We might say of Red Hugh and indeed of all
O'Grady's heroes that they are the spiritual progeny of Cuculain.
From Red Hugh down to the boys who have such enchanting adventures
in "Lost on Du Corrig" and "The Chain of Gold" they have all a
natural and hardy purity of mind, a beautiful simplicity of
character, and one can imagine them all in an hour of need, being
faithful to any trust like the darling of the Red Branch. These
shining lads never grew up amid books. They are as much children
of nature as the Lucy of Wordsworth's poetry. It might be said of
them as the poet of the Kalevala sang of himself,
"Winds and waters my instructors."
These were O'Grady's own earliest companions and no man can find
better comrades than earth, water, air and sun. I imagine
O'Grady's own youth was not so very different from the youth of
Red Hugh before his captivity; that he lived on the wild and rocky
western coast, that he rowed in coracles, explored the caves,
spoke much with hardy natural people, fishermen and workers on the
land, primitive folk, simple in speech, but with that fundamental
depth men have who are much in nature in companionship with the
elements, the elder brothers of humanity: it must have been out of
such a boyhood and such intimacies with natural and
unsophisticated people that there came to him the understanding of
the heroes of the Red Branch.
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