lest it
should slay the host. The swords murmur and hiss and cry out for the
battle; the shield of the hero hums louder and louder, vibrating for
the encouragement of the warrior. Even the wheels of Cuchulain's
chariot roar as they whirl into the fight. This partial life given to
the weapons of war is not specially Celtic. Indeed, it is more common
in Teutonic than in Celtic legend, and it seems probable that it was
owing to the Norsemen that it was established in the Hero tales of
Ireland.

This addition of life, or of some of the powers of life, to tree and
well and boulder-stone, to river and lake and hill, and sword and
spear, is common to all mythologies, but the special character of each
nation or tribe modifies the form of the life-imputing stories. In
Ireland the tree, the stream were not dwelt in by a separate living
being, as in Grecian story; the half-living powers they had were given
to them from without, by the gods, the demons, the fairies; and in the
case of the weapons, the powers they had of act or sound arose from
the impassioned thoughts and fierce emotions of their forger or their
wielder, which, being intense, were magically transferred to them. The
Celtic nature is too fond of reality, too impatient of illusion, to
believe in an actual living spirit in inanimate things. At least, that
is the case in the stories of the Hero and the Fenian Cycles.[5]

[5] Everything, on the contrary, in the Mythological Cycle is
gifted with life, all the doings and things of nature are
represented as the work of living creatures; but it is quite
possible that those in Ireland who made these myths were not
Celts at all.

What the Irish of the Heroic, and still more of the Fenian Cycle, did
make in their imagination was a world, outside of themselves, of
living spiritual beings, in whose actuality they fully believed, and
in whom a great number of them still believe. A nation, if I may use
this term, dwelt under the sea. Another dwelt in the far island of the
ocean, the Isle of the Ever-Young. Another dwelt in the land, in the
green hills and by the streams of Ireland; and these were the ancient
gods who had now lost their dominion over the country, but lived on,
with all their courtiers and warriors and beautiful women in a country
underground. As time went on, their powers were dwarfed, and they
became small of size, less beautiful, and in our modern times are less
inclined to enter into the lives