who, like Isaiah, were full of the hope of her, the Virgin, who should conceive and bring forth the Saviour.

But when we come to the Christian ages, the saints that rank highest are the apostles and martyrs-only these are commemorated in the canon of the Mass, in the most solemn moments before and after the consecration; and before the confessors and virgins and all saints, we hail the Blessed Virgin as Queen of Apostles and Queen of Martyrs, Regina Apostolorum, Regina Martyrum, ora pro nobis.

Both of these highest earthly dignities and glories were united in St. Matthew. He was one of Christ's chosen apostles. "The Apostleship was," says Father Faber, "a dignity and a grace unequalled except by the Divine Maternity, the Wardenship of St. Joseph, and perhaps the office of the Precursor "only perhaps, considering the office itself apart from the personal sanctity and unearthly austerity of the Baptist. "What gifts and graces, what inward beauties and heroisms," exclaims the holy man whom we have just quoted, "are implied in this vocation to be one of the Incarnate Word's selected twelve." Think who Jesus Christ was and what He was come for, and think how near the apostles were to His person, and what a share they were allowed in His work. Elected by the eternal wisdom of God, chosen out from all to be the personal friends and constant companions of Jesus Christ our Lord-to see and hear Him familiarly at all times during the years that He gave to the society of men outside of the holy house of Nazareth-to share His privations and to receive from Him every day a thousand marks of His thoughtful love, and then after His departure to be the founders and pillars of His Church: what earthly dignity can equal so sublime a vocation? And think, too, of the manner of his calling, of the immediate sacrifice that he had to make. This was the ground on which he received the beautiful dedication of Father Faber's Creator and Creature, which some consider the greatest of his books: "To St. Matthew, the apostle and evangelist of the Incarnate Word, the pattern of obedience to divine inspirations, the teacher and the example of correspondence to grace, who left all for God-self and the world and wealth-at God's one word, without question, without reserve, without delay, to be for ever in the Church the doctor, the prophet, and the patron, the comfort and the justification of those who follow heavenly calls in the world's despite and who give themselves in love as he gave himself, without limit or condition, as creatures to their Creator."

St. Matthew was not only an apostle but a martyr. He crowned his apostolic labours among the Ethiopians with the glory of martyrdom. Martyr" means "witness," and St. Matthew witnessed unto blood, he bore testimony to the truth of the faith that he preached by dying for it; and if the beautiful tradition can betrusted, which tells us of Iphigeni a, the king's