"Many of them, and generally the best, are just as essentially
Irish as if they were written in Gaelic. They could have grown
among no other people, perhaps under no other sky or scenery. To an
Englishman, to any Irishman educated out of the country, or to a
dreamer asleep to impressions of scenery and character, they would
be achievements as impossible as the Swedish _Skalds_ or the
_Arabian Nights_. They are as Irish as Ossian or Carolan, and
unconsciously reproduce the spirit of those poets better than any
translator can hope to do. They revive and perpetuate the vehement
native songs that gladdened the halls of our princes in their
triumphs, and wailed over their ruined hopes or murdered bodies. In
everything but language, and almost in language, they are
identical. That strange tenacity of the Celtic race, which makes a
description of their habits and propensities when Caesar was still a
Proconsul in Gaul true in essentials of the Irish people to this
day, has enabled them to infuse the ancient and hereditary spirit
of the country into all that is genuine of our modern poetry. And
even the language grew almost Irish. The soul of the country,
stammering its passionate grief and hatred in a strange tongue,
loved still to utter them in its old familiar idioms and cadences.
Uttering them, perhaps, with more piercing earnestness, because of
the impediment; and winning out of the very difficulty a grace and
a triumph."