"The Flight of the Eagle" there is the same quality of power
joined with a shining simplicity in the narrative which rises into
a poetic ecstacy in that wonderful chapter where Red Hugh,
escaping from the Pale, rides through the Mountain Gates of
Ulster, and sees high above him Slieve Mullion, a mountain of the
Gods, the birthplace of legend "more mythic than Avernus" and
O'Grady evokes for us and his hero the legendary past, and the
great hill seems to be like Mount Sinai, thronged with immortals,
and it lives and speaks to the fugitive boy, "the last great
secular champion of the Gael," and inspires him for the fulfilment
of his destiny. We might say of Red Hugh and indeed of all
O'Grady's heroes that they are the spiritual progeny of Cuculain.
From Red Hugh down to the boys who have such enchanting adventures
in "Lost on Du Corrig" and "The Chain of Gold" they have all a
natural and hardy purity of mind, a beautiful simplicity of
character, and one can imagine them all in an hour of need, being
faithful to any trust like the darling of the Red Branch. These
shining lads never grew up amid books. They are as much children
of nature as the Lucy of Wordsworth's poetry. It might be said of
them as the poet of the Kalevala sang of himself,

"Winds and waters my instructors."

These were O'Grady's own earliest companions and no man can find
better comrades than earth, water, air and sun. I imagine
O'Grady's own youth was not so very different from the youth of
Red Hugh before his captivity; that he lived on the wild and rocky
western coast, that he rowed in coracles, explored the caves,
spoke much with hardy natural people, fishermen and workers on the
land, primitive folk, simple in speech, but with that fundamental