It ran all
through the Bardic History, the Critical and Philosophical
History, and through the political books, "The Tory Democracy" and
"All Ireland." There is this imaginative energy in the tale of
Cuculain, in all its episodes, the slaying of the hound, the
capture of the Laity Macha, the hunting of the enchanted deer, the
capture of the wild swans, the fight at the ford and the awakening
of the Red Branch. In the later tale of Red Hugh which he calls
"The Flight of the Eagle" there is the same quality of power
joined with a shining simplicity in the narrative which rises into
a poetic ecstacy in that wonderful chapter where Red Hugh,
escaping from the Pale, rides through the Mountain Gates of
Ulster, and sees high above him Slieve Mullion, a mountain of the
Gods, the birthplace of legend "more mythic than Avernus" and
O'Grady evokes for us and his hero the legendary past, and the
great hill seems to be like Mount Sinai, thronged with immortals,
and it lives and speaks to the fugitive boy, "the last great
secular champion of the Gael," and inspires him for the fulfilment
of his destiny.
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