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IRISH PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS

instance, is written on the very key of "Fragments of the Lost Journals of Piero di Cosimo" (1896), far apart their subject material, and "The Hill-Wind" by "W. S." dedicated as it is to "F. M.," might well be a rejected passage from "The Mountain Lovers." There is the color of the Highlands and Islands about many of these mystical stories, about "The Hill-Wind," by "W. S." and "The Wind, the Shadow, and the Soul," the epilogue "F. M." wrote to the "Dominion of Dreams"; but most of these shorter mystical tales have not the tang and savor of farm-home on lonely moors, or fisher's hut on the lonelier machar, that is characteristic of most of the tales long and short, that deal with modern days.

Nor are the meanings of these "spiritual tales" consistently indicated in symbols taken from Scottish life, nor is their supernaturalism native to it. Mrs. Spoer (Ada Goodrich-Freer), in her "Outer Isles" (1902), tells us "The Celtic Gloom" amuses the Hebridean. If so, what effect would such discussion as that of "The Lynn of Dreams" and "Maya" have upon him? But if such essays are not written out of Highland life, they are none the less interesting, and in the case of "Maya," with its consideration of waking dream, beautiful as art, and valuable, too, as a contribution to science.

So far does Sharp go in his belief as to the apprehension of thought through powers other than those of the senses, that in "The Winged Destiny" he can look forward to a time "when the imagination shall lay aside words and pigments and clay, as raiment needless during the festivals of the spirit, and express itself in the thoughts which