Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

14 Fictions of the Irish Celts.
Monday, they would scatter themselves abroad, and
collect such a supply of fish and flesh as would satisfy
his appetite for a twelvemonth. Thinking the offer
reasonable, he got into his crib, which was securely
covered by his wily constituents, and dropped into an
exceedingly deep hole in the neighbouring river. He
looked on this as a strange proceeding, but kept his
opinion to himself until next Monday. Then he roared
out to be set at liberty, but the unprincipled party with
whom he had to do, stated that the time appointed had
not arrived, seeing that Doomsday was the period named
in the covenant. He insisted that Monday was the
word, but learned, to his great disgust, that the Celtic
name, besides doing duty for that first of working days,
also implied the Day of Judgment. He gave a roar,
and stupidly vented his rage in a stanza of five lines, to
the effect that if he was once more at liberty he would
not only eat up the whole country, but half the world
into the bargain ;
and bitterly bewailed his ignorance of
the perfidies of the Gaelic tongue, that had made him a
wretched prisoner.
These observations on animal worship cannot be
better brought to a close than by the mention of the
cat who reigned over the Celtic branch of the feline
race at Knobba, in Meath. The talented and very ill-
tempered chief bard, Seanchan, satirized the mice in a
body, and the cats also, including their king, for allow-