Every child knows that the old Norse story of a sleeping brunnhilde encircled by flames is true; to him or her, there is a brunnhilde in every street, and the child knows that there it always has a chance of being the chosen Siegfried.
"G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study"
Julius West
As Richard Wagner received from the Scandinavian folk-lore the inspiration for his great music, as Tennyson found the incentive for The Idylls of the Kings in Malory's Morte d'Arthur, so the modern Celtic poets turned back to the primitive legends of their country for tales of Cuchulain who fought the sea, Caolte who besieged the castle of the gods, Oisin, who wandered three hundred years in the land of the immortals, and Deirdre who stands in the same relation to Celtic literature as Helen to Greek and brunnhilde to German literature.
"Halleck's New English Literature"
Reuben P. Halleck