The extreme politeness of the islanders, and their desire to impart any knowledge they possess of antiquarian lore or of the legends or fairy tales with which the islands abound, must strike with force the mind of the observing tourist. Their reverence for the dead, and their affection for their loved and departed friends, impel them to erect, sometimes in long lines on the roadside, square stone pillars about ten feet in height by three feet each side, all of the same measurements, surmounted each with a well-cut stone cross and with inscriptions such as the following: "Sta viator. Stay, traveller. O Lord have mercy on the soul of Mac Dara Ternan, who departed this life 26th June, 1842." These monuments of the dead, who are generally interred in far-distant churchyards, have by moonlight a ghastly appearance.

THEIR HOLY WELLS.

The reverence of the Aranite for holy wells is great, nor will he suffer in silence his faith in them to be ridiculed. "Can you," said a stranger, "be so silly as to believe that that well gushing out of the hillside was placed there by a saint, in dim and remote ages?" The peasant replied that a well on a mountain side or on a mountain top appeared to him to be miraculous. "And isn't it, sir, wonderful to see water on the top of a hill? And it must flow up the hill inside before it can flow down the hill outside;" and water flowing up the hill inside or outside was to his mind miraculous. The stranger answered that, "the water may have been forced up from some far-off lake on a higher level." The peasant's answer was, "that may be so and it may not be so, but your honour does not give us any proof that it is so." Wells in all ages and in all places are associated with the marvellous, even from the well of Zem-zem to that on the Aran rocks, and we are not so sure that the geological stranger was quite satisfactory as to his theory of wells on a mountain summit.

THE ISLE OF O'BRAZIL.

Speaking of the wonders by which the native of Aran is surrounded, what wonder can be greater than that of the mirage, an island that is said to rise after sunset from the Atlantic? A phantom island which the people call "O'Brazil, the Isle of the Blest," upon which a city like the New Jerusalem is built, and the old men say that that city hath no need of the sun nor of the moon to shine in it, neither does it need the light of the lamp any more at all. That island with that city has, they say, over and over again appeared far away on the Atlantic. Alison, we remember, somewhere in his charming account of the French in Egypt, gives a note on the mirage of the desert, where the parched-up soldiers of the French republic, in 1798, used to see far-distant lakes into which tumbled the waters of mighty waterfalls. On, on the French soldiers rushed. Alas! the phantom vanished; and so vanishes the phantom city seen on a summer evening from the lofty cliffs of the Aran islands. To follow in search of this "Isle of the Blest" an Aranite peasant once resolved. He had heard of St. Brendan and of Christopher Columbus, and of those mariners who, sailing over the seas in search of fame and of gold, were fortunate enough to find both. The peasant, in spite of all persuasion, set sail.

A PHANTOM-ISLAND.

The phantom receded; he followed. Still following, he never returned to Aran again, and his mournful fate is thus sung by Gerald Griffin:—

1.
"On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,
A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell;
Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest,
And they called it O'Brazil, the Isle of the Blest.
From year unto year on the ocean's blue rim,
The beautiful spectre showed lovely and dim;
The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay,
And it looked like an Eden away—far away.
2.
"A peasant who heard of the wonderful tale,
In the breeze of the Orient loosened his sail;
From Aran, the holy, he turned to the west,
For though Aran was holy, O'Brazil was blest.
He heard not the voice that called from the shore,
He heard not the rising wind's menacing roar:
Home, kindred, and safety, he left on that day,
And he sped to O'Brazil away—far away.
3.
"Morn rose on the deep, and that shadowy isle,
O'er the faint rim and distant reflected its smile;
Noon burned on the wave, and that shadowy shore
Seemed lovely, distant, and faint as before.
Lone evening came down on the wanderer's track,
And to Aran again he looked timidly back;
Oh! far on the verge of the ocean it lay,
Yet the isle of the blest was away—far away!
4.
"Rash dreamer, return! oh, ye winds of the main,
Bear him back to his own peaceful Aran again;
Rash fool! for a vision of fanciful bliss
To barter thy calm life of labour and peace.
The warning of reason was spoken in vain,
He never revisited Aran again.
Night fell on the deep, amidst tempest and spray,
And he died on the waters away—far away."

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Stokes' "Life of Dr. Petrie," pp. 49, 50.