ut when the poet in him spoke, he said his music
was the crying of the sea-gull, and the noise of the waves, and the
voice of the cuckoo when summer was at hand, and the washing of the
sea against the shore, and of the tide when it met the river of the
White Trout, and of the wind rushing through the cloud. And many other
sayings of the same kind this charming and poetic folk has said
concerning those sweet, strong sounds in Nature out of which the music
of men was born.

Again, there is not much music in the Mythological Tales. Lugh, it is
true, is a great harper, and the harp of the Dagda, into which he has
bound his music, plays a music at whose sound all men laugh, and
another so that all men weep, and another so enthralling that all fall
asleep; and these three kinds of music are heard through all the
Cycles of Tales. Yet when the old gods of the mythology became the
Sidhe,[7] the Fairy Host, they--having left their barbaric life
behind--became great musicians. In every green hill where the tribes
of fairy-land lived, sweet, wonderful music was heard all day--such
music that no man could hear but he would leave all other music to
listen to it, which "had in it sorrows that man has never felt, and
joys for which man has no name, and it seemed as if he who heard it
might break from time into eternity and be one of the immortals." And
when Finn and his people lived, they, being in great harmony and union
with the Sidhe, heard in many adventures with them their lovely music,
and it became their own. Indeed, Finn, who had twelve musicians, had
as their chief one of the Fairy Host who came to dwell with him, a
little man who played airs so divine that all weariness and sorrow
fled away. And from him Finn's musicians learnt a more enchanted art
than they had known before. And so it came to pass that as in every
fairy dwelling there was this divine art, so in every palace and
chieftain's hall, and in every farm, there were harpers harping on
their harps, and all the land was full of sweet sounds and
airs--shaping in music, imaginative war, and sorrows, and joys, and
aspiration. Nor has their music failed. Still in the west and south of
Ireland, the peasant, returning home, hears, as the evening falls from
the haunted hills, airs unknown before, or at midnight a wild
triumphant song from the Fairy Host rushing by, or wakes with a dream
melody in his heart. And these are played and sung next day to the
folk sitting round th