The fragrance comes into flowers, and birds break 



Cuckoo's m t S ong. The voice of Cuchulain is the music 

 Silence 



of the world. Blathmaid hears it, awakes, 



moves to it in wondering joy. But a rival 

 lord, Curoi the king, carries Blathmaid away. 

 Cuchulain is left bound, and shorn of his long 

 yellow hair. But he regains his strength and 

 freedom, and follows Blathmaid. Her sign to 

 him from the dun where she is kept a prisoner 

 is milk poured into the water that makes a gulf 

 between the fortress and the leaning banks. In 

 the end, Curoi is slain or driven away ; Blath- 

 maid hears the call of Cuchulain, and wanders 

 into the beautiful green world with her lover. 

 Here, every touch is symbolical. Cuchulain is 

 the breath of returning life, Spring, symbolised 

 in the Cuckoo, that 'child of air' as the old 

 northland poet calls his dream. Blathmaid is 

 the awakening world : Blossom. Curoi is the 

 wind of autumn, the fierce and silent magician 

 Winter. The milk is but the emblem of 

 melting streams, of the fluent sap. 



But now, as I write, already midsummer is 

 gone. The cuckoo is silent. The country-folk 

 still think it is become a hawk. The old 

 Cymric Gwalchmei (the cuckoo-son of Arthur 

 and twin brother of Modred) is, Professor Rhys 

 tells us, but an analogue of the Hawk of May. 

 So, once more, we see the incalculable survival 



186 



