Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

2l6 STANDISH O'gRADY
bardic mythus-making era, and divine nature withholds
her gifts from anarchic kings. It is a doctrine very old.
Truer, perhaps, than we think. You will find it in Homer,
too, who expounds it through the lips of the many-coun-
selled, much-experienced Ithacan. Judge from the fore-
going whether mutiny and servile rebellions were dear
to the old chroniclers and bards.
Cairbre Cat-Heat, prick-eared, satyr-like mutineer,
has had a tolerably long sleep, a sleep of some two thou-
sand years ; but he is out once more, alive and strong,
with roaring multitudes at his heels. For indeed he is
not at all mortal or useless in the economy of things, and,
like the devil, is but kept in chains to become in due time
the scourge and abolisher of corrupt aristocracies, when
patient Justice at length delivers judgment and the clock
tolls the hour of execution. He is out once more,
bawling upon platforms, glozing in the Senate, boycotting,
maligning, and lying, full of greed and envy. He is the
Old Anarch met once long since by a certain bad traveller,
tourist, pursuer of big game, or what not. His home
is in Chaos. He is known by many names in many lands,
and everywhere hated even by his multitudes when his
work is done. Wise Homer called him the ugliest man
that came up to Troy, and Moses had a tough wrestle
with him, triple-headed, in the wilderness of Hormah.
But ugly though he be, this never forget, that he is part
of the eternal system of things, the scavenger who makes
away with things dead and corrupting, the vulture that
pounces on the dying.
' Of the causes of the rebellion of Cairbre and the rent-