In Finn's Song to May, the
waterfall is singing a welcome to the pool below, the loudness of
music is around the hill, and in the green fields the stream is
singing. The blackbird, the cuckoo, the heron and the lark are the
musicians of the world. When Finn asks his men what music they thought
the best, each says his say, but Oisin answers, "The music of the
woods is sweetest to me, the sound of the wind and of the blackbird,
and the cuckoo and the soft silence of the heron." And Finn himself,
when asked what was his most beloved music, said first that it was
"the sharp whistling of the wind as it went through the uplifted
spears of the seven battalions of the Fianna," and this was fitting
for a hero to say. But when the poet in him spoke, he said his music
was the crying of the sea-gull, and the noise of the waves, and the
voice of the cuckoo when summer was at hand, and the washing of the
sea against the shore, and of the tide when it met the river of the
White Trout, and of the wind rushing through the cloud. And many other
sayings of the same kind this charming and poetic folk has said
concerning those sweet, strong sounds in Nature out of which the music
of men was born.
Again, there is not much music in the Mythological Tales. Lugh, it is
true, is a great harper, and the harp of the Dagda, into which he has
bound his music, plays a music at whose sound all men laugh, and
another so that all men weep, and another so enthralling that all fall
asleep; and these three kinds of music are heard through all the
Cycles of Tales.
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