We should no longer understand the men and women
who fought and loved in Ireland, and whose characters were moulded by
Irish surroundings, customs, thoughts, and passions. We should not see
or feel the landscape of Ireland or its skies, the streams, the woods,
the animals and birds, the mountain solitudes, as we feel and see
them in the original tales. We should not hear, as we hear in their
first form, the stormy seas between Scotland and Antrim, or the great
waves which roar on the western isles, and beat on cliffs which still
belong to another world than ours. The genius of Ireland would desert
our work.
And it would be a vast pity to lose the Irish atmosphere in the
telling of the Irish tales, because it is unique; not only distinct
from that of the stories of other races, but from that of the other
branches of the Celtic race. It differs from the atmosphere of the
stories of Wales, of Brittany, of the Highlands and islands of
Scotland. It is more purely Celtic, less mixed than any of them. A
hundred touches in feeling, in ways of thought, in sensitiveness to
beauty, in war and voyaging, and in ideals of life, separate it from
that of the other Celtic races.
It is owing to the careful, accurate, and critical work of continental
and Irish scholars on the manuscript materials of Irish Law, History,
Bardic Tales, and Poetry; on customs, dress, furniture, architecture,
ornament, on hunting and sailing; on the manners of men and women in
war and peace, that the modern re-teller of the Irish tales is enabled
to conserve the Irish atmosphere.
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