ought enshrined in stately verse, it has not sung. What it may do in
the future, if Irish again becomes a tongue of literature in lofty
poetry, lies on the knees of the gods. I wish it well, but such a
development seems now too late. The Irish genius, if it is to speak in
drama, in narrative poetry or in an epic, must speak, if it is to
influence or to charm the world beyond the Irish shore, in a
world-language like English, and of international as well as of Irish
humanity.

These elements on which I have dwelt seem to me the most distinctive,
the most Irish, in the Tales in this book. There are many others on
which a more minute analysis might exercise itself, phases of feeling
concerning war or love or friendship or honour or the passions, but
these are not specially Irish. They belong to common human nature, and
have their close analogies in other mythologies, in other Folk-tales,
in other Sagas. I need not touch them here. But there is one element
in all the Irish tales which I have not yet mentioned, and it brings
all the others within its own circumference, and suffuses them with
its own atmosphere. It is the love of Ireland, of the land itself for
its own sake--a mystic, spiritual imaginative passion which in the
soul of the dweller in the country is a constant joy, and in the heart
of the exile is a sick yearning for return. There are not many direct
expressions of this in the stories; but it underlies the whole of
them, and it is also in the air they breathe. But now and again it
does find clear expression, and in each of the cycles we have
discussed. When the sons of Turenn are returning, wounded to death,
from the Hill of Mochaen, they felt but one desire. "Let us but see,"
said Iuchar and Iucharba to their brother Brian, "the land of Erin
again, the hills round Telltown, and the dewy plain of Bregia and the
quiet waters of the Boyne and our father's Dun thereby, and healing
will come to us; or if death come, we can endure it after that." Then
Brian raised them up; and they saw that they were now near by under
Ben Edar; and at the strand of the Bull they came to land. That is
from the Mythological Cycle.

In the Heroic Cycle it appears in the longing cry for return to
Ireland of Naisi and his brothers, which drives them out of Alba to
their death; but otherwise it is rarely expressed. In the Fenian Cycle
it exists, not in any clear words, but in a general delight in the
rivers, lakes, woods, valleys, plain