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 depth
men have who are much in nature in companionship with the elements,
the elder brothers of humanity. It must have been out of such a
boyhood and such intimacies with natural and unsophisticated people
that there came to him the understanding of the heroes of the Red
Branch. How pallid, beside the ruddy chivalry who pass, huge and
fleet and bright, through O'Grady's pages, appear Tennyson's
bloodless Knights of the Round Table, fabricated in the study to
be read in the drawing room, as anemic as Burne Jones' lifeless
men in armour. The heroes of ancient Irish legend reincarnated
in the mind of a man who could breathe into them the fire of life,
caught from sun and wind, their ancient deities, and send them
forth to the world to do greater deeds, to act through many men
and speak through many voices. What sorcery was in the Irish mind
that it has taken so many years to win but a little recognition
for this splendid spirit; and that others who came after him, who
diluted the pure fiery wine of romance he gave us with literary water,
should be as well known or more widely read. For my own, part I