Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

340 STANDISH O GRADY
could not see Lough Liath, which crowns the height of
Slieve GuUion, enfolded now and swathed in that white
cloudy tiara—the many-storied lake. Others have, and
regarded with awe its dark waves, more mythic than those
of Avernus, sounding as with all the sorrows and all the
far-soaring aspirations of our race.
O melancholy lake, shaped like the moon ! lake uplifted
high in the arms of Slieve Gullion ; boggy, desolate,
thick-strewn with grey boulders on thy eastern shore, and
on thy western, regarded askance by thy step-child the
rosy heather, ruddy as with blood—aloof, observant of
thy never-ending sorrow ; unfathomable, druid lake
home of the white steed immortal : bath of the Caillia-
Bullia, the people's dread ;
thy turbid waves aye brealcing
in pale foam upon thy grey shore strewn with boulders
and wrecks of the work of men's hands ;
enchanted lake ;
scattered to the winds ;
horror-haunted,
seat of dim ethnic mysteries, lost all or
with thy made wells, and walls
and painted temples, and shining cairns, and subterrene
corridors obscure— ^walked once by druids gold-helmeted
and girded with the Sun ;—scene of religious pomps,
and thronging congregations hymning loud their forgotten
gods obscene or fair ; what mighty tales, what thoughts
far-journeying. Protean, sprang once in light from thy
wine-dark, mystic floor, Lough Liath ! Sky-neighbouring
lake vexed by all the winds ! mournful, sibilant, teeming
fount of thy vast phantasmal mythus, O Ultonia !
THE END.
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