Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

IRISH BARDIC HISTORY 45
historic ages are filled. No such visible results have
flowed to the world from the labours of the Irish bards
as what has indirectly accrued from those of Orpheus,
Mu&aeus, and the other spiritual progenitors of the
Greek race. The development of the Irish mind under
the influence of the bards was interrupted by the advent
of Christianity at a very early age, impelled by the force
of all the existing civilization of Europe. Had the
intellectual and spiritual sovereignity of the Irish bards
continued for a few centuries longer, I, for one, regarding
the wonderful imaginative power evinced in the whole
conception, of that vast epos which forms the bardic
history of Ireland, and the innumerable defined lofty or
beautiful characters which it contains, feel as confident
as one can well be concerning anything not actually
realized, that results would have been forthcoming which
would now be portion of the intellectual wealth of man-
kind.
Yet were the labours of the Irish bards considerable
and well worthy of attention, and their influence upon
the history of this nation deep and far-reaching. In
the first place, they have left behind the still extant
imaginative literature, monuments of antiquity in the
highest degree interesting and important. No other
European country suppUes records exhibiting phases of
thought and civilization so archaic, as are revealed with
regard to the Irish race, in this unique literature. Thus
a great hiatus in European, and, more particularly, in
Grecian history, is partially filled. We find in it a stage
of mental and social development corresponding to that