n accept almost any of their deeds, so we can
delight in the earlier stories of "Gods and Fighting Men," the stories
of the Tuatha de Danaan, Lugh and Angus, Midhir and Etain, Bran and
Connla, as we cannot in those of Finn and Goll and Cuchulain and
Conchubar, who, because of their historical setting and more definite
characterization, have more of the appeal of humanity. We know
Cuchulain, in Lady Gregory's pages, as a small dark man, constant in
love in comparison with his fellows, faithful to his friends, loyal to
his king; and we know Finn as a fair old man of ruddy countenance, a
lover of women, somewhat pompous and somewhat quarrelsome; but neither
hero is a clear-cut personality like Sigurd or Ajax. If either Cuchulain
or Finn were surely a god we should accept his deeds as now we cannot
accept them, and were either brought home to us as wholly human and
divested of his supernatural powers, and given a personality, we should
be far more moved by his fortunes.

It is in enchantments, visits to worlds oversea and under wave, and in
praises of the beauties of this world, its woods, its waters, its real
wonders, and in the celebration of sorrow and delight that "Gods and
Fighting Men" is at its best, not in the celebration of happy loves, or
of wild loves, or of great victories. So it is that Gabhra, where the
Fianna were broken, is finer than "The Battle of the White Strand,"
where they won against great odds.

Finer, however, than any narrative power possessed by the old Irish
bards is their power in the lyrical passages so freely interspersed
throughout the stories, and in the lyrics that come into them on the
lips of the poets and warriors and on the lips of the women who have
lost their lovers in fight. The farewell of Deirdre to Alban and her
lament over Naoise, the song of the woman from oversea to Bran, the poem
Finn made to prove his power of poetry, the sleepy song of Grania over
Diarmuid, the lament of Neargach's wife, the song of Tir-nan-Og that
Niave made to Oisin, and Oisin's own praise of the good times of the
Fianna--these are the passages in which the old tales reach their
highest poetry. Once read, these remain in memory, but certain episodes
and certain sayings remain also. Mr. Yeats has picked out one of the
sayings in his introduction to "Gods and Fighting Men" that will do for
sample. It is the answer of Osgar dying, to the man who asks him how he
is: "I am as you would have me be." Starker eve