this brief outline
of the Irish contribution to Celtic literature to a close. Its modern
interpretation is only now beginning to take its due place, let us
remember, both at the hands of its scholars and on the lips of its
poets. And if any reader should think the scholars still, after all we
have said, too difficult to follow, let us recommend them to turn to
the poems and tales of Mr. W. B. Yeats and to the romantic pages of
Mr. Standish O'Grady, the latest exponents in our more modern tongue
of that imagination, and that subtlety and energy of thought, which
are characteristically Irish.

Of the three great cycles of Gaelic literature, the third is the
(so-called) Ossianic. Of this cycle Finn (Fionn, Fingal) is the
central hero. The second great cycle is that which treats of the
heroes of the Ultonians, _i. e._, the Red Branch of Ulster; among this
cycle Cuculain (Cuchullin, Cohoolin, Coolin) is the supreme type. No
living writer has so well reconstructed the past for us as Mr.
Standish O'Grady has done, and nowhere is he so successful as in his
vivid and beautiful historical romance, of which Cuculain is the hero.
Of the famous "battle-prop of the valor and torch of the chivalry of
the Ultonians" Mr. O'Grady has given us an account which deserves to
pass into the fixed literature of our race. Apart from its vividness,
charm, and power, 'The Coming of Cuculain' affords a general idea of
the first great heroic cycle (its predecessor dealing entirely with
mythical or mythopoeic beings), and of primitive heroic life as
reflected in that literature. The excerpts selected are (1) the
opening of the romance, and (2) from the chapter telling how Cuculain
won his knighthood.

FROM 'THE COMING OF CUCULAIN'

I

The Red Branch feasted one night in their great hall at Emain Macha.
So vast was the hall that a man such as men are now, standing in the
centre and shouting his loudest, would not be heard at the
circumference; yet the low laughter of the King sitting at one end was
clearly audible to those who sat around the Champion at the other. The
sons of Dithorba made it, giants of the elder time, laboring there
under the shoutings of Macha and the roar of her sounding thongs. Its
length was a mile and nine furlongs and a cubit. With her brooch-pin
she plowed its outline upon the plain, and its breadth was not much
less. Trees such as earth nourished then upheld the mossy roof beneath
which feasted that heroic brood, the