THE WORLD'S DEBT TO THE IRISH 
has said with regard to the women of Homer, was 
still more true with regard to Ireland. The more 
we know about them the more we realize that they 
were at once the incentive to men to bring out the 
best that was in them and considered an all sufficient 
reward themselves for whatever struggles man 
might have to go through in the accomplishment of 
their desires. The beautiful passage in which 
Homer described the tender domestic relations in 
the family of Hector has a vivid reminder of Irish 
traditions. When the consciousness of impending 
death came to Hector it is to Andromache that the 
hero turns and it is the parting with her that con- 
stitutes death’s bitterest pang. The leave taking 
between Hector and Andromache is one of the most 
simply beautiful yet sublime passages in all literature 
and the introduction of the child softens it and 
makes it intensely human. Out of such simple ma- 
terial the Irish poets also made their sagas. 
President Roosevelt in his article on “The An- 
cient Irish Sagas” (the Century Magazine, Janu- 
ary 1907) has emphasized the contrast between the 
women pictured by the ancient Irish poets and those 
of the Norse poets. He said: 
“Still more striking is the difference between the 
women in the Irish sagas and those, for instance, of 
the Norse sagas. Their heirs of the spirit are the 
Arthurian heroines, and the heroines of the 
romances of the middle ages. In the ‘Song of 
Roland’—rather curiously, considering that it is the 
first great piece of French literature—woman plays 
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