Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

142 STANDISH O'gRADY
monumental remains seek to discern what manner of
men were they, and how fed and cherished that unity
and that prowess which in this age made them famous,
and should endeavour to connect their lives, too, with all
that is known of the spirit prevalent in North Europe in
these days, and feel that beneath their breasts, tattooed
and branded, beat that heroic loving heart whose throbs
we feel in the antique literature of the Irish, their friends
and confederates, and in the remnants of Teutonic Scan-
dinavian, and Icelandic sagas.
But of the Irish, the Scoti, who can now speak in
words of sudden, hasty repulsion, perceiving in that,
their Bible, the ancient songs and tales of the race, how
therein lie, firm and deep, all the elements, all the organic
impulses which go to the formation of heroic and beautiful
characters ? The men who adored those ancient gods,
who loved and worshipped those great Ultonian heroes
and heroines, and those later of the Ossianic age, and who
adorned with myths, touchingly beautiful and tender, every
mountain, plain, bay, stream, lake, and promontory of
their native land, were not savages, or, if they were, such
savagery as theirs, in its inherent spirit, as distinguished
from its archaic simple form, who would not recall ?
What a world of magnanimous thought and delicate
sentiment underlies the whole narration no intelligent
reader can fail to perceive. The attribution to heroines
of a sweet voice, so common,—is this savage ?— ^the
attribution to them of divining, protecting instincts, how,
save in literary form, finish, and direction, does the
Shakspearian literature differ from theirs ? Cuculaia