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The Irish Kingdom
of Scotland
or sagas, she has what even Rome has not, a literature
of heroic Iliads that is the independent, unadulterated,
original creation in antiquity of the heart and lips of her
people. The northern nations, apparently as free as she,
as unmolested by Roman power, failed to accomplish
this tour de force. It invests Ireland with a supreme
glory. It marked her from the beginning as a nation of
destiny and served as a fitting prelude to that medieval
work which was to continue as an enduring foundation to
subsequent civilization.
By the sixth century Greco-Roman and the old Irish
culture had become inseparably blended and a new Chris-
tian polity had given breadth and stature to the older
national entity which unassisted Irish experience had
created. In Ireland alone are we enabled to look on the
old life and the new on that ultra-world which knew
neither Roman nor Greek and on that world again trans-
formed by Greek and Roman learning.
Classical writers and the unknown authors of the old
Irish epics reveal to us the unity of the civilization of
the Celts, more clearly developed and defined in Ireland
than elsewhere. We see them eating, drinking, playing
and fighting. We note their great numbers and powerful
physique; the magnificence of their funerals; their use
of the chariot; their splendid horsemanship; their races
and cattle-spoils; the ferocity of their onset in battle; the
retinue around their princes; their astonishing apparel
dyed tunics, flowered with colors, fantastic, flaming cloaks,
breeches, and wondrous buckles and ornaments of gold.
We note their haughty self-confidence, as in the colloquy
with Alexander, their chivalry in combat, their figurative
in