And it is told of
them that sometimes, when the moon is high, they rise from their
graves and meet and hunt together, and speak of ancient days. The
supernatural has lessened since the heroic cycle. But it is still
there in the Fenian.
Again, the Fenian cycle of tales is more influenced by Christianity
than the others are. The mythological cycle is not only fully pagan,
it is primeval. It has the vastness, the savagery, the relentlessness
of nature-myths, and what beauty there is in it is akin to terror.
Gentleness is unknown. There is only one exception to this, so far as
I know, and that is in the story of _The Children of Lir_. It is
plain, however, that the Christian ending of that sorrowful story is a
later addition to it. It is remarkably well done, and most tenderly. I
believe that the artist who did it imported into the rest of the tale
the exquisite tenderness which fills it, and yet with so much
reverence for his original that he did not make the body of the story
Christian. He kept the definite Christian element to the very end, but
he filled the whole with its tender atmosphere.
No Christianity and very little gentleness intrude into the heroic
cycle. The story of Christ once touches it, but he who put it in did
not lose the pagan atmosphere, or the wild fierceness of the manners
of the time.
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