Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

336 STANDISH o'gRADY
or poems. The other names, Sabia, Bodbh Derg, and the
Dagda are not mere names. They stand for characters,
personalities, who play a great part in the ancient literature.
As for the Dagda, he seems to have been the supreme god
of the Pagan Irish, the Jupiter of our Olympus. The
very beautiful woman who gave its name to Slievenaman
was, therefore, the grand-daughter of the supreme god of
the Gael.
Our Irish poetry and prose, queer, strange, and out-of-
date as it may appear, is the inspiration which is to-day
urging intellectual Ireland into a position in which she
is bound, I think, to become a new creative centre in
modern English literature ; and for us poor editors of
newspapers to ignore such things as these going on around
us, for fear of being laughed at, would be absurd and
fantastic poltroonery. Now, the supernatural races who
in modern times, and in English and Anglo-Irish literature,
generally, have been called fairies, were in the middle ages
regarded as angels—^fallen—and, in the purely Pagan
ages, bore the name of Tuatha de Danan. The first word
in this compound means peoples ; the second, gods ; the
third of " Dana," and the whole expression may be
translated the " god races of Dana," i.e., the gods, chil-
dren of Dana. Dana again is a compoimd word meaning
the goddess Ana ; and so we have in an ancient Irish
dictionary the word Ana, and over against it the memor-
able explanation. Mater deorum Hibernensium, i.e.,
" the Mother of the Irish gods." Now the fairy maiden,
Sabia, daughter of Bodbh Derg, son of the Dagda, met
by Fionn on the slopes of Slievenaman, was nearly related