But there is one element in all the Irish tales which I have not yet mentioned, and it brings all the others within its own circumference, and suffuses them with its own atmosphere.

It is the love of Ireland, of the land itself for its own sake--a mystic, spiritual imaginative passion which in the soul of the dweller in the country is a constant joy, and in the heart of the exile is a sick yearning for return.

There are not many direct expressions of this in the stories; but it underlies the whole of them, and it is also in the air they breathe.

But now and again it does find clear expression, and in each of the cycles we have discussed.

When the sons of Turenn are returning, wounded to death, from the Hill of Mochaen, they felt but one desire.