This being the case, modern
philosophy, accounting for the origin of the classical deities by
guesses and _a priori_ reasonings, has almost universally adopted
that explanation which I have, elsewhere, called Wordsworthian, and
which derives them directly from the imagination personifying the
aspects of nature.
"In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched
On the soft grass through half a summer's day,
With music lulled his indolent repose,
And in some fit of weariness if he,
When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain far sweeter than the sounds
Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched,
Even from the blazing chariot of the sun,
A beardless youth who touched a golden lute
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment--
***
"Sunbeams upon distant hills,
Gliding apace with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet oreads, sporting visibly."
This is pretty, but untrue. In all the ancient Irish literature we
find the connection of the gods, both those who survived into the
historic times, and those whom they had dethroned, with the raths
and cairns perpetually and almost universally insisted upon. The
scene of the destruction of the Firbolgs will be found to be a
place of tombs, the metropolis of the Fomorians a place of tombs,
and a place of tombs the sacred home of the Tuatha along the shores
of the Boyne.
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