up again, a shining torrent, and I realized as I bathed in that
stream, that the greatest spiritual evil one nation could inflict
on another was to cut off from it the story of the national soul.
For not all music can be played upon any instrument, and human
nature for most of us is like a harp on which can be rendered the
music written for the harp but nor that written for the violin.
The harp strings quiver for the harp-player alone, and he who can
utter his passion through the violin is silent before an unfamiliar
instrument. That is why the Irish have rarely been deeply stirred
by English literature, though it is one of the great literatures
of the world. Our history was different and the evolutionary
product was a peculiarity of character, and the strings of our
being vibrate most in ecstasy when the music evokes ancestral moods
or embodies emotions akin to these. I am not going to argue the
comparative worth of the Gaelic and English tradition. All that
I can say is that the traditions of our own country move us more
than the traditions of any other. Even if there was not essential
greatness in them we would love them for the same reasons which
bring back so many exiles to revisit the haunts of childhood. But
there was essential greatness in that neglected bardic literature
which O'Grady was the first to reveal in a noble manner. He had
the spirit of an ancient epic poet. He is a comrade of Homer,
his birth delayed in time perhaps that he might renew for a
sophisticated people the elemental simplicity and hardihood men
had when the world was young and manhood was prized more than any
of its parts, more than thought or beauty or feeling. He has
created for us, or rediscovered, one figure which looms in the
imagination as a high comrade of Hector, Achilles, Ulysses, Rama
or Yudisthira, as great in spirit as any. Who could extol enough
his Cuculain, that incarnation of Gaelic chivalry, the fire and