Imaginations and Reveries | Page 8

darling hero and restored him to us,
and I think now that Cuculain will not perish, and he will be invisibly
present at many a council of youth, and he will be the daring which lifts
the will beyond itself and fires it for great causes, and he will be also
the courtesy which shall overcome the enemy that nothing else may
overcome.
I am sure that Standish O'Grady would rather I should speak of his
work and its bearing on the spiritual life of Ireland, than about himself,
and, because I think so, in this reverie I have followed no set plan but
have let my thoughts run as they will. But I would not have any to think
that this man was only a writer, or that he could have had the heroes of
the past for spiritual companions, without himself being inspired to
fight dragons and wizardry. I have sometimes regretted that
contemporary politics drew O'Grady away from the work he began so

greatly. I have said to myself he might have given us an Oscar, a
Diarmuid or a Caolte, an equal comrade to Cuculain, but he could not,
being lit up by the spirit of his hero, he merely the bard and not the
fighter, and no man in Ireland intervened in the affairs of his country
with a superior nobility of aim. He was the last champion of the Irish
aristocracy, and still more the voice of conscience for them, and he
spoke to them of their duty to the nation as one might imagine some
fearless prophet speaking to a council of degenerate princes. When the
aristocracy failed Ireland he bade them farewell, and wrote the epitaph
of their class in words whose scorn we almost forget because of their
sounding melody and beauty. He turned his mind to the problems of
democracy and more especially of those workers who are trapped in the
city, and he pointed out for them the way of escape and how they might
renew life in the green fields close to Earth, their ancient mother and
nurse. He used too exalted a language for those to whom he spoke to
understand, and it might seem that all these vehement appeals had
failed but that we know that what is fine never really fails. When a man
is in advance of his age, a generation, unborn when he speaks, is born
in due time and finds in him its inspiration. O'Grady may have failed in
his appeal to the aristocracy of his own time but he may yet create an
aristocracy of character and intellect in Ireland. The political and
economic writings will remain to uplift and inspire and to remind us
that the man who wrote the stories of heroes had a bravery of his own
and a wisdom of his own. I owe so much to Standish O'Grady that I
would like to leave it on record that it was he made me conscious and
proud of my country, and recalled to my mind, that might have
wandered otherwise over too wide and vague a field of thought, to
think of the earth under my feet and the children of our common
mother. There hangs in the Municipal Gallery of Dublin the portrait of
a man with melancholy eyes, and scrawled on the canvas is the subject
of his bitter brooding: "'The Lost Land." I hope that O'Grady will find
before he goes back to Tir na noge that Ireland has found again through
him what seemed lost for ever, the law of its own being, and its
memories which go back to the beginning of the world.

THE DRAMATIC TREATMENT OF LEGEND
"The Red Branch ought not to be staged. . . . That literature ought not

to be produced for popular consumption for the edification of the
crowd. . . . I say to you drop this thing at your, peril. . . . You may
succeed in degrading Irish ideals, and banishing the soul of the land. . . .
Leave the heroic cycles alone, and don't bring them down to the
crowd..." (Standish O'Grady in All Ireland Review).
Years ago, in the adventurous youth of his mind, Mr. O'Grady found
the Gaelic tradition like a neglected antique dun with the doors barred,
and there was little or no egress. Listening, he heard from within the
hum of an immense chivalry, and he opened the doors and the wild
riders went forth to work their will. Now he would recall them. But it is
in vain. The wild riders have gone forth, and their labors in the human
mind are only beginning. They will do their deeds over again, and now
they will act through many men and speak through many voices. The
spirit