man is on a level with the brutes, we may illustrate his general belief from the practice of the Gonds, a Dravidian race, who used to kidnap boys of the Brahmans, and, slaying one of them with a poisoned arrow at seed-time or harvest, sprinkled his blood over the ploughed field or ripe corn, and then devoured his flesh. At all other times, the destined victim would be taboo, and receive tokens of worship.

So then, from the 'cursed stones of Usnech,' which would never stay in the wall of any building, and from the sacred oak, logs of which were taken to burn evil hags and other malefactors, all the way up through the non-human world we may travel, and at every step we shall find the holy thing with its two faces, one giving life, the other raying out destruction. No man but has a ritual which he is bound to observe. The monarch himself is nothing less than the incarnation of his kingdom's good or evil fortune, and on his due performance of all points the country stands. Finn may not look upon any dead man that has not been slain; Diarmuid is prohibited from hunting the boar; King Fergus, though allowed to pass 'under loughs, and linns, and seas,' receives the command not to go down into Lough Rudhraidhe, which is in his own country,and when he does so, the monster dwelling therein slays him. Maidens are forbidden to be in the sun; if Sinann, daughter of Lodon, presumes to gaze into a sacred well, the water bursts forth and pursues her like a river-god, forming the Shannon during its course, and she is drowned in it. Tales beyond number, of which an extremely primitive one is that of the Horned Women,' relate the dangers of staying up at uncanny hours, when the fairies are abroad, or would like to be clustering round the deserted hearth-stone. To give away fire, salt, or milk on May Day is to put oneself in the power of evil. The good people claim whatever is spilled on the ground; nor, when the hero carries away the sword, the steed, or the damsel, can he get off safe if any one of them touches the doorposts while he is passing out. Colours have their appointed rank and power; the red, the white, the yellow, may not be worn indiscriminately. Red-haired men and women belong to Pluto, and their encounter is unlucky in the morning when light begins to reign. Words-above all, the rhythmic formulas of poetry and of high indignation or deep attachment-have in them a compelling charm; it is possible so to curse an enemy that he shall wither away, and to call and consecrate a loved object which must then yield to the lover. Yet counter-charms exist; and fire drives off evil; iron wounds or even kills malignant spirits; the demon be cheated into taking an image for the soul he has come to

may

snatch.

snatch. There are many Manii at Aricia,' quotes Mr. Frazera proverb which might have sprung up in Erinn, where under the name of Mainè they were not less numerous. He explains it of the dough simulacra becoming at length mere cakes, which the gods accepted instead of living victims. Little by little, the wild and blood-stained ritual softens into symbolism; and mimicry, which always had a secret influence over the thing imitated, grows to be a sacerdotal art, or a species of rude but harmless jesting on the cornfield. As in the 'Brawl of Almhain,'-not, however, until many combatants have fallen,— the battle is stayed by music; and the bestial and the bleating gods, no longer accounted divine in themselves, now furnish the sacrifice at which they were once the only deities.

This upward movement, in which the gods become men, with minds inspired by lofty or benevolent ideals, and hearts touched to the kindlier emotions, is marked from India to Mexico, by the appearance of the Culture Hero. Not himself born in the purple, and compelled to endure a long apprenticeship, he comes to the aid of the failing heavenly powers, but much more does he toil and succeed on behalf of his fellows. For them he goes down to Hell, and by force or cunning brings back from thence many boons-the 'flame of all-creative fire,' the dog and the horse, the seed of corn and wine, the magic draught that is to give mankind their poets and eloquent soothsayers. But he does not win these treasures upon easy terms. When Cuchulainn sings of his own descent to Hades, the reflection breaks from his lips, 'It was a deed! '—a mighty and perilous adventure, in which the cruel tempest of the north drowned all his companions save those whom he could rescue by letting them cling to him. Among his duties it is reckoned that he shall bring up again the sun which has sunk into ocean, or two parts out of the three which make day and night. He is to be armed at all points, and ever on the watch against man's enemies. Nor is it surprising that after he has singly braved these perils, in the person of a wandering Odin, Hercules, or Cuchulainn, he should call about him a host such as Arthur led to battle, or, in the person of Finn Mac Cumhall, train up and rule over the chivalrous knighthood of the Fianna.

In ancient Erinn, such was the final aspect of Paganism. It could reckon ideal kings-Conchobar Mac Nessa, Cormac, and Ollamh Fodhla; chieftains with divers and conflicting attributes, like Cuchulainn, who remind us too often that the Culture Hero must still, in this lower world, overcome as much by the sword as by potent runes; and a whole order of prophetic singers, including not a few of the daughters of kings

and

and nobles, who were exempt from war, and would have thought it sinful to stain their white garments with blood. The under-world itself became more lightsome as human mortals learnt to adorn and beautify it. As the Tuatha De Danann laid aside their dreadful powers, they changed into the fairies whom we all know by their music, which charms to love, to laughter, and to sleep, according as it is played in its varied keys. Their raiment was all of bright colours, their meat and drink of the daintiest; their steeds ran before the March wind; and themselves were among the most beautiful creatures ever seen, with their complexion as it were of flowers and their golden locks. If huge and monstrous beings still abode in the land, they haunted solitary places, for their time was past; and they could come only by stealth or in disguise where the fire might scorch them, or words of a prevailing spell might put them to flight. The high feudal chivalry which took its pleasure by ranks and in orders at Tara and Emania, was faithfully reproduced in the land beyond Erinn.' Such, at least, is the picture drawn by medieval poets, who cannot have invented the main outlines of a system in which they did not believe or rather, in which they did believe, for it had come down to them, however touched with new colouring, from their ancestors.

But even Finn and his warriors must yield at last. Not Apollo nor Athena could save Hellenism, and how much less was there worth preserving in the Celtic ritual, out of which no Socrates had emerged? The Culture Hero, as we view him in Cormac and the avatars of Lugh, does not rise into a public conscience governed by the law of righteousness; he is shrewd, and can be fair in his judgments, but he is no philosopher. The state of perpetual war and wasting has still to be transformed into civilized peace. And now Christian saints come across the world of dark waters; they subdue the land, consecrate its holy places to a new name, and go on a progress in which blessing and banning do their allotted task. The wizards fly to their enchantments, and King Dermot fasts against these new magicians—all to little purpose, for they can outfast him by stratagem, and the Druids have no remedy which will overpower Christian prayers. The old Fenian warriors, broken at the battle of Gowra, have long vanished underground. Yet Ossian, with Caoilte Mac Ronan, comes forth to the encounter of St. Patrick and his seventy clerics as they travel. The past and the present hold a colloquy together, not in unfriendly wise, although to inspire the heathen poet with a love of the massbell is impossible, and he would rather turn back to his people in Sheol than go up with the saints to their far-off heaven.

Has

Has the Colloquy of the Ancients' a parallel in any other language? We do not remember one. It dates, at least, from the fifteenth century, but the traditions contained in it are much older; and, as a vision of mythical Erinn, it gathers up hundreds of stories which cleave to the names of places in the south and west. St. Patrick, while displaying a more than kingly style, is drawn with refinement and sometimes with a touch of light humour. To the Fenian chiefs he is invariably considerate; neither has he a Puritanic disdain of story-telling. On the contrary, when he enquired of his guardian spirits if it were convenient in God's sight for him to be listening to such tales, these delightful Celtic angels made answer, 'Holy cleric, no more than a third part of their stories do these ancient warriors tell, by lack of memory; but by thee let it be written on tabular staffs of poets, and in Ollamhs' words, for to nobles of the latter time it will be an amusement.' Which said, the angels departed. Patrick, accordingly, commands Brogan, the ready writer, to take it all down; and, in prose and verse, we of the latter time (though not, perhaps, especially our nobles), have the pleasure of reading it.

Caoilte Mac Ronan is, therefore, the Pausanias who knows all the tombs, treasure-mounds, enchanted caves and streams, hidden wells, and spots made venerable by the Fenian glories, which Patrick passes by. He is, himself, the pattern knight, as brave as blameless, and his enthusiastic praise of Finn becomes him greatly: Were but the brown leaf which the wood sheds from it gold-were but the white billow silverFinn would have given it all away.' And of Ossian he says: 'He that, if only a man had a head to eat with and legs to go upon-so as to carry off his largesse 'never refused any.' Here, also, is a delicate trait: 'No matter how much Finn had bestowed on a man, neither by day nor by night did he ever bring it up against him.' Finn was equal to Cormac, who would have judged right judgment between his son and his enemy.' Nor do the knights seem unworthy of their master in this description, which, though fervent and loyal, is not overcharged with epithets. Truly, to see Caoilte Mac Ronan was enlargement of mind,' as Conall and his friends deemed it. For he gave token of all that minute interest in heirlooms from the past which graces the antiquarian; he could tell the deeds done in battle, and shared in by himself, with a bard's impetuous rhetoric; and his songs of the hunting of Arran, of the red deer, and the forest trees-above all, the last-would have delighted Spenser as well as amazed him. The poet of 'The Faery Queen' was not, as he believed, the first that made Irish

woods

woods and rivers sing. They had learned their music a thousand years before, if this story has any truth in it. And, as Brogan argues, If there be music in heaven, why should there not be on earth?' To which end, Cascorach, the graceful elf or pigmy, who plays the harp for Finn and his remaining heroes, is taken up in Patrick's train. As the mixed company passes through the land, there is much weeping over old times. When the green tulach opens, it displays the gold and things of price which were entombed with the warriors; and the generous Fenians bestow them all on Patrick. Thus in pathetic human fashion, with melody and sobbing, the old order passes out of sight. For Ossian has grown to be as a lonely tree against the wind,' whose branches are shaken with the music that blows through them, while it waits the hour when it shall put forth leaves no more.

Yet the Celtic tree, the oak which bears within it a heart of fire, is not dead. Ossian himself, coming with ancient harp from the fairy mound, and playing the melodies which still breathe in the under-world, has held our moderns captive. Nothing now touches the finest chords in poetry, unless it has some reminiscence of the days that are no more. It is not Virgilian but Celtic pathos which has stolen itself into our enchanted cup, brimming over with the wine of gods. As the foreground of civilized life becomes a battle-ground, with the squadrons of misery in their rags and tatters thronging to it, the high distant lights grow, as by some law of compensation, more transparent and aërial; the fine colours of sunset, as delicate as any dream, mount up and take their station in the sky. For the times are changing, and never was there an age when the poet, seeking inspiration among the 'grassy barrows of the happier dead,' might find it more easily.

Poetry, indeed, like all high literature, has ever lived in remembrance of the past. It appeals to what is deepest, and therefore most ancient, in the heart of man. Like the music which it invites as an accompaniment, it moves on the path of feeling; it feeds upon regret no less than aspiration; it looks before and after, and is a willing pilgrim to forgotten tombs. How else could it get free from the imperious present, with its clamour and dust, its burden of the commonplace, its surrender to appetite and instinct? The poet must make for himself an ideal solitude, or he will cease to sing. this grass-grown Celtic literature, why should he not find the inspiring loneliness that will enable him to breathe and muse? The land of memories, with its purple hills, its changing April sky, and the mists which have entangled in

In