It is even more remarkable in the descriptions of the
dress and weapons of the warriors and kings. They blaze with colour;
and as gold was plentiful in Ireland in those far-off days, yellow and
red are continually flashing in and out of the blue and green and rich
purple of their dress. The women are dressed in as rich colours as the
men. When Eochy met Etain by the spring of pure water, as told in this
book, she must have flashed in the sunlight like a great jewel. Then,
the halls where they met and the houses of the kings are represented
as glorious with colour, painted in rich patterns, hung with woven
cloths dyed deep with crimson and blue and green and yellow. The
common things in use, eating and drinking implements, the bags they
carry, the bed-clothing, the chess-men, the tables, are embroidered or
chased or set with red carbuncles or white stones or with interlacing
of gold. Colour is everywhere and everywhere loved. And where colour
is loved the arts flourish, as the decorative arts flourished in
Ireland.
Lastly, on this matter, the Irish tale-tellers, even to the present
day, dwell with persistence on the colour of the human body as a
special loveliness, and with as much love of it as any Venetian when
he painted it. And they did this with a comparison of its colour to
the colours they observed in Nature, so that the colour of one was
harmonised with the colour of the other.
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