to Adam and his Garden. Those who listened to them
must have felt as if the living were like rabbits digging their burrows
under walls that had been built by Gods and Giants, or like swallows
building their nests in the stone mouths of immense images, carved by
nobody knows who. It is no wonder that one sometimes hears about men who
saw in a vision ivy-leaves that were greater than shields, and
blackbirds whose thighs were like the thighs of oxen. The fruit of all
those stories, unless indeed the finest activities of the mind are but a
pastime, is the quick intelligence, the abundant imagination, the
courtly manners of the Irish country-people.

William Morris came to Dublin when I was a boy, and I had some talk with
him about these old stories. He had intended to lecture upon them, but
'the ladies and gentlemen'--he put a communistic fervour of hatred into
the phrase--knew nothing about them. He spoke of the Irish account of
the battle of Clontarf and of the Norse account, and said, that one saw
the Norse and Irish tempers in the two accounts. The Norseman was
interested in the way things are done, but the Irishman turned aside,
evidently well pleased to be out of so dull a business, to describe
beautiful supernatural events. He was thinking, I suppose, of the young
man who came from Aoibhill of the Grey Rock, giving up immortal love and
youth, that he might fight and die by Murrough's side. He said that the
Norseman had the dramatic temper, and the Irishman had the lyrical. I
think I should have said with Professor Ker, epical and romantic rather
than dramatic and lyrical, but his words, which have so great an
authority, mark the distinction very well, and not only between Irish
and Norse, but between Irish and other un-Celtic literatures. The Irish
story-teller could not interest himself with an unbroken interest in the
way men like himself burned a house, or won wives no more wonderful than
themselves. His mind constantly escaped out of daily circumstance, as a
bough that has been held down by a weak hand suddenly straightens itself
out. His imagination was always running to Tir-nan-og, to the Land of
Promise, which is as near to the country-people of to-day as it was to
Cuchulain and his companions. His belief in its nearness, cherished in
its turn the lyrical temper, which is always athirst for an emotion, a
beauty which cannot be found in its perfection upon earth, or only for a
moment. His imagination, which had