the white flame and the red flame, wisdom and loveliness; the tale of
the Sons of Tuireann, with its unintelligible mysteries, an old Grail
Quest as I think; the tale of the four children changed into four swans,
and lamenting over many waters; the tale of the love of Cuchulain for an
immortal goddess, and his coming home to a mortal woman in the end; the
tale of his many battles at the ford with that dear friend he kissed
before the battles, and over whose dead body he wept when he had killed
him; the tale of his death and of the lamentations of Emer; the tale of
the flight of Grainne with Diarmuid, strangest of all tales of the
fickleness of woman, and the tale of the coming of Oisin out of faeryland,
and of his memories and lamentations. 'The Celtic movement,' as I
understand it, is principally the opening of this fountain, and none can
measure of how great importance it may be to coming times, for every new
fountain of legends is a new intoxication for the imagination of the
world. It comes at a time when the imagination of the world is as ready,
as it was at the coming of the tales of Arthur and of the Grail, for a
new intoxication. The reaction against the rationalism of the eighteenth
century has mingled with a reaction against the materialism of the
nineteenth century, and the symbolical movement, which has come to
perfection in Germany in Wagner, in England in the Pre-Raphaelites, and in
France in Villiers De l'Isle Adam, and Mallarme, and Maeterlinck, and has
stirred the imagination of Ibsen and D'Annunzio, is certainly the only
movement that is saying new things. The arts by brooding upon their own
intensity have become religious, and are seeking, as I think Verhaeren has
said, to create a sacred book. They must, as religious thought has always
done, utter themselves through legends; and the Sclavonic and Finnish
legends tell of strange woods and seas, and the Scandinavian legends are
held by a great master, and tell also of strange woods and seas, and the
Welsh legends are held by almost as many great masters as the Greek
legends, while the Irish legends move among known woods and seas, and
have so much of a new beauty, that they may well give the opening century
its most memorable symbols.

1897.

I could have written this essay with much more precision and have much
better illustrated my meaning if I had waited until Lady Gregory had
finished her book of legends, _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, a book to set