The Culain, as unmistakably a cuckoo-god as his 



Cuckoo's Finnish or Esthonian namesake, Kukkolind. 

 The base of all is the divine inspiration, the 

 mysterious wandering Breath, the incalculable 

 Word, 'the heroic cuckoo,' who awakens the 

 green world, the world of blossom and leaf and 

 the songs of birds and the sap in the trees and 

 the mounting warmth in the blood, who, as 

 the chroniclers say, * rouses the enchanted 

 maid of spring from her long sleep.' Of all 

 these, whether it be Faunus, or Kullervo, or 

 Kalevipoeg, or the Son of Mananan, or Cuchu- 

 lain, the same thing may be said : they are 

 bringers of Spring, champions of the sun, 

 rhapsodes of the immemorial ecstasy, bacchids 

 of the ancient intoxication. 



One of the loveliest of these mythopceic 

 dreams I heard first, at the break of June, years 

 ago, at Strachur of Loch Fyne, in a season 

 of cloudless blue by day and mellow amber 

 by night, and when in the long-delaying dusk 

 the voices of many cuckoos floated across the 

 narrow loch from the shadowy woods of 

 Claondiri. It was of Manan, the son of that 

 ancient Manan the Gaelic Poseidon ; and how 

 he went to the north to woo his beautiful 

 sister, and strew her way with the petals of 

 wild-rose, and fill her ears with the songs of 

 birds, and the sighing of waters, and the 



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