text:  She furnished him with the rich materials of his song--with her dear victories set in blood; with the imperishable memory of her independence; with the character of her sons and daughters simple as water but strong as the waterfall; with her snatches of old-world minstrelsy surely never composed by mortal man but spilt from the overflowing soul of sorrow and gladness; with her music twin-born say rather one with her minstrelsy; with her fairy belief the most delicately beautiful mythology in the history of the human mind and strangely contrasted with the rugged character of her people a people of sturt and strife; with her heroic faith; with the graves of her headless martyrs in green shaw or on grim moor visited by many a slip of sunshine streaming down from behind the cloud in the still autumnal afternoon