--- title: Opening, part 1 — The foray of Queen Meave, and other legends of I… · full text with trees · page 2 description: Opening, part 1, «The foray of Queen Meave, and other legends of Ireland's heroic age» by Aubrey De Vere: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: LEGENDS --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78491/1/page/2/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The foray of Queen Meave, and other le…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78491/) / Opening, part 1 # Opening, part 1 · page 2 [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78491/1/) **2** It has been remarked that in the characters of Homer--so absolutely true are they to nature--the qualities which bear the same name are yet essentially different qualities; as, for example, courage as illustrated in Achilles and Ajax, in Diomed and in Hector.[80](../../80/ "tree and pragmatics") This mark of truthfulness strikes us at once in the Tain.[81](../../81/ "tree and pragmatics") The kingly valour of Fergus, thoughtful and serene, has nothing in common with the animal fearlessness of Lok Mac Favesh, or the blind patriotic fury of Ketherne, and but little with that of Ferdīa.[82](../../82/ "tree and pragmatics") In Cuchullain, courage is an inspiration descending from above upon a being essentially emotional, and though always brave, yet sensitive and capable of awe.[83](../../83/ "tree and pragmatics") We smile at the boundless admiration lavished on strength by all early races; nor shall we understand it aright while we suppose that it was, indeed, directed to mere physical qualities.[84](../../84/ "tree and pragmatics") This was not so.[85](../../85/ "tree and pragmatics") Body and soul were not then thus carefully discriminated; the heroic deed was attributed, not to the hand alone, but to the warrior himself, his heart and his brain; and not to the man only, but to some divine aid, his because deserved by him.[86](../../86/ "tree and pragmatics") Cuchullain is the chief example of heroism thus conceived.[87](../../87/ "tree and pragmatics") He is slender as a maid; but in the crisis of battle, when his spirit kindles, his stature becomes gigantic.[88](../../88/ "tree and pragmatics") This close connection between the material and the spiritual explains the rapidity with which the wounds of these legendary heroes heal.[89](../../89/ "tree and pragmatics") Should there ever come a time when the spiritual is the chief object of man’s reverence, the present adulation of mere intellect will be looked on as we regard the enthusiasm bestowed on martial might in days gone by.[90](../../90/ "tree and pragmatics") The imaginative literature of early races wears a rough exterior; but as we are told of a ‘latent heat,’ so there exists a latent thoughtfulness; and it is often found unexpectedly in the depths of a tale which on its surface reveals no disposition to deal with hard problems.[91](../../91/ "tree and pragmatics") The reader of the Tain will be reminded of this truth in proportion as he understands the relative position of the Irish kingdoms at the time it describes.[92](../../92/ "tree and pragmatics") Connaught was the most barbaric as well as the poorest of them all; while Ulster had even then reached that superiority in strength and wealth, and in civilisation both civil and military, which for so many centuries she retained.[93](../../93/ "tree and pragmatics") Her king was the subtlest and most powerful of the Irish kings; and her celebrated ‘Red Branch Knights’ were the most gallant order of Irish chivalry.[94](../../94/ "tree and pragmatics") The more astonishing, consequently, was the utter prostration, a defeat without a battle, into which she so suddenly fell.[95](../../95/ "tree and pragmatics") Without any apparent cause her strength changed to weakness, and her wisdom to folly.[96](../../96/ "tree and pragmatics") It was the rebuke of her pride.[97](../../97/ "tree and pragmatics") At the critical moment of her fortunes her great ones began to babble and talk nonsense.[98](../../98/ "tree and pragmatics") All that their country had been they forgot; and the near future they looked on through what the Tain calls ‘a mist of imbecility,’ and attributes to witchcraft.[99](../../99/ "tree and pragmatics") Equally striking is the change which takes place when the spell is reversed.[100](../../100/ "tree and pragmatics") The inferior nation can neither use nor retain the advantages accidentally and dishonestly gained, and defeat succeeds to triumph.[101](../../101/ "tree and pragmatics") I know of nothing else in poetry which resembles this.[102](../../102/ "tree and pragmatics") Possibly it might be easier to find a parallel in history.[103](../../103/ "tree and pragmatics") The Tain, a work which, while abounding in passion, distinctly includes an element of humour and irony, suffers nothing from a revulsion so strange.[104](../../104/ "tree and pragmatics") It ends with a great event, a battle and an overthrow; and if that catastrophe is but a ‘conclusion inconclusive,’ and no results remain behind, in this very circumstance lies a special significance of the work.[105](../../105/ "tree and pragmatics") To this issue the whole leads up, and the reader is not taken by surprise.[106](../../106/ "tree and pragmatics") Throughout the tale he finds the same strange mixture of ardent affections with causeless hatreds; of quick sympathies with injustice and ferocity; of high daring with a blundering the consequence not of incapacity, but of tortuous acuteness.[107](../../107/ "tree and pragmatics") Everywhere he finds the contrast between the emotional in excess and an all but complete absence of discipline, whether moral or mental.[108](../../108/ "tree and pragmatics") Such characteristics may last for centuries, but the end is ever the same--exertions that amaze, and abortive results.[109](../../109/ "tree and pragmatics") The only cause for surprise is that a moral so grave should have been unconsciously bequeathed by an ancient work, written to amuse, not instruct.[110](../../110/ "tree and pragmatics") The explanation is that a poem true to the time and to the characters it commemorates, teaches by necessity what they teach.[111](../../111/ "tree and pragmatics") The relation in which St. Kiaran stood to the Tain illustrates that of the Christian priesthood to the imaginative traditions of Ireland.[112](../../112/ "tree and pragmatics") The living bards and the clergy could not but be rivals, but it was often a friendly rivalship; and as regards the bards of past centuries, there was no room for jealousy.[113](../../113/ "tree and pragmatics") By degrees the clergy took an interest in the ancient tales, and became attached to what they befriended.[114](../../114/ "tree and pragmatics") Amid many extravagances they detected doubtless a significance which escapes the half-closed eye of a cynic shrewdness.[115](../../115/ "tree and pragmatics") Occasionally they added to old legends an interpolation which might have surprised those who had first sung them.[116](../../116/ "tree and pragmatics") Thus we read that Cuchullain, when going forth to his last battle, heard a choir of angels singing above that hill on which the cathedral of Armagh was destined one day to stand; that he was pleased by the anthem, and that his pleasure in it was accepted as a homage of good-will.[117](../../117/ "tree and pragmatics") Elsewhere he is represented as fleeting in his war-car, after death, above his beloved Emania.[118](../../118/ "tree and pragmatics") He sings,--[119](../../119/ "tree and pragmatics") I played on breaths Above the horses’ steam: There used to be broken before me Great battles on every side:[120](../../120/ "tree and pragmatics") yet he ends with a warning to the race of man, and announces the day of judgment.[121](../../121/ "tree and pragmatics") The teachers of those days doubtless believed that religion could afford to be indulgent towards minstrels who had been true to such lesser lights as they possessed.[122](../../122/ "tree and pragmatics") Paganism in those days was too little insidious to be dangerous.[123](../../123/ "tree and pragmatics") There is a paganism in literature much more formidable than theirs; but it had not then manifested itself.[124](../../124/ "tree and pragmatics") It belongs to that corrupted civilisation which uses against Christianity those intellectual and imaginative gifts, as well as that social and scientific progress, which it owes to Christianity alone.[125](../../125/ "tree and pragmatics") It belongs also to that merely conventional civilisation which has scanty dealings either with nature or with the supernatural.[126](../../126/ "tree and pragmatics") Nature, even in periods branded as ‘barbaric,’ has qualities that indicate a sympathy with the divine; for it has ardent affections, a simple refinement, singleness of aim, a marvellous self-sacrifice, and those unblunted sensibilities, both of love and reverence, without which the loftiest revealed truths cease to have a meaning.[127](../../127/ "tree and pragmatics") The heroic at its highest stretches forth its hands to the spiritual; and its very deficiencies are a confession that it needs to be supplemented by a something higher than itself.[128](../../128/ "tree and pragmatics") We must not confound the ‘savage’ state which has fallen beneath the dominion of blind sense, with the ‘barbaric’ which has not yet ascended into the clearer day, but which in its twilight has a gleam of coming morn.[129](../../129/ "tree and pragmatics") If Ireland, once converted to the faith, filled the world with her missions, there must have existed in her previously a thoughtfulness as well as a fearlessness each of which found its way at last into the nobler fields of enterprise.[130](../../130/ "tree and pragmatics") It is not unlikely that the apostle from Clonmacnoise and Iona often cheered his way over the Northumbrian moors or through the Teuton forest with a ballad about Cuchullain as well as with a Latin hymn of Sedulius.[131](../../131/ "tree and pragmatics") [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78491/1/) **2** - ← previous: [page 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78491/1/) - next →: [Opening, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78491/2/) - ↑ back to [The foray of Queen Meave, and other legends of Ireland's heroic age](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78491/)