Naisi and his brothers, in life and death, to one another, is lovelier
in contrast with the savage and treacherous revenge of Conor. The
great pitifulness of Cuchulain's fight with his dear friend Ferdia,
whom he is compelled to slay; the crowning tenderness of Emer's
recollective love in song before she dies on Cuchulain's dead body,
are in full contrast with the savage hard-heartedness and cruelties of
Maev, and with the ruthless slaughters Cuchulain made of his foes, out
of which he seems often to pass, as it were, in a moment, into
tenderness and gracious speech. Even Finn, false for once to his
constant courtesy, revenges himself on Dermot so pitilessly that both
his son and grandson cry shame upon him.

Of course this barbaric cruelty is common to all early periods in
every nation; and, whenever fierce passion is aroused, to civilised
nations also. What is remarkable in the Irish tales is the
contemporary tenderness. The Vikings were as savage as the Irish, but
the savagery is not mingled with the Irish tenderness. At last, when
we pass from the Hero Cycle into the Cycle of Finn, there is scarcely
any of the ancient brutality to be found in the host of romantic
stories which gather round the chivalry of the Fenians.

There are other characteristics of these old tales on which I must
dwell. The first is the extra-ordinary love of colour. This is not a
characteristic of the early German, English or Scandinavian poems and
tales. Its remarkable presence in Scottish poetry, at a time when it
is scarcely to be found in English literature, I have traced elsewhere
to the large admixture of Celtic blood in the Lowlands of Scotland. In
early Irish work it is to be found everywhere. In descriptions of
Nature, which chiefly appear in the Fenian Cycle and in Christian
times, colour is not as much dwelt on as we should expect, for nowhere