And this conservation of the special
Irish atmosphere is the second result which the work of the critical
scholars has established. If the re-writer of the tales does not use
the immense materials made ready to his hand for illustration,
expansion, ornament and description in such a way that Ireland, and
only Ireland, lives in his work from line to line, he is greatly to be
blamed.
Mr Rolleston has fulfilled these conditions with the skill and the
feeling of an artist. He has clung closely to his originals with an
affectionate regard for their ancientry, their ardour and their
distinction, and yet has, within this limit, used and modified them
with a pleasant freedom. His love of Ireland has instilled into his
representation of these tales a passion akin to that which gave them
birth. We feel, as we read, how deep his sympathy has been with their
intensity, their love of wild nature, their desire for beauty, their
interest in humanity and in character, their savagery and their
tenderness, their fairy magic and strange imaginations that suddenly
surprise and charm. Whenever anything lovely emerges in the tale, he
does not draw attention to it, but touches it with so artistic a
pencil that its loveliness is enhanced. And he has put into English
verse the Irish poems scattered through the tales with the skill and
the temper of a poet.
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