ht not to be staged.... That
literature ought not to be produced for popular consumption
for the edification of the crowd.... I say to you drop
this thing at your peril.... You may succeed in
degrading Irish ideals, and banishing the soul of the land.
... Leave the heroic cycles alone, and don't bring them
down to the crowd..." (Standish O'Grady in All Ireland
Review).

Years ago, in the adventurous youth of his mind, Mr. O'Grady found the
Gaelic tradition like a neglected antique dun with the doors barred, and
there was little or no egress. Listening, he heard from within the hum
of an immense chivalry, and he opened the doors and the wild riders went
forth to work their will. Now he would recall them. But it is in vain.
The wild riders have gone forth, and their labors in the human mind are
only beginning. They will do their deeds over again, and now they
will act through many men and speak through many voices. The spirit of
Cuculain will stand at many a lonely place in the heart, and he will win
as of old against multitudes. The children of Turann will start afresh
still eager to take up and renew their cyclic labors, and they will
gain, not for themselves, the Apples of the Tree of Life, and the Spear
of the Will, and the Fleece which is the immortal body. All the heroes
and demigods returning will have a wider field than Erin for their
deeds, and they will not grow weary warning upon things that die but
will be fighters in the spirit against immortal powers, and, as before,
the acts will be sometimes noble and sometimes base. They cannot be
stayed from their deeds, for they are still in the strength of a youth
which is ever renewing itself. Not for all the wrong which may be done
should they be restrained. Mr. O'Grady would now have the tales kept
from the crowd to be the poetic luxury of a few. Yet would we, for all
the martyrs who perished in the fires of the Middle Ages, counsel the
placing of the Gospels on the list of books to be read only by a few
esoteric worshippers?

The literature which should be unpublished is that which holds the
secret of the magical powers. The legends of Ireland are not of this
kind. They have no special message to the aristocrat more than to the
man of the people. The men who made the literature of Ireland were by
no means nobly born, and it was the bards who placed the heroes, each
in his rank, and crowned them for after ages, and gave them the