Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/329

Rh Songs of Connacht. The version enclosed with the circular was taken down by Mr. Cecil Sharpe, and differs in a few unessential phrases from that in The Oxford Book of English Ballads.

The poem is a masterpiece, because something of great moment is there completely stated; and the poet who wrote the English words—it may exist in every European tongue for all I know—certainly wrote before the Reformation. It has been sung to our own day by English and Irish countrymen, but it shocks the Christian Brothers. Why?

The actual miracle is not in the Bible, but all follows as a matter of course the moment you admit the Incarnation. When Joseph has uttered the doubt which the Bible also has put into his mouth, the Creator of the world, having become flesh, commands from the Virgin's