n the music evokes ancestral moods or embodies emotions akin
to these. I am not going to argue the comparative worth of the Gaelic
and English tradition. All that I can say is that the traditions of our
own country move us more than the traditions of any other. Even if there
was not essential greatness in them we would love them for the same
reasons which bring back so many exiles to revisit the haunts of
childhood. But there was essential greatness in that neglected bardic
literature which O'Grady was the first to reveal in a noble manner. He
had the spirit of an ancient epic poet. He is a comrade of Homer, his
birth delayed in time perhaps that he might renew for a sophisticated
people the elemental simplicity and hardihood men had when the world
was young and manhood was prized more than any of its parts, more than
thought or beauty or feeling. He has created for us, or rediscovered,
one figure which looms in the imagination as a high comrade of Hector,
Achilles, Ulysses, Rama or Yudisthira, as great in spirit as any. Who
could extol enough his Cuculain, that incarnation of Gaelic chivalry,
the fire and gentleness, the beauty and heroic ardour or the imaginative
splendor of the episodes in his retelling of the ancient story. There
are writers who bewitch you by a magical use of words whose lines
glitter like jewels, whose effects are gained by an elaborate art and
who deal with the subtlest emotions. Others again are simple as an
Egyptian image, and yet are more impressive, and you remember them
less for the sentence than for a grandiose effect. They are not so much
concerned with the art of words as with the creation of great images
informed with magnificence of spirit. They are not lesser artists but
greater, for there is a greater art in the simplification of form in the
statue of Memnon than there is in the intricate detail of a bronze by
Benvenuto Cellini. Standish O'Grady had in his best moments that epic
wholeness and simplicity, and the figure of Cuculain amid his companions
of the Red Branch which he discovered and refashioned for us is, I
think, the greatest spiritual gift any Irishman for centuries has given
to Ireland.

I know it will be said that this is a scientific age, the world is so
full of necessitous life that it is waste of time for young Ireland to
brood upon tales of legendary heroes, who fought with enchanters, who
harnessed wild fairy horses to magic chariots and who talked with
the ancient g