Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

IRISH BARDIC HISTORY 77
Neidy, son of Adna, wanders by the sea shore of
Alba, " for it is by the sea that poets are wont to compose
their lays," and listening to the noise of the waves, he
addresses to them magic verses, to compel them to
translate for him the inarticulate sounds which they utter.
Then the sea-spirits inform him that his father has died,
and that a stranger is assuming the robe and office of the
chief bard of Ulster.
The interpretation of the noise of the waves is else-
where described as one of the functions of the druids.
As Owen M5r draws nigh to Spain, the king and his
chief men and druids feast by night in the royal palace.
They hear the billows roaring strangely along the shore.
Then prophesied Dadrona the Druid :
" I hear the waves clamour along the shore.
The sound is an omen—the harbinger of a King."
These waves more properly roared for the High King
of all Ireland. They are represented as welcoming
Conn of the Hundred Battles, when he marched against
Owen Mor.
" He who was there was a precious stone, a sheltering tree, a
for his march was the rush
transparent gem, a cluster of vines ;
of a spring-tide, and his journeying the evacuation of territories,
and both the sea and land rejoiced in his greatness. And
the Monarch was certainly and evidently greeted by the three
swelling waves of Fohla, the wave of Toth, and the wave of
Rury, and the long, slow, white, foaming wave of Cleena."
Toth and Cleena were goddesses. Rury, as we have
seen, was a god of the Partholanian cycle, but appears
perpetually in all the divine cycles ; also as a Milesian
—