We know all this from their poetry, their tales, and their writings in general, which strongly reflect this pleasing aspect of their character. Everywhere we meet with passages in which are noticed, with loving admiration, not only those features mentioned by Keats, but many others, such as the boom and clash of the waves, the cry of the sea-birds, the murmur of the wind among the trees, the howling of the storm, the sad desolation of the landscape in winter, the ever-varying beauty of Irish clouds, the cry of the hounds in full career among the glens, the beauty of the native music, tender, sad, or joyous, and so forth in endless variety. The few examples that follow here, as the reader will at once perceive, exhibit vividly this very fine and very attractive characteristic. The singing of birds had a special charm for the old Irish people. Comgan, a poet of the seventh century, standing on the great rath of Knockgraffon in Tipperary--one of the old Munster royal residences--which was in his time surrounded with woods, uttered the following verse:-- “This great rath on which I stand Wherein is a little well with a bright silver drinking-cup: Sweet was the voice of the wood of blackbirds Round this rath of King Fiacha.” Among the examples of metre given in an old Irish treatise on prosody is the following verse, selected merely for a grammatical purpose:-- “The bird that calls within the sallow-tree, Beautiful his beak and clear his voice; The tip of the bill of the glossy jet-black bird is a lovely yellow; The note that the merle warbles is a trilling lay.” It would be hard to find a more striking or a prettier conception of the power of music in the shape of a bird-song, than the account of Queen Blanid’s three cows with their three little birds which used to sing to them during milking. These cows were always milked into a caldron, but submitted reluctantly and gave little milk till the birds came to their usual perch--on the cows’ ears--and sang for them: then they gave their milk freely till the caldron was filled. This corresponds with the effect of the milking-songs described at p. 89. (See also for bird-songs, p. 83.) Many students of our ancient literature have noticed these characteristics of the old Irish and their writings. “Another poem,” writes Mr. Alfred Nutt, “strikes a note which remains dominant throughout the entire range of Ossianic Literature: the note of keen and vivid feeling for certain natural conditions. It is a brief description of winter:-- “A tale here for you: oxen lowing: winter snowing: summer passed away: wind from the north, high and cold: low the sun and short his course: wildly tossing the wave of the sea. The fern burns deep red. Men wrap themselves closely: the wild goose raises her wonted cry: cold seizes the wing of the bird: ’tis the season of ice: sad my tale.”