I wish it well, but such a development seems now too late.

The Irish genius, if it is to speak in drama, in narrative poetry or in an epic, must speak, if it is to influence or to charm the world beyond the Irish shore, in a world-language like English, and of international as well as of Irish humanity.
These elements on which I have dwelt seem to me the most distinctive, the most Irish, in the Tales in this book.

There are many others on which a more minute analysis might exercise itself, phases of feeling concerning war or love or friendship or honour or the passions, but these are not specially Irish.

They belong to common human nature, and have their close analogies in other mythologies, in other Folk-tales, in other Sagas.

I need not touch them here.