ssential virtues
are to be generous among the weak, and truthful among one's friends, and
brave among one's enemies, and courteous at all times; and if we
understand by courtesy not merely the gentleness the story-tellers have
celebrated, but a delight in courtly things, in beautiful clothing and
in beautiful verse, one understands that it was no formal succession of
trials that bound the Fianna to one another. Only the Table Round, that
is indeed, as it seems, a rivulet from the same well-head, is bound in a
like fellowship, and there the four heroic virtues are troubled by the
abstract virtues of the cloister. Every now and then some noble knight
builds a cell upon the hill-side, or leaves kind women and joyful
knights to seek the vision of the Grail in lonely adventures. But when
Oisin or some kingly forerunner--Bran, son of Febal, or the like--rides
or sails in an enchanted ship to some divine country, he but looks for a
more delighted companionship, or to be in love with faces that will
never fade. No thought of any life greater than that of love, and the
companionship of those that have drawn their swords upon the darkness of
the world, ever troubles their delight in one another as it troubles
Iseult amid her love, or Arthur amid his battles. It is an ailment of
our speculation that thought, when it is not the planning of something,
or the doing of something, or some memory of a plain circumstance,
separates us from one another because it makes us always more unlike,
and because no thought passes through another's ear unchanged.
Companionship can only be perfect when it is founded on things, for
things are always the same under the hand, and at last one comes to hear
with envy the voices of boys lighting a lantern to ensnare moths, or of
the maids chattering in the kitchen about the fox that carried off a
turkey before breakfast. Lady Gregory's book of tales is full of
fellowship untroubled like theirs, and made noble by a courtesy that has
gone perhaps out of the world. I do not know in literature better
friends and lovers. When one of the Fianna finds Osgar dying the proud
death of a young man, and asks is it well with him, he is answered, 'I
am as you would have me be.' The very heroism of the Fianna is indeed
but their pride and joy in one another, their good fellowship. Goll, old
and savage, and letting himself die of hunger in a cave because he is
angry and sorry, can speak lovely words to the wife whose help