irish storytelling...

I have known smoky cabins where literature was cherished and appreciated in a way that few except great men of letters can or do appreciate it.

And I have seen wearied haymakers, after the prolonged toil of a midsummer day, sit round in a circle while one of their number recited in Irish a Fenian lay--the "Chase of Sieve Gullion" perhaps, or "The Lay of the Great Woman."

Breathless they listened, till at some turn in the narrative, they broke out into a chorus of applause, or sorrow, or indignation. What impressed me then, and impresses me even more now, was the intensity of interest in which they showed in these poems or stories, showing as it did a literary taste which has disappeared with the language."