felt their souls overtopping the moon; and, as some think, imagined
for the first time in the world the blessed country of the gods and of the
happy dead. They had imaginative passions because they did not live within
our own strait limits, and were nearer to ancient chaos, every man's
desire, and had immortal models about them. The hare that ran by among the
dew might have sat upon his haunches when the first man was made, and the
poor bunch of rushes under their feet might have been a goddess laughing
among the stars; and with but a little magic, a little waving of the
hands, a little murmuring of the lips, they too could become a hare or a
bunch of rushes, and know immortal love and immortal hatred.

All folk literature, and all literature that keeps the folk tradition,
delights in unbounded and immortal things. The _Kalevala_ delights in the
seven hundred years that Luonaton wanders in the depths of the sea with
Waeinaemoeinen in her womb, and the Mahomedan king in the Song of Roland,
pondering upon the greatness of Charlemagne, repeats over and over, 'He is
three hundred years old, when will he weary of war?' Cuchulain in the
Irish folk tale had the passion of victory, and he overcame all men, and
died warring upon the waves, because they alone had the strength to
overcome him. The lover in the Irish folk song bids his beloved come with
him into the woods, and see the salmon leap in the rivers, and hear the
cuckoo sing, because death will never find them in the heart of the woods.
Oisin, new come from his three hundred years of faeryland, and of the love
that is in faeryland, bids St. Patrick cease his prayers a while and
listen to the blackbird, because it is the blackbird of Darrycarn that
Finn brought from Norway, three hundred years before, and set its nest
upon the oak-tree with his own hands. Surely if one goes far enough into
the woods, one will find there all that one is seeking? Who knows how many
centuries the birds of the woods have been singing?

All folk literature has indeed a passion whose like is not in modern
literature and music and art, except where it has come by some straight
or crooked way out of ancient times. Love was held to be a fatal sickness
in ancient Ireland, and there is a love-poem in _The Songs of Connacht_
that is like a death cry: 'My love, O she is my love, the woman who is
most for destroying me, dearer is she for making me ill than the woman who
would be for making me well. She