Withal it was a brave melancholy that possessed them; they were
equal to great deeds, and not easily to be discouraged; they
could make merry, too; but in the midst of their merriment, they
could not forget grim and hostile Fate:--

"There dwelt men merry-hearted and in hope exceeding great,
Met the good days and the evil as they went the ways of fate."

It is literature that reveals the heart of a people who had
suffered long, and learnt from their suffering the lessons of
patience, humility, continuity of effort: those qualities which
enable them, in their coming manvantaric period, to dominate
large portions of the world.

But when we turn to the Celtic remains, the picture we find is
altogether different. Their literature tells of a people, in the
Biblical phrase, "with a proud look and a high stomach." It is
full of flashing colors, gaiety, titanic pride. There was no
grayness, no mournful twilight hue on the horizon of their mind;
their 'Other-World' was only more dawn-lit, more noon-illumined,
than this one; Ireland of the living was sun-bright and
sparkling and glorious; but the 'Great Plain' of the dead was
far more sun-bright and sparkling than Ireland. It is the
literature of a people accustomed to victory and predominance.
When they began to meet defeat they by no means acquiesced in
it. They regarded adverse fate, not with reverence, but with
contempt. They saw in sorrow no friend and instructress of the
human soul; were at pains to learn no lesson from her; instead,
they pitted what was their pride, but what they would have called
the glory of their own souls, against her; they made no terms,
asked no truce; but went on believing the human--or perhaps I
should say the Celtic--soul more glorious than fate, stronger to
endure and defy than she to humiliate and torment. In many sense
it was a fatal attitude, and they reaped the misery of it; but
they gained some wealth for the human spirit from it too. The
aged Oisin has returned from Fairyland to find the old glorious
order in Ireland fallen and passed during the three centuries of
his absence. High Paganism has gone, and a religion meek,
inglorious, and Unceltic has taken its mission thereto: tells
him the gods are conquered and dead, and that the omnipotent God
of the Christians reigns alone now.--"I would thy God were set on
yonder hill to fight with my son Oscar!" replies Oisin. Patrick
paints for him the hell to which he is d