FullReads

A generosity and greatness of spirit are in the heroes of the Red Branch, and out of their strength grows a bloom of beauty never fully revealed until Lady Gregory compiled these tales. As we read our eyes are dazzled by strange graces of color flowing over the pages: everywhere there is mystery and magnificence. Procession’s pass by in Druid ritual, kings and queens, and harpers who look like kings. When the wind passes over them and stirs their garments a sweetness comes over the teller of the tale, who felt that delight in draperies blown over shapely forms which is the inspiration of the Winged Victory and many Greek marbles. The bards will not have the hands of those proud people touch anything which is not beautiful. “It was a beautiful chessboard they had, all of white bronze, and the chessmen of gold and silver, and a candlestick of precious stones lighting it.” The wasting of time has spared us a few things to show that this rare and intricate metal work was not a myth, and we are forced by an inexorable logic to accept as mainly true the narration of the pride, the beauty, the generosity, and the large lovable character of the ancient heroes. We may come to realize that, losing their Druid vision of a more shining world mingling with this, we have lost the vision of that life into the likeness of which it is the true labor of the spirit to transform this life. For the Tirnanoge is that Garden where, in the mind of the Lord, the flowers and trees blossomed before they grew in the fields, where man lived in the Golden Age before the outer darkness of the earth was built and he was outcast from Paradise. There is no true art or literature which has not some image of the Golden Life lurking within it, and through the archaic rudeness of these legends the light shines as sunlight through the hoary branches of ancient oaks. Lady Gregory has done her work, as compiler with a judgment which could hardly be too much praised, and she has translated the stories into an idiom which is a reflection of the original Gaelic and is full of charm. We are indebted to her for this labor as much as to any of those who sang to sweeten Ireland’s wrong.

1902