The wisdom of Irish verse is the vision of Finn after he had eaten the
Salmon of Knowledge, not
"The triple temporality
Under the countenance of eternity",
or Art on her knees to Nature craving the gift of life, or any of the
complicated visions of the great clerk Jean de Meung at the end of the
thirteenth century. "Finn, what do you see?" And he said that he say May
Day, and swallows skimming and haze on the lake and the rushes talking,
heather and black peat, and the sea asleep. "What are the three lasting
things?" they asked Cormac, and the answer came, "Grass and copper and yew."
Their Latin verse is beaten copper: the Irish has the grass and the yew.
-- Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars
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