broom, her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her
hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemone amidst the
spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of
the falcon, was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowy than the
breast of the white swan, her cheek was redder than the reddest roses."
Everywhere there is an Oriental profusion of gorgeous imagery, but the
gorgeousness is seldom oppressive. The sensibility of the Celtic temper, so
quick to perceive beauty, so eager in its thirst for life, its emotions,
its adventures, its sorrows, its joys, is tempered by a passionate
melancholy that expresses its revolt against the impossible, by an instinct
of what is noble, by a sentiment that discovers the weird charm of nature.
The wildest extravagance of the tale-teller is relieved by some graceful
play of pure fancy, some tender note of feeling, some magical touch of
beauty. As Kulwch's greyhounds bound from side to side of their master's
steed, they "sport round him like two sea-swallows." His spear is "swifter
than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth
when the dew of June is at the heaviest." A subtle, observant love of
nature and natural beauty takes fresh colour from the passionate human
sentiment with which it is imbued. "I love the birds" sings Gwalchmai "and
their sweet voices in the lulling songs of the wood"; he watches at night
beside the fords "among the untrodden grass" to hear the nightingale and
watch the play of the sea-mew. Even patriotism takes the same picturesque
form. The Welsh poet hates the flat and sluggish land of the Saxon; as he
dwells on his own he tells of "its sea-coast and its mountains, its towns
on the forest border, its fair landscape, its dales, its waters, and its
valleys, its white sea-mews, its beauteous women." Here as everywhere the
sentiment of nature passes swiftly and subtly into the sentiment of a human
tenderness: "I love its fields clothed with tender trefoil" goes on the
song; "I love the marches of Merioneth where my head was pillowed on a
snow-white arm." In the Celtic love of woman there is little of the