To sum up, then:  I believe there was an influx of the Crest-Wave into Britain, from about 410 to 540:  a national awakenment, with something of greatness to account for the Arthurian legend; and with something of spiritual illumination, through a revival of Druidic Wisdom to account for the rumor of Taliesin.  I am not sure but that this influenced the Celtic Church:  I am not sure but that David, and Cadoc, and Teilo, and Padarn, fathers of that church, were men pervious to higher influences; and that the monastery-colleges they presided over were real seats of lerning, unopposed to, if not in league with, the light.

XXVI.  “SACRED IERNE OF THE HIBERNIANS” *

“I could not put the pen aside
Till with my heart’s love I had tried
To fashion some poor skilless crown
For that dear head so low bowed down.” 

                                                —­From the Celtic

It is but a step from Wales to Ireland.  From the one, you can see the “fair hills of holy Ireland” in the heart of any decent sunset; from the other, you can see Wales shining landed in in any shining dawn.  No Roman legion ever landed in Ireland; yet all through Roman times boats must have been slipping across and across; there must have been constant communication, and there was, really, no distinction of race.  There was a time, I believe, when they were joined, one island; and all the seas were east of the Severn.  Both peoples were a mixture of Gaels and Cymry; only it happens that the Gaelic or Q language survived in Ireland; the Cymric or P language in Wales.  So, having touched upon Wales last week, and shown the Crest-Wave flowing in there, this week, following that Wave westward,

     I invoke the land of Ireland! 
     Shining, shining sea! 
     Fertile, fertile mountain! 
     Gladed, gladed wood! 
     Abundant river, abundant in water! 
     Fish-abounding lake!

It was what Amargin the Druid sang, when the Gael first came into Ireland.  Here is the story of their coming:—­

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* The stories told in this and the following lecture, and the
translations of Irish poems, etc., are taken from Mr. T.W. 
Rollertone’s delightful Myths and Legends of the Celtic
Race, or from M. de Jubainville’s Irish Mythological Cycle,
translated and published in Dublin in the ’nineties.
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Bregon built a tower in Spain.  He had a son named Ith; and one fine evening in winter Ith was looking out over the horizon from Bregon’s tower, and saw the coast of Ireland in the distance; for “it is on a winter’s evening when the air is pure that one’s sight carries farthest.”  So says the eleventh century bard who tells the tale:  he without knowing then that it was not in Spain was Bregon’s tower, but on the Great Plain, which is in the Atlantic, and yet not in this world at all.