so excited his wife's jealousy that she wished to have them all massacred: instead of that she was, however, only allowed to have them dispersed among the other batallions.[1] The narrative permits it to be seen that the superiority of the Gailióin is merely an interpretation of the magic arts ascribed to them;[2] and this is in harmony with the fact that Irish legend makes the Gailióin a part of an early invasion of Erinn, to whose share Leinster fell, where they ranged themselves always against the Tuatha Dé Danann, or the race of the gods. Similarly, Leinster, no less than Connaught and the west, appears to represent Hades in the story of Aitherne.
This view of Aitherne' s doings is not a little countenanced by a strange story told in the Book of Leinster about Aitherne's notorious churlishness. In that manuscript[3] it follows those of which an abstract has just been given, and it is so curious that I venture to give a literal translation of it as follows: "Aitherne the Importunate, son of Ferchertne, he is the most inhospitable man that dwelt in Erinn. He went to Mider of Bri Leith and took the cranes of denial and churlishness away from him surreptitiously; that is, with a view to refusal and churlishness, that no man of the men of Erinn should visit his house for hospitality or mendicancy. 'Do not come, not come,' says the first crane. 'Get away,' says her mate. '[Go] past the house, past the house,' says the third crane. Any man of the men of Erinn who should see them would not betake himself to
