‘My mother said to me not to be talking with you, to-day or to-morrow or on Sunday. It was a bad time she took for telling me that, it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.... ‘You have taken the east from me, you have taken the west from me, you have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me, and my fear is great you have taken God from me.’ The Gael of the Scottish islands could not sing his beautiful song over a bride, had he not a memory of the belief that Christ was the only man who measured six feet and not a little more or less, and was perfectly shaped in all other ways, and if he did not remember old symbolical observances— I bathe thy palms In showers of wine, In the cleansing fire, In the juice of raspberries, In the milk of honey. * * * * * Thou art the joy of all joyous things, Thou art the light of the beam of the sun, Thou art the door of the chief of hospitality, Thou art the surpassing pilot star, Thou art the step of the deer of the hill, Thou art the step of the horse of the plain, Thou art the grace of the sun rising, Thou art the loveliness of all lovely desires. The lovely likeness of the Lord Is in thy pure face, The loveliest likeness that was upon earth. I soon learned to cast away one other illusion of ‘popular poetry.’ I learned from the people themselves, before I learned it from any book, that they cannot separate the idea of an art or a craft from the idea of a cult with ancient technicalities and mysteries. They can hardly separate mere learning from witchcraft, and are fond of the words and verses that keep half their secret to themselves. Indeed, it is certain that before the counting-house had created a new class and a new art without breeding and without ancestry, and set this art and this class between the hut and the castle, and between the hut and the cloister, the art of the people was as closely mingled with the art of the coteries as was the speech of the people that delighted in rhythmical animation, in idiom, in images, in words full of far-off suggestion, with the unchanging speech of the poets.