Again, there is not much music in the Mythological Tales.  Lugh, it is true, is a great harper, and the harp of the Dagda, into which he has bound his music, plays a music at whose sound all men laugh, and another so that all men weep, and another so enthralling that all fall asleep; and these three kinds of music are heard through all the Cycles of Tales.  Yet when the old gods of the mythology became the Sidhe,[7] the Fairy Host, they—­having left their barbaric life behind—­became great musicians.  In every green hill where the tribes of fairy-land lived, sweet, wonderful music was heard all day—­such music that no man could hear but he would leave all other music to listen to it, which “had in it sorrows that man has never felt, and joys for which man has no name, and it seemed as if he who heard it might break from time into eternity and be one of the immortals.”  And when Finn and his people lived, they, being in great harmony and union with the Sidhe, heard in many adventures with them their lovely music, and it became their own.  Indeed, Finn, who had twelve musicians, had as their chief one of the Fairy Host who came to dwell with him, a little man who played airs so divine that all weariness and sorrow fled away.  And from him Finn’s musicians learnt a more enchanted art than they had known before.  And so it came to pass that as in every fairy dwelling there was this divine art, so in every palace and chieftain’s hall, and in every farm, there were harpers harping on their harps, and all the land was full of sweet sounds and airs—­shaping in music, imaginative war, and sorrows, and joys, and aspiration.  Nor has their music failed.  Still in the west and south of Ireland, the peasant, returning home, hears, as the evening falls from the haunted hills, airs unknown before, or at midnight a wild triumphant song from the Fairy Host rushing by, or wakes with a dream melody in his heart.  And these are played and sung next day to the folk sitting round the fire.  Many who heard these mystic sounds became themselves the makers of melodies, and went about the land singing and making and playing from village to village and cabin to cabin, till the unwritten songs of Ireland were as numerous as they were various.  Moore collected a hundred and twenty of them, but of late more than five hundred he knew not of have been secured from the people and from manuscripts for the pleasure of the world.  And in them lives on the spirit of the Fianna, and the mystery of the Fairy Host, and the long sorrow and the fleeting joy of the wild weather in the heart of the Irish race.

   [7] This word is pronounced Shee, and means “the folk of the
   fairy mounds.”