from the Gaelic mind. I do not know how to express this loss
otherwise than by saying we appear to have fallen away from our
archetype. We find in all the early stories the presence of one
being who may be the genius of our land if that old idea of race
divinities be a true one. A strange similitude unites all the
characters. We infer an interior identity. The same spirit flashes
out in hostile clans, and then Cuculain kisses Ferdiad. They all
confidently appeal to; it in each other. Maeve flying after the
great battle can ask a gift from her conqueror and obtains it. Fand
and Emer dispute who shall make the last sacrifice of love and give
the beloved to a rival. The conflicts seem half in play or in dream,
and we do not know when an awakening of love will disarm the foes.
In spite of the bloodshed the heroes seem like children who fight
steadily through a mock battle, but the night will see these children
at peace, and they will dream with arms around each other in the
same cot. No literature ever had a more beautiful heart of childhood
in it. The bards could hate no one consistently. If they took
away the heroic chivalry from Conchobar in one tale they restored
it to him in another. They have the confident trust--and expectation
of goodness that children have, who may have suffered punishment,
but who come later on and smile on the chastiser. It is this quality
which gives the tales their extraordinary charm. I know no other
literature which has it to the same degree. I do not like to
speculate on the absence of this spirit in our later literature,
which was written under other influences. It cannot be because
there was a less spiritual life in the apostles than in the bards.
We cannot compare Cuculain, the most complete ideal of Gaelic
chivalry, with that supreme figure whose coming to the world was
the effacement of whole pantheons of divinities, and yet it is
true that since the thoughts of men were turned from the old ideals