and, it may be,
if the worship of sun and moon had not left a faint reverence behind it,
what Aran fisher-girl would sing--

'It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was speaking
of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird throughout the
woods; and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

'You promised me and you said a lie to me, that you would be before me
where the sheep are flocked. I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to
you; and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

'You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold under a
silver mast; twelve towns and a market in all of them, and a fine white
court by the side of the sea.

'You promised me a thing that is not possible; that you would give me
gloves of the skin of a fish; that you would give me shoes of the skin of
a bird, and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

'My mother said to me not to be talking with you, to-day or to-morrow or
on Sunday. It was a bad time she took for telling me that, it was shutting
the door after the house was robbed....

'You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me, you
have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have taken the
moon, you have taken the sun from me, and my fear is great you have taken
God from me.'

The Gael of the Scottish islands could not sing his beautiful song over a
bride, had he not a memory of the belief that Christ was the only man who
measured six feet and not a little more or less, and was perfectly shaped
in all other ways, and if he did not remember old symbolical observances--

I bathe thy palms
In showers of wine,
In the cleansing fire,
In the juice of raspberries,
In the milk of honey.

* * * * *

Thou art the joy of all joyous things,
Thou art the light of the beam of the sun,
Thou art the door of the chief of hospitality,
Thou art the surpassing pilot star,
Thou art the step of the deer of the hill,
Thou art the step of the horse of the plain,
Thou art the grace of the sun rising,
Thou art the loveliness of all lovely desires.

The lovely likeness of the Lord
Is in thy pure face,
The loveliest likeness that was upon earth.

I soon learned to cast away one other illusion of 'popular poetry.' I
learned from the people themselves, before I learned it from any book,
that they cannot separate the idea of an art or a craft from