in us in America, one realizes that we owe a debt of
gratitude to Lady Gregory second only to that owed her by "The Men of
Ireland and Alban" themselves. For it is Lady Gregory, in her "Cuchulain
of Muirthemne" (1902) and in her "Gods and Fighting Men" (1904) and in
her "Book of Saints and Wonders" (1908), who has done more than any
other writer of the Gaelic countries to bring home to us the wonders of
Gaelic romance. That they should have to be brought home to us is a
shame to us. With so much of Irish and Scotch blood in us the names of
the heroes of the Red Branch and Fenian Cycles should not be so foreign
in aspect and sound as they undoubtedly are, and their deeds should be
as familiar as those of Robin Hood. A hundred years ago our grandfathers
had, indeed, "Ossian" on their shelves, as we had in boyhood Dean
Church's stories of Greece and Rome, or, in some cases, the stories of
his doings in their memories, learned from their parents were they
old-country born, or of their nurses were it their privilege, as it was
that of many more Americans of the second half of the nineteenth
century, to have as foster mothers "kindly Irish of the Irish."

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To her own countrymen the work of Lady Gregory, valuable as it is, is
not the revelation it is to us. Those of them that have not been brought
up on the stories that she translates could read at least many of them
in the "Old Celtic Romances" (1879) of Dr. P.W. Joyce, or in the
versions of the Cuchulain and the Finn legends by Mr. Standish James
O'Grady (1878 and 1880), books that somehow or other never came to be
widely read in America. Mr. Yeats admits it was Mr. O'Grady that
"started us all," that is, the writers who began the Renaissance in the
late eighties. It may be, of course, that the added beauty and dignity
the stories take on in the versions of Lady Gregory will inspire to
nobler writing poets and dramatists and novelists that already owe much
to Mr. O'Grady or Dr. Joyce or to the scholars they were sent back to by
these popularizers. It is certain that the writers of the younger group,
the group of those that are only now nearing distinction, owe much to
Lady Gregory. After all is said, however, her work is to be judged not
for its value to others, but as in itself an art product, of a class
kindred to "The Wanderings of Oisin" of Mr. Yeats, although differing in
form. I am not forgetting, of course, that she is following faithfully,
or rather