Having written so far, we begin to wonder whether it was wise or necessary to set so much prose between the reader and the poems which, as we hope, he wishes to read. In an ordinary anthology, the interruption of a long preface is a mistake and an intrusion, for, more than any other good art, good poetry must explain itself. The mood in which a poem touches us acutely may be recorded, but it cannot be reproduced in or for the reader. He must find his own moment. For the most part, these Irish poems need no introduction. We need no one to explain to us the beauty of the lines in the "Flower of Nut-brown Maids":
"I saw her coming towards me o'er the face of the mountain,
Like a star glimmering through the mist";
or to remind us of the depth of Cuchulain's sorrow when over the dead body of his son he called aloud:
"The end is come, indeed, for me;
I am a man without son, without wife;
I am the father who slew his own child;
I am a broken, rudderless bark
Tossed from wave to wave in the tempest wild;
An apple blown loose from the garden-wall,
I am over-ripe, and about to fall;"
or to tell us that the "Blackthorn," or "Donall Oge," or "Eileen Aroon," are exquisite in their pathos and tenderness. But there are, besides these enchanting things, which we are prepared to expect from Irish verse, also things for which we are not prepared; unfamiliar themes, treated in a new manner; and to judge of these, some help from outside may be useful. The reader who does not know Ireland or know Gaelic, is ready to accept softness, the almost endless iteration of expressions conveying the sense of woman's beauty and of man's affection, in phrases that differ but little from each other; what he is not prepared for is the sudden break into matter-of-fact, the curt tone that cuts across much Irish poetry, revealing an unexpected side of life and character. Even the modern Irishman is tripped up by the swift intrusion of the grotesque; the cold, cynical note that exists side by side with the most fervent religious devotion, especially in the popular poetry, displeases him. He resents it, as he resents the tone of the "Playboy of the Western World"; yet it is the direct modern representative of the tone of mind that produced the Ossianic lays.
We find it in all the popular poetry; as an example take the argument of the old woman who warns a young man that if he persists in his evil ways, there will be no place in heaven for such as he. The youth replies:
"If no sinner ever goes to Paradise,
But only he who is blessed, there will be wide empty places in it.
If all who follow my way are condemned
Hell must have been full twenty years and a year ago,
And they could not take me in for want of space."
The same chill, almost harsh tone is heard in the colloquy between Ailill of Munster and the woman whom he has trysted on the night after his death,[5] or in the poem, "I shall not die for you" (p. 286), or in the verses on the fairy-hosts, published by Dr. Kuno Meyer, where, instead of praise of their ethereal loveliness, we are told:
"Good are they at man-slaying,
Melodious in the ale-house,
Masterly at making songs,
Skilled at playing chess."[6]