It is one of
the ailments of our speculation that thought, when it is not the
planning of something, or the doing of something or some memory of a
plain circumstance separates us from one another because it makes us
always more unlike, and because no thought passes through another's ear
unchanged. Companionship can only be perfect when it is founded on
things, for things are always the same under the hand, and at last one
comes to hear with envy of the voices of boys lighting a lantern to
ensnare moths, or of the maids chattering in the kitchen about the fox
that carried off a turkey before breakfast. This book is full of
fellowship untroubled like theirs, and made noble by a courtesy that has
gone perhaps out of the world. I do not know in literature better
friends and lovers. When one of the Fianna finds Osgar dying the proud
death of a young man, and asks is it well with him, he is answered, "I
am as you would have me be." The very heroism of the Fianna is indeed
but their pride and joy in one another, their good fellowship. Goll, old
and savage, and letting himself die of hunger in a cave because he is
angry and sorry, can speak lovely words to the wife whose help he
refuses. "'It is best as it is,' he said, 'and I never took the advice
of a woman east or west, and I never will take it. And oh, sweet-voiced
queen,' he said, 'what ails you to be fretting after me? and remember
now your silver and your gold, and your silks .
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