Something of that emotion as of ancestral The Wild 

 memories, as of an awakened past, of an un- Apple, 

 loosening of the imagination, may well come 

 to any imaginative nature encountering sud- 

 denly a wild-apple in blossom in some solitary 

 place. To people of a Celtic race or having a 

 dominant Celtic strain, in particular, perhaps ; 

 for to the Gael, the Cymru and the Breton 

 the Apple-tree is associated with his most 

 sacred traditional beliefs. Of old it was sacro- 

 sanct. It was the Celtic Tree of Life, what 

 Yggdrasil was to the ancient dreamers of 

 Scandinavia. He cannot think of it, but of 

 the kingdom of eternal youth : of Emhain 

 Abhlach, of Y Breasil, of Avalon, of drowned 

 Avillion. It waves over the lost Edens. In 

 Tir-na-n'Og its boughs, heavy with blossom, 

 hang above the foam of the last pale waters 

 of doom. The tired islander, who has put 

 away hunger and weariness and dreams and 

 the old secret desire of the sword, lays himself 

 down below its branches in Flatheanas, and 

 hears the wild harpers of Rinn in a drowsy 

 hum like the hum of wild bees. Grey -haired 

 men and women on the shores of Connemara 

 look out across the dim wave and see the 

 waving of its boughs. The Breton peasant, 

 standing at twilight on the rock-strewn beaches 

 of Tregastel, will cross himself as he smells the 



!3i 



