and when Alexander stayed his army marching to the conquest of the world
that he might contemplate the beauty of a plane-tree, he played his
part. When Osgar complained as he lay dying, of the keening of the women
and the old fighting men, he too played his part; "No man ever knew any
heart in me," he said, "but a heart of twisted horn, and it covered with
iron; but the howling of the dogs beside me," he said, "and the keening
of the old fighting men and the crying of the women one after another,
those are the things that are vexing me." If we would create a great
community--and what other game is so worth the labour?--we must recreate
the old foundations of life, not as they existed in that splendid
misunderstanding of the eighteenth century, but as they must always
exist when the finest minds and Ned the beggar and Seaghan the fool
think about the same thing, although they may not think the same thought
about it.


IX

When I asked the little boy who had shown me the pathway up the Hill of
Allen if he knew stories of Finn and Oisin, he said he did not, but that
he had often heard his grandfather telling them to his mother in Irish.
He did not know Irish, but he was learning it at school, and all the
little boys he knew were learning it. In a little while he will know
enough stories of Finn and Oisin to tell them to his children some day.
It is the owners of the land whose children might never have known what
would give them so much happiness. But now they can read this book to
their children, and it will make Slieve-na-man, Allen, and Benbulben,
the great mountain that showed itself before me every day through all my
childhood and was yet unpeopled, and half the country-sides of south and
west, as populous with memories as are Dundealgan and Emain Macha and