I speak here of the better known of the two versions of this encounter of the pagan with the Christian spirit. There are others in which the reconciliation is carried still further. One example is to be found in the Colloquy of the Ancients (SILVA GADELICA). Here Finn and his companions are explicitly pronounced to be saved by their natural virtues, and the relations of the Church and the Fenian warriors are most friendly.
Everything, on the contrary, in the Mythological Cycle is gifted with life, all the doings and things of nature are represented as the work of living creatures; but it is quite possible that those in Ireland who made these myths were not Celts at all.
I give one example of the way colour was laid on to animals just for the pleasure of it. "And the eagle and cranes were red with green heads, and their eggs were pure crimson and blue"; and deep in the wood the travellers found "strange birds with white bodies and purple heads and golden beaks," and afterwards three great birds, "one blue and his head crimson, and another crimson and his head green, and another speckled and his head gold."