is to speak in drama, in narrative poetry or in an epic, must speak, if it is to influence or to charm the world beyond the Irish shore, in a world-language like English, and of international as well as of Irish humanity.

These elements on which I have dwelt seem to me the most distinctive, the most Irish, in the Tales in this book. There are many others on which a more minute analysis might exercise itself, phases of feeling concerning war or love or friendship or honour or the passions, but these are not specially Irish. They belong to common human nature, and have their close analogies in other mythologies, in other Folk-tales, in other Sagas. I need not touch them here. But there is one element in all the Irish tales which I have not yet mentioned, and it brings all the others within its own circumference, and suffuses them with its own atmosphere. It is the love of Ireland, of the land itself for its own sake—a mystic, spiritual imaginative passion which in the soul of the dweller in the country is a constant joy, and in the heart of the exile is a sick yearning for return. There are not many direct expressions of this in the stories; but it underlies the whole of them, and it is also in the air they breathe. But now and again it does find clear expression, and in each of the cycles we have discussed. When the sons of Turenn are returning, wounded to death, from the Hill of Mochaen, they felt but one desire. "Let us but see," said Iuchar and Iucharba to their brother Brian, "the land of Erin again, the hills round Telltown, and the dewy plain of Bregia and the quiet waters of the Boyne and our father's Dún thereby, and healing will come to us; or if death come, we can endure it after that." Then Brian raised them up; and they saw that they were now near by under Ben Edar; and at the strand of the Bull they came to land. That is from the Mythological Cycle.

In the Heroic Cycle it appears in the longing cry for return to Ireland of Naisi and his brothers, which drives them out of Alba to their death; but otherwise it is rarely expressed. In the Fenian Cycle it exists, not in any clear words, but in a general delight in the rivers, lakes, woods, valleys, plains, and mountains of Ireland. Every description of them, and of life among them, is done with a loving, observant touch; and moreover, the veil of magic charm is thrown over all the land by the creation in it of the life and indwelling of the fairy host. The Fianna loved their country well.