IN the recently published poem called "Deirdre" occurs an episode which I wish to relate here. The inhabitants of a peaceful fishing-village find one day on the beach, cast there by the drifting ice, a living animal, to them unknown.

"A small, frail thing it was, with pearly hair, -

The far-sent offspring of the Northern Bear,

And to their simple minds a thing like it

Upon their windy shores had never lit;

As weak it moaned like a young lamb that wails,

For its lost mother in the lonesome dales."

The people thought it an offspring of some god; they nourished and cared for it, built for it a temple, and worshipped it;

"And as the years went on it grew and grew,

Till the great bull that ranged the pastures through

Seemed like a heifer when it stood anigh."

With new strength came the creature's natural cravings, and

"One day of summer, when the village men

Were far away by mountain and by glen,"

the great bear, wandering at her will, as was her wont among the children at their play, first tasted blood, as it flowed from a child's foot pierced by a thorn.