Page:The poem-book of the Gael - Hull.djvu/37

things for which we are not prepared; unfamiliar themes, treated in a new manner; and to judge of these, some help from outside may be useful. The reader who does not know Ireland or know Gaelic, is ready to accept softness, the almost endless iteration of expressions conveying the sense of woman's beauty and of man's affection, in phrases that differ but little from each other; what he is not prepared for is the sudden break into matter-of-fact, the curt tone that cuts across much Irish poetry, revealing an unexpected side of life and character. Even the modern Irishman is tripped up by the swift intrusion of the grotesque; the cold, cynical note that exists side by side with the most fervent religious devotion, especially in the popular poetry, displeases him. He resents it, as he resents the tone of the "Playboy of the Western World"; yet it is the direct modern representative of the tone of mind that produced the Ossianic lays.

We find it in all the popular poetry; as an example take the argument of the old woman who warns a young man that if he persists in his evil ways, there will be no place in heaven for such as he. The youth replies:

The same chill, almost harsh tone is heard in the colloquy between Ailill of Munster and the woman whom he has trysted on the night after his death,^[1] or in the poem, "I shall not die for you" (p. 286), or in the