nterruption of other races and the claims of the world upon us.
Surely the ancient Egyptian met in Memphis or Thebes as many strangers
as we did, but he wept on through many dynasties carving the same
face of mystery and rarely altering the peculiar forms which were his
inheritance from the craftsmen of a thousand years before. It was not
the introduction of something new, but the loss of something which
finally vexed the calm of the Sphinx and marred the Phidian beauty which
in Greece was a long dream for many generations. It was not because the
Dane or Norman came and dwelt among us that the signature of the Sidhe
was withdrawn from the Gaelic mind. I do not know how to express this
loss otherwise than by saying we appear to have fallen away from our
archetype. We find in all the early stories the presence of one being
who may be the genius of our land if that old idea of race divinities be
a true one. A strange similitude unites all the characters. We infer
an interior identity. The same spirit flashes out in hostile clans, and
then Cuculain kisses Ferdiad. They all confidently appeal to; it in
each other. Maeve flying after the great battle can ask a gift from her
conqueror and obtains it. Fand and Emer dispute who shall make the last
sacrifice of love and give the beloved to a rival. The conflicts seem
half in play or in dream, and we do not know when an awakening of love
will disarm the foes. In spite of the bloodshed the heroes seem like
children who fight steadily through a mock battle, but the night will
see these children at peace, and they will dream with arms around each
other in the same cot. No literature ever had a more beautiful heart of
childhood in it. The bards could hate no one consistently. If they took
away the heroic chivalry from Conchobar in one tale they restored it
to him in another. They have the confident trust--and expectation of
goodness that children have, who may have suffered punishment, but who
come later on and smile on the chastiser. It is this quality which gives
the tales their extraordinary charm. I know no other literature which
has it to the same degree. I do not like to speculate on the absence
of this spirit in our later literature, which was written under other
influences. It cannot be because there was a less spiritual life in
the apostles than in the bards. We cannot compare Cuculain, the most
complete ideal of Gaelic chivalry, with that supreme figure whose coming
to the wor