battles are one, the battle of all things
with shadowy decay. Once a symbolism has possessed the imagination of
large numbers of men, it becomes, as I believe, an embodiment of
disembodied powers, and repeats itself in dreams and visions, age after
age.

THE SECRET ROSE.

I find that I have unintentionally changed the old story of Conchobar's
death. He did not see the crucifixion in a vision, but was told about
it. He had been struck by a ball, made of the dried brain of a dead
enemy, and hurled out of a sling; and this ball had been left in his
head, and his head had been mended, the Book of Leinster says, with
thread of gold because his hair was like gold. Keating, a writer of the
time of Elizabeth, says, 'In that state did he remain seven years, until
the Friday on which Christ was crucified, according to some historians;
and when he saw the unusual changes of the creation and the eclipse of
the sun and the moon at its full, he asked of Bucrach, a Leinster
Druid, who was along with him, what was it that brought that unusual
change upon the planets of Heaven and Earth. "Jesus Christ, the son of
God," said the Druid, "who is now being crucified by the Jews." "That is
a pity," said Conchobar; "were I in his presence I would kill those who
were putting him to death." And with that he brought out his sword, and
rushed at a woody grove which was convenient to him, and began to cut
and fell it; and what he said was, that if he were among the Jews that
was the usage he would give them, and from the excessiveness of his fury
which seized upon him, the ball started out of his head, and some of the
brain came after it, and in that way he died. The wood of Lanshraigh, in
Feara Rois, is the name by which that shrubby wood is called.'

I have imagined Cuchullain meeting Fand 'walking among flaming dew.' The
story of their love is one of the most beautiful of our old tales. Two
birds, bound one to another with a chain of gold, came to a lake side
where Cuchullain and the host of Uladh was encamped, and sang so sweetly
that all the host fell into a magic sleep. Presently they took the shape
of two beautiful women, and cast a magical weakness upon Cuchullain, in
which he lay for a year. At the year's end an Aengus, who was probably
Aengus the master of love, one of the greatest of the children of the
goddess Danu, came and sat upon his bedside, and sang how Fand, the wife
of Mannannan, the master of the sea, and of the islands o