of seeing their true underlying form by the dust of events and the clamor of details; for eyes anointed they might resolve themselves into Moyturas and Camlans endlessly fought; into magical weapons magically forged; into Cuculains battling eternally at the Watcher’s Ford, he alone withstanding the great host of this world’s invaders, while all his companions are under a druid sleep. . . .  It is the most splendid scene or incident in the Tann Bo Cuailgne; and I cannot think of it, but it calls up before my mind’s eye another picture:  that of a little office in New York, and a desk, and rows of empty seats; and another Irishman, lecturing to those empty seats . . . . but to all humanity, really . . . . from the ranks of which his companions should come to him presently; he would hold back the hosts of darkness alone, waiting for their coming.  And I cannot think of this latter picture but it seems to me as if: 

     Cuculain rode from out the ages’ prime,
          The hero time, spacious and girt with gold,
     For he had heard this earth was stained with crime.

     With loud hoof-thunder, clangor, ring and rhyme,
          With chariot-wheels flame-trailing where they rolled,
     Cuculain rode from out the ages’ prime.

     I saw his eyes, how darkening, how sublime,
          With what impatient pity and power ensouled;
     (For he had heard this earth was stained with crime!)

     Song on his lips—­I heard the chant and chime. 
          The stars themselves danced to in days of old:—­
     Cuculain rode from out the ages’ prime.

     Love sped him on to out-speed the steeds of Time: 
          No bliss for him, and this world left a-cold,
     Which, he had heard, was stained with grief and crime.

     Here in this Iron Age’s gloom and grime
          The Ford of Time, the waiting years, to hold,
     Cuculain came . . . . and from the Golden prime
     Brought light to save this world grown dark with crime....

Well; from the schools of Findian and his disciples missionaries soon began to go out over Europe.  To preach Christianity, yes; but distinctly as apostles of civilization as well.  Columba left Ireland to found his college at Iona in 563; and from Iona, Aidan presently went into Northumbria of the Saxons, to found his college at Lindisfarne.  Northumbria was Christianized by these Irishmen; and there, under their auspices, Anglo-Saxon culture was born.  In Whitby, one of their foundations, Caedmon arose to start the poetry:  a pupil of Irish teachers.  At the other end of England, Augustine from Rome had Christianized Kent; but no culture came in or spread over England from Augustine and Kent and Rome; Northumbria was the source of it all.  You have only to compare Beowulf, the epic the Saxons brought with them from the continent, with the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf, or with such poems as The Phoenix, to see how Irishism tinged the minds of these Saxon pupils of Irish teachers with, as Stopford Brooke says, “a certain imaginative passion, a love of natural beauty, and a reckless wildness curiously mingled with an almost scientific devotion to metrical form.”