Ideas of Good and Evil.
music and art, except where it has come by some straight or crooked way out of ancient times. Love was held to be a fatal sickness in ancient Ireland, and there is a love-poem in The Songs of Connacht that is like a death cry: 'My love, O she is my love, the woman who is most for destroying me, dearer is she for making me ill than the woman who would be for making me well. She is my treasure, O she is my treasure, the woman of the grey eyes ... a woman who would not lay a hand under my head.... She is my love, O she is my love, the woman who left no strength in me; a woman who would not breathe a sigh after me, a woman who would not raise a stone at my tomb.... She is my secret love, O she is my secret love. A woman who tells me nothing, ... a woman who does not remember me to be out.... She is my choice, O she is my choice, the woman who would not look back at me, the woman who would not make peace with me.... She is my desire, O she is my
282
