Celtiberia

CELTIC LITERATURE

THE Greeks gave the collective name Keltai to a Western people, and the name Keltike to the laud which they inhabited. The region to which the latter term was applied varied according to the more or less accurate knowledge of each writer who used the term. The use of the word Keltai víŭs equally vague and variable; and this was due as much to the great movements of peoples which took place some centuries before the Christian era as to the want of knowledge of the early Greek writers. One of the displacements of tribes due to those movements has immediate connection with our present subject, the migration of some of the Keltαi by the valley of the Danube and Northern Greece into Asia Minor; for in the names Galatai given to the people, and Galatia given to the land wherein they settled, we have forms which connect the Greek Keltai and Keltike with the Roman Galli and Gallioe, and both, perhaps, with Goulil, Gαeidil, or Gaedhü, the name of one branch of the descendants of the Keltai, or, to use the modern form of the word, Celts. If Goidil, or, in the modern Scottish form, Gael, be radically connected with Keltai, Galatai, and Galli, these names would represent that by which the original nation, or one of its principal tribes, called itself. We do not know the collective name by which the Germans designated their neighbours. Dieffenbach suggests that it may exist in Halidgastes, a man’s name, which, as frequently happened, from a tribe name became an appellative, and exists now in the modern German word Held.

When the Romans became first acquainted with the Celts there were two Gauls,—Cisalpine Gaul or Northern Italy, and Transalpine or Greater Gaul, which included not only France but also Belgium, all that part of Germany west of the Rhine, and Western Switzerland. Whether any Celtic tribes lived east of the Rhine since the attack of the Gauls on Rome, and whether the frontier of the Germans and Celts was a fixed one within historic times or a constantly advancing one, are questions which we have not space to discuss, nor, if we had, would it be profitable to do so in the absence of any real facts to work upon. To the Continental Celtic ground above defined we have to add the British Islands.

The determination of the limits of the Celtic ground is based chiefly on linguistic evidence. Unfortunately, as regards the Continental part, our materials are scant, and hence a good deal of room is left for the imagination. Thus it has been much discussed whether the language spoken in every part of ancient Gaul was the same. Some have asserted that the Belgians were Germans, and therefore spoke a Teutonic tongue, and that even the Celtic dialect spoken north of the Loire differed considerably from that spoken south of that river in Aquitaine. This opinion was based upon a well-known passage in Caesar’s History of the Gallic War, in which he states that Gaul was divided into three parts which differed among themselves in language, institutions, and laws. This may mean either that three distinct languages were spoken, or if but one language, that there were three well-marked dialects. Μ. Roget de Belloguet has shown from a careful investigation of all ancient authorities, and an analysis of nearly 400 Gaulish words gathered from ancient authors and inscriptions, that the differences in question were dialectic, and that, save, perhaps, in those parts occupied by a Ligurian or Basque people, the same language was spoken in all GauL

Community of language does not, however, necessarily imply community of race. People having no kinship may speak the same language, while others nearly akin may speak widely different languages. This has been found to have been the case in Gaul as elsewhere. One language was spoken by two races which gradually fused into one people—a northern, fair-haired, blue-eyed race, of tall stature, lymphatic temperament, and elongated heads, and a southern race, shorter in stature and dry and nervous in temperament, having brown or black hair and eyes and round heads. The free or dominant class of Gauls belonged to the former race, which was evidently an intrusive one. The inhabitants of the British Islands seem to have been composed of the same two races, and to have spoken the same language as those of GauL

Causes of phonetic change like those which produced the parallel branches of the Teutonic stem (the Germanic and Scandinavian tongues) and of the Windic stem (the Slavonic and Lithuanie tongues) must have existed at an early period in the Celtic language, for the original stem has produced two branches in the British Islands which are wider apart than those of the Teutonic stem, and, according to Zeuss, less widely separated than the two branches of the Windic stem. These branches we shall call, following Zeusa, the Irish and British branches. Each of these branches has again produced three dialects. The Irish or Goidelic dialects are—the Irish proper, the Scottish Gaelic, and the Manx, or dialect of the Irish spoken in the Isle of Man. The British dialects are—the Kymraeg or Welsh, the Cornish, and the Armorie, or language of Brittany. The Cornish is now extinct, having died out about the middle of the last century. We have included Armorie among British dialects on the ground that whatever may be its relation to old Gaulish it was intimately connected during the Middle Ages with the Cornish, if it be not a direct descendant of the language spoken by the southern Britons who emigrated to Brittany during the early Saxon wars.

It would be impossible within the limits of such an article as this to point out even the principal distinctions between the two branches of the Celtic, but the following examples will perhaps enable the reader to realize their general character. The Irish has preserved the hard or k sound of e, while in British it is represented by p,- e.g., Irish cethir, four, eland, posterity, cτann tree, with initial guttural, are equal to the Welsh pedguar, plant, pren ; Irish nach, nech, person, mace, son, with final guttural, and each, each, with initial and final e, correspond respectively with Welsh nep, map, and paup This change from a guttural to a labial, and even in some cases to a dental, is what Professor Curtius calls “labialismus,” and is very marked in Greek as compared with Latin; so that as respects this phonetic law Welsh stands to Irish in the same relation as Greek does to Latin. The tendency to labialism is, however, less in Irish than in Latin, e.g., Latin septem, seven, Irish secht ; and perhaps even than in Sanskrit, for Irish drops initial p, e.g., iasg, fish, Welsh pysg, or changes it into b, e.g., Welsh pen, Irish ben. The reverse process to labialism even sometimes takes place in the case of borrowed words, e.y., Pascha, Easter, Welsh Pasg, Irish Casg; Latin purpura, Irish cor cur. So great is the contrast in this respect between Irish and Welsh, that the latter labializes borrowed names, as in the case of the Irish Saint Ciaran, who became Piaran in Wales. If Dr Windisch, Mr J. Rhys, and some other philologists are right in thinking that the primitive or true p sound when not combined with other consonants has disappeared everywhere from all the Celtic languages, and that when p does appear in them, especially in Welsh, it is only the representative of a former qu, mb, or of a provected b, that is a δ carried forward from the end of one word to the beginning of the next, then the distinction just dwelt upon, though very marked when we compare modern Welsh and Irish, did not exist in ancient times. But whether this be so or not the Irish articulation maintains a good deal of hardness and strength, in illustration of which we may mention that en and sr occur as initial sounds—the latter, which is also found in Sanskrit, does not exist perhaps in any other European language. Again, Irish, like Sanskrit, Latin, German, and Slavonian has preserved the sibilant s, while in British, as in Zend, Persian, and Greek, it has been generally changed into h, e.g., Irish sen, old, Welsh hen, Irish sadann, salt, Welsh halen ; or the s when combine! with other consonants has. a prefixed y, as in Irish searad, separation, Welsh ysear. As regards this change of s into h British also stands to Irish in the same position as Greek does to Latin, e.g., Latin sal, Greek aλς. Like the labialism above pointed out, this change did not, however, constitute an ancient distinction. Irish words can also end in s and r, and in n probably derived from m. Of these, final s disappears first, but we have an example of the preservation of a final r in so common a word as αthir, father, when it has lost the initial labial. British has often v or w for au m in Irish, e.g., louan, a rope, Irish loman ; huvel, low, Irish humai. All the dialects of the British do not do this equally; thus Irish αmail, amal, like, is auel in Cornish, and euel in Armorie, but mal in Welsh. And again the Irish preserves letters where the British loses them; this is especially the case with gutturals, e.g., Irish tech, house, Welsh ti ; Irish noeht, night, Welsh nos ; Irish teglech, household, Welsh teulu. And, lastly, Irish has preserved the declension of its noun even to this day; and forms closely allied to old Indo-European declensions are found in Old Irish, but with the exception of the genitive in Cornish scarcely a trace of declension is to be found in British. Irish verbal forms are also much better preserved than the British ones, though the latter are in a better state than the nouns.

As regards the dialects of each branch, the Irish ones differ less from each other than do the British dialects. Irish proper and Scottish Gaelic are practically the same language, and do not differ greatly more than the dialect of English spoken in the Scotch Lowlands does from common English. Such differences as do exist indicate the modern origin of the Scottish Gaelic. Among those differences the following will bear out this opinion. In the genitive plural the initial consonant is not modified, or, as Irish grammarians say, does not suffer ellipsis in Gaelic as it does in Irish. Thus a Highlander says nan cos, of the feet, where an Irishman would say na g-eοs ; the former would, however, use nam before a labial, as e.g., nαm fear, of the men. Again the possessive pronouns ar, our, bhur, your, do not cause ellipsis in Gaelic as in Irish, e.g., ar buaehaill, our boy, Irish ar m-buaehaill ; bhur eosa, of your feet, Irish bhar g-cosa. Again there is the frequent ending of the nominative plural in Gaelic in an, as in slαtan, rods, a peculiarity which it shares with Manx and Welsh, and probably derives from British; writing the personal ending -αire, or -οir as -air in Gaelic, e.g., sealgair, a huntsman, for seal-gaire, and the personal ending -aidh as -aiehe or -ic!ιe, e.g., eoisiehe for cοisidhe, a footman; writing the Irish termination -ugadh in progressive active nouns as -uehadh, e.g., grαdhαchadh for gradhughadh ; writing the passive participle always hard instead of softening it under certain circumstances, as in Irish, e.g., ta, tha ; te, the. Among the less marked differences we may point out the use of the negative eha in Gaelic for the modern Irish ni and old nocha, the more frequent use of the auxiliary verb, id in conjugation, and the absence of f in the future indicative and in subjunctive in Gaelic. Manx differs from Irish much more than Gaelic; but the dissimilarity is not nearly so great as at first sight it appears to be, owing to a kind of phonetic spelling having been adopted in Manx through which the radical letters have often been lost. Manx has been much corrupted, too, in consequence of the connection between Ireland and the Isle of Man having been cut off by the Norse conquest, and also by its having been under the dominion of Wales for some time; add to which that it never received literary cultivation. The chief differences are in orthography,—the ending of the nominative plural in n already alluded to, the dropping of a final vowel, the substitution of d for g, and of t or c for g in the middle or end of words, <fcc.

Of the British dialects Cornish and Armorie resemble each other more than either of them does Welsh. This resemblance is, however, not as great as that of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic, but perhaps as close as that between Spanish and Portuguese, especially if the later borrowings from English and French be excluded. As to the words borrowed by the Cornish from French, which are much more numerous than those taken from English, it is interesting in connection with the history of romance to note that many are borrowed directly from Provençal. The difference between Welsh and Cornish and Armorie is considerable; Mr Edwin Norris thought it to be as great as that between French and Spanish. Besides the difference in their vocabularies, which is, of course, largely due to the great number of words borrowed by the southern British dialects, especially by Cornish, we may mention the following points in which Cornish differs from Welsh, and these will serve to indicate the general character of the difference between the latter and the southern dialects as a whole :—the retention in Cornish of an initial s combined with other consonants without prefixing y, eg., scol, scod, gpyryt, which in Welsh are weakened to ysgol, ysgwydd, and ysprydd ; the diphthongation of vowels in Welsh in eases where Cornish preserves the strong vowel, eg., Cornish tron, tom, scouth, which are in Welsh trwyn, twym, and ysgwyd ; the better preservation of consonants in the middle of words in Cornish than in Welsh, eg., Cornish hanter, steren, valtοvat, canteuil, which have been reduced in Welsh to hanner, seren, gwallawiad, canyll ; and lastly the preservation in Cornish of a genitive case in complete conformity with the Irish.

The 'question naturally suggests itself here, when did the original Celtic stem divide into the two branches described l and again, when did each of those branches produce their dialects l The late Mr Edwin Norris was of opinion that the separation took place after the arrival of the primitive stock in the British Islands. This opinion appears to be in entire conformity with all the facts of the case, ethnological, linguistic, and historical. We have already indicated that the Scottish Gaelic is an essentially modern dialect, which has an existence of only a few centuries. It is probable that pure Irish was spoken in the Isle of Man in the 6th and 7th centuries, that is, Irish exhibiting no greater dialectic variety than existed at the same period between any two provinces of Ireland itself, so that the Manx dialect must have grown up since then. Of the two branches the Irish is the most archaic, that is it has preserved more of the characteristics of the original stem. Among the British dialects the most archaic, that is, the one which best represents the British branch, is Cornish, which is the descendant of the speech of the un-R,omanized Britons of England. This was also the opinion of Mr Norris, who held that the older the Welsh the more closely would it approximate to Cornish. It is indeed probable that the Welsh dialect originated in the 5th and 6th centuries, when the conquests of the Saxons began to isolate Wales from the other British-speaking people. The separation of Cornish and Armorie is still more recent, a fact which supports the story of the emigration of Britons to Armorica, and of long-continued intercourse during the early Middle Ages.

If the preceding view of the origin of the two branches of Celtic and their respective dialects be correct, it disposes once for all of a very vexed question, namely, did old Gaulish belong to the Irish or to the British type, or, to put it more correctly, to which of those types would the dialects belong which would have grown up in France if Gaulish had not been suppressed by Latin? The usual view has been that the Gaulish belonged to the same type as the British. Grimm’s attempt to prove that the medical incantations contained in the book of Marcellus of Bordeaux, a physician of the 4th century, were Celtic of the Irish type led to a modification of this view. Amédée Thierry assumed that the Gauls proper spoke a dialect of the Irish type, while the Belgae and the Gauls or Galatians of Asia Minor spoke Cymric or British. Such a view implies that Irish and British had already grown out of the original stem before the advent of the Celtic people in the British Islands and Gaul; and further that two distinct waves of Celts had come into Western Europe, the first or oldest being the Goidelic or Irish, and the second the Cymric or British. Edward Lhuyd, the father of Celtic philology, long ago suggested an hypothesis of this kind as an explanation of the occurrence of geographical names in Britain which appeared to him to be Goidelic rather than Cymric. Zeuss threw the weight of his great authority into the scale in favour of the kinship of the old Gaulish and Cymric. The grounds on which he based his opinion have since, however, been altogether explained away, or their force much weakened, especially since the investigations of Gluck and R,oget de Belloguet on the Gaulish vocabulary which has been collected from classic authors and inscriptions, and the increased knowledge of the Celtic dialects, the study of which Zeuss himself so powerfully promoted.

Mediaeval Irish and Welsh manuscripts contain an extensive body of legendary ethnology, which in the case of the Irish legends has been even fitted with a complete chronology. Setting aside the more fabulous parts of the Irish legends which refer to colonists who arrived a short time before and after the deluge, we find four successive colonies mentioned in the following order :— Nemediaιιs, Firbolgs, Tuatha Dé Danann, and Milesians. The Nemedians are said to have occupied the country during only two hundred years, when the greater part of them went away in three separate bodies, owing to the harassing attacks made upon them, and their final overthrow, by a people who appear in Irish legends as sea-rovers, called Fomorians. One body took refuge in Britain, another went to Thrace, and the third into the north of Europe. The Thracian party became the ancestors of the second colonizing race, the Firbolgs. The Nemedians who went to the north of Europe appear afterwards as the Tuatha Dé Danann; those who went into Britain became the Britons. According to this legend three of the early tribes which peopled Ireland were of the same race with the Britons. The fourth and latest of the Irish races, the Milesians, or followers of Miled, are also connected with the others in the genealogies to be found in Irish manuscripts, but the relationship is much more distant than that which is represented to have existed between the other races. All Irish accounts of the early races inhabiting Ireland agree in bringing Miled from the north of Spain; but in the early times when the Irish ethnic stories received their present shape, the majority of people, not alone in Ireland, but everywhere, had very imperfect notions of geography, and often applied the few geographical names which had reached their ears by pure hazard, and generally without having more than the vaguest notions of the places they referred to. A perusal of Irish and, we may add, of Welsh poems and tales will bear out what is here stated. Spain in the Milesian story probably means no more than that the Milesians, whoever they were, came from a distance, and not from neighbouring countries with which the early Irish had intercourse. Ethnic traditions as a rule do not add much to our knowledge, but it is always dangerous to ignore them altogether because they must necessarily contain some truth. Of all the Irish traditions of this class those only seem to possess real importance which relate to the mysterious people called the Tuatha Dé Danann. This name appears to mean the tribes of Dé and Ana; and as Dé is God, and Ana is called the mother of the Irish gods, these supposed invading tribes are only the deities in a system of mythology which has yet to be unravelled.

All these deities descend from a common ancestor, the Alldai, or All-God, and appear to form two lines —the Acs Trebair and the A es Side, probably analogous to the Teutonic Vanir and Aesir. The close resemblance between the Irish and Norse words Aes and Aesir can hardly be accidental. The former signifies a people; the latter is connected with the Norse ans and the Anglo-Saxon ôs, God, which occurs in many men’s names. The Sid was the heavenly fort of the Aes Side, as Asgard was of the Aesir. The Mna Sidhe, women of the Sidh, or in the singular Bean Sidhe (pronounced Banshee) of modern fairy mythology, represent the goddesses of the A es Side. As in other mythologies, the same deity was endowed with different attributes and received different appellatives. The mediaeval genealogists who looked upon the Tuatha Dé Danann as a real human race, thought it necessary to provide a place in the genealogies which they invented for every different name, and so added confusion to what was before obscure enough.

As some of those deities occupy a place in Celtic romance, we shall venture to say a few words about some of them, though at the risk of making one out of several distinct deities, and of making several out of one. Ina subject of inquiry which has been hitherto almost entirely uncultivated, and all but unknown, this is nearly inevitable; but a few mistakes, should we make them, will not seriously interfere with the object we have in view. One of the chief deities of the Irish pantheon was Ogmα, surnamed Griainaincch, “of the sun-like face,” son of Eladan, or Elathan, that is, of knowledge. Ogma had other appellatives, the most important being Dagda, Delbaith Dana or Tuirenn Bicrenn, and Cermait “of the honey-mouth,” though the last sometimes appears as the son of the Dagda. Under the last appellative his wife is Ana, the mother of the gods, or the Mòr Bígu, or Mór Rigan also known by the appellatives of Badb and Macha. As the latter, she was the mother of A cd (fire), who is probably the Aed Mawr of Welsh legends, father of Prydain, the first legendary king of Britain, whence the name Ynys Prydain, or the Island of Prydain, and the real origin of the mythical Ha of the mediaeval bards. The Dagda had another son, whose name was Aengus, or the Mas 0g, a celebrated personage of early Irish legend, and an equally celebrated daughter, Brigii, the goddess of wisdom and judgment. Under the appellative of Dclbailh Dana or Tuirenn Bicrenn (who is represented as the son of Ogma, and not that personage himself), Ogma has two wives, Ana, under that name, and of her other two appellatives, and Emmas, who is. represented as the mother of the first-named wife; Ana, under her various names, is therefore at once the daughter and wife of Delbaith. Ana’s sons by Dclbaith are Brian, Iuchair, and Iucharba, who are called the gods of Ana, and hence she is called the mother of the gods. They are the same as the sons of Germait ‘ , of the honeymouth,” already mentioned as being an appellative of Ogma himself, or his sou under that of the Dagda. These sons are Seithoir or Mas Cuill, a sea-god, Teühair or Mas Cccht, the ruler of the sky and heavenly bodies, to whom the plough was sacred, and Ceithsir or Mas Greins (son of the earth), the god of the earth. Their mother was the Etain of Irish legend; and as she was the wife of Ogma under that name, it proves that Cermait “of the honeymouth” was only an appellative for the latter, and not his son, under his appellative the Da<jda. The wives of the three gods above mentioned were Banba, Fotla, and Eire, names under which Ireland was personified. Elcmair was either a son of Ogma as Delbaith, or more probably his brother, and was the same as Tads Mor, Orbsen, and Lêr (the sea). Under the last-named appellative he was god of the sea, and is especially interesting, for in him we have the original of Shakespeare’s King Lear, and the father of Manandan of Irish and Welsh romance. It is probable that Lêr was the same as Mas Cuill, the sea-god above mentioned. There was also a god of war, Ncit (battle), whose son Escrg (slaughter) was the father of Diancécht Dia na-cêcht), the god of the powers (of healing), of Goibniu, the smith, and of other impersonations of the Arts. The god of healing had a son Cian or Conn (valour), who is also known under other appellatives, such as Scalbalb, and is sometimes confounded with his wife Ethlenn or Ethne (skill). His daughters were Airmed, the goddess of physic, and Etain, the wife of Ogma, above mentioned. Ettdenn's son Lug is a prominent figure in Celtic romance, and was known also by the names of Lug Lámfada, or Lug “the long-armed,” En, and the Sab Ildanach, or pillar of many arts. Abhcan, the grandson of Ethlenn and Conn, was god of music. Conn, under his appellative of Scalbalb, is also made one of the sons of Echaid Garb, son of Brcas (power), personages who fill prominent parts in Irish story. Among the other sons of Echaid we must mention Badb Derg, the chief of the Side of Munster, and Uillind Faebar Derg, who kills Manandan Mac Lir in a legend. The deities related to Conn or Cian, husband of Ethlenn, and his son Lug are called the Acs Trebair, while those related to the Dagda or Ogma are the Acs Side of story. The two tribes appear in contention or warfare, but, nevertheless, occasionally associated and intermarry, like the Teutonic f r anir and Aesir ; thus Etain, the daughter of the god of healing, was the wife of the Dagda, and Germait “of the honeymouth;” and Fea and Fernand, the goddess of war, the wives of Feit or Neid, the god of war, were the daughters of Elcmair (great «vil), known also as Lêr.

Before leaving the subject of the early races of Ireland we shall say a few words upon a people incidentally mentioned above, the Fomorians. In Irish legends they appear as sea-rovers who only occasionally visited the coasts, pillaged and oppressed the people by levying tribute, or rather holding the inhabitants to ransom. One of the principal battles of Irish legendary history is supposed to have been fought between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorians. Even did we not know, as in this instance we do, that one of the contending races was mythical, we should naturally be inclined to regard such ethnic quarrels as imaginary, unless where we had unquestionable physical evidence of the occurrence of the struggle. On the other hand, in the case of mythologies which reach us, not as the recorded living belief of a people, but as the traditions of a prehistoric time, clothing real personages, who lived just at the close of that period, in what we might call the twilight of the historic period, and around whom as lay figures gather and assume definite shape fragments of old beliefs, we should always expect to find some nucleus of fact in legends relating to such ethnic wars. That the Fomorian and Tuatha Dé Danann contests are mythological there can be no doubt, but the kernel of fact around which the myths have gathered is the contests of the Irish and the Romans; in other words we believe the Foraorians to have been the Romans. The latter never made any settlements in Ireland, but there can be no doubt that they kept a few galleys in the western ports of Britain to protect the country from the hostile incursions of the Irish or Scots, and that they often chased these into Irish ports, and forced them to pay ransom. The accounts of the Fomorians in Irish story are just in accordance with this view, which can be supported by other evidence, into which, however, we cannot enter here.

The Welsh or Cymric ethnic traditions are not so elaborate as the Irish, nor do they in their present form bear the same appearance of antiquity about them. According to the Triads, a peculiar kind of literature to which we shall return hereafter, four classes of tribes entered Britain—the social, the refuge-seeking, the invading, and the treacherous tribes. The social tribes, of which there must have been three to make a triad, were the Cymry, the Jdoegrwys, and the Brython, who were all of the same race and closely related. The Cymry like the Irish Firbolgs came from the summer land called Defroboni or Greece, or to speak as precisely as the Triads, from “where is now Constantinople, by way of the Hazy Sea,” or German Ocean. The Lloegrwys, or Loegrians, came from the land of Gwasgwyn t not Gascony, however, but the country of the Veneti, about the mouth of the Loire, between whom and the Britons there appears to have been much intercourse in the time of Caesar. The Brython or Britons came from Llydaw i that is Armorica, or rather that part of France which lies between the Seine and the English Channel, and which, therefore, included Normandy as well as Brittany. The refuge-seeking tribes were the Celyddοn in y Gοgled, the Gwyddel in Alba, and the men of Galedin. Y G ogled was apparently a general term among early Welsh writers for all the country between the Ribble and the Clyde inhabited by Britons; but it probably had a more restricted meaning, of which we shall speak presently. The Celyddon can hardly be other, at least in name, than the Caledonians, and were probably a Pictish tribe which had settled in the great forest district amidst the British people of the Scotch Lowlands. The Gwyddel of Alba were the Picts, and as the name Gwyddel implies, they were Gaelic. Gwyddel is the Welsh form of the old Irish Góidil, or in its modified later form Goeidhil, or phonetically Gael. The men of Galedin, the present Galloway (Wigtown and Kirkcudbright), were part of the tribe known in Ireland as Cruitne, that is Picts, and only differed from the Gwyddel or Picts of Alba, in having come into Galloway from Ireland. The three invading tribes were the Corαniαid, the Gwyddel FficJdi, and the Saesοn or Saxons. The Cοraniαid are said to have come from “the land of Pιvyl, and they could not be driven out,” but dwelt about the River Humber and the shore of the North Sea. If these be the same as the people known to the Romans as the Cοritani, they were probably Picts of the same tribe as the Irish Picts, for there can be no doubt that Cruitne and Cοritαni are the same word. The Gwyddel Ffichtí, or Irish Picts who came to Alba by the Sea of Llycklyn (Norway), that is the North Sea, were doubtless a branch of the same Picts who settled about the Humber, in Galloway, and in Ireland. The three treacherous tribes were the Gwyddel Cοclι or Red Goidil, or Goel from Ireland, the men of Llychlyn or Norsemen, and the Saeson or Saxons. The Triads expressly tell us that the Cyrnry, the Lloegrwys, and the Brythοn were of the same stock. The different tribes of the Gwyddel or Gael, including the Cοraιιiaid, were simply part of the same people who inhabited Ireland. We therefore assume with Mr W. F. Skene that the Picts and Gael were the same people.

It thus appears that all the Celtic inhabitants of the British Islands consisted of two branches, which though originally the same people had branched off from each other in language and in other ways, producing the two classes of Celtic dialects, the Goidelic or Irish and the British, as we have above pointed out. But while we agree with Μ. de Belloguet that the Gauls were one in race and language, and, moreover, believe that the people who inhabited the British Islands were the same as those of Gaul, and that the divergence which we now observe between the Goidelic and British dialects first took place after their arrival, there seems no reason to doubt that the Celtic population flowed into these islands in two streams, one from the neighbouring Gaul, and one from some country east of Gaul by way of the North Sea,—the Cοretani, the Gwyddel Ffichti from about the Forth, the Irish Gmitne, and the Scots forming part of the latter stream, and, if our conjecture be correct, the latest comers, a view in harmony with ethnic traditions, but differing from the ordinary opinion that the so-called Cymry came long after the Goidil, and drove them westward, they themselves being in turn pushed in the same direction by the incoming Saxons.

It would be interesting to pursue the subject of the ethnology of the early races of the British Islands through the conflicts and displacements of races which took place between the landing of Caesar and the final retirement of the Romans in the 5th century. But as this is not absolutely necessary for the illustration of a literature which only dates from the latter event, we shall content ourselves with giving a sketch of the ethnic distribution of the people of Britain resulting from the conflicts and displacements referred to as it existed in the beginning of the 6th century, when we are on sure ground in the history and literature of Ireland at least. Without such a preliminary sketch much that we shall have to say of great importance in the history of Celtic literature would be unintelligible.

In the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th centuries external invasions had ceased, and the different races had gathered into separate states, and commenced a struggle for mastery. In England the Saxons (using that term as a collective name for Saxons proper, Frisians, Angles, and Jutes) held possession of the southern and eastern coast from Dorsetshire to the Humber—the Angles chiefly occupying what is now Suffolk, Norfolk, and Lincoln—and were gradually making themselves masters of Central England towards the Severn, and were even penetrating northwards between the vale of the Ouse and the Pennine Chain, into what is now the West Riding of Yorkshire. With the exception, perhaps, of the immediate neighbourhood of the south-eastern coast, where the continuous arrival of fresh bands of Saxons had driven away the British inhabitants, and of the district about the Humber where in like manner the fresh bands of Angles continually coming must have done the same, we are not to assume, as is usually done, that the former British inhabitants, called by the Welsh Llοeyrwys or Loegrians, had all been exterminated, or driven away. On the contrary as the Saxons advanced inwards and the external invasion practically ceased, an increasing proportion of Britons must have been left. The new comers merely dispossessed the British ruling families, as the Norsemen did in Normandy, and as happened afterwards in Ireland, and left the bulk of the peasants. This was unquestionably the case in Central and Western England, and in Deira and Bemicia, the present counties of York, Northumberland, Durham, and the eastern Lowlands of Scotland. Cornwall and Devon were independent British kingdoms. What the Saxons had done on the southern and eastern coast the Irish did on the west. We cannot enter here into the question of when the Irish occupation of Western England commenced, or how long it lasted; there is no doubt, however, now that iu the 5th century they occupied a considerable part of Gwynned, or that part of North Wales now forming Anglesea, Carnarvon, Merioneth, Denbigh, and Flintshire; and Demetia, or that part of South Wales now forming Cardigan, Pembroke, and Carmarthen, or in other words, the north and west coast of Wales. But while the Saxons were gradually displacing the British rule in the east, the Britons were gradually dispossessing the Irish in the west. The leaders of these Britons were the descendants of a certain Cunedda, reputed to have been a Gwyddel or Pict of the east of Scotland. Another Gwyddel, but probably one from Ireland, who like Cunedda was said to have married a British wife, Brychan, has given his name to Brecon or Brecknockshire. Brychan may, however, have been only the eponymous ancestor of the Goidelic families of Brecon.

The west of Britain from the Dee to the Clyde, with the exception of Galloway, was occupied by independent British tribes, apparently confederated for purposes of war. On the eastern side between the Humber and the Tyne was Dyfer or Deira, also British at this period; and north of Deira, was Bryneixh or Bernicia, which extended to the Forth. These two states probably formed in the beginning of the 6th century part of a confederation of Cumbrian states. But in the course of that century they seem to have been gradually converted into Anglian states without any serious displacement of population, or even of ruling families. On the shore of the Firth of Forth was a district called in Welsh Guοtοdin, the eastern part of which about the Pentland Hills was called AIanau Guοtοdin, and was occupied by a tribe of Goidelic or Irish Picts, who, there is reason to believe, had also settlements in other parts of Bryndch along the east coast. It was from this tribe that Cunxdda, if, as is probable, he was not an eponymous ancestor, had sprung. The remainder of Guοtοdin, between the Lammermoor Hills and the sea, seems to have been also at least partially occupied by another foreign people, most probably Frisians. On the western side, in what is now Argyllshire, north of the Clyde, a settlement of Scots, who had gradually leaked in there from the opposite coast of Ireland, had been formed, and had become organized into a distinct state which was ultimately destined to absorb the whole of Scotland, and give it its present name. The remainder of the country north of the Forth and Clyde was occupied by the Picts, properly so called, a Gυidelic people closely akin to, indeed almost identical with, the Irish. In Galloway was another branch of Picts, called Gwyddel Fficldi by the Welsh, that is, Goidelic or Irish Picts, part of the Cruitne who leaked over from Ireland like the Scots.

In the beginning of the 6th century the Romanized Britons were giving way everywhere before the Teutonic tribes, and the only independent territory which they appear to have held comprised—(1) The Damnonian kingdom of Devon and Cornwall; (2) the part of Eastern Wales now forming Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, which later formed the principality or lordship of Powys, and perhaps even yet aÛ the land to the Severn, that is, Herefordshire and Shropshire; (3) Cumbria, that is, all the land from the Ribble to the Solway west of the Pennine chain, and all the Lowlands of Scotland to the Roman Wall, save Galloway, and Guotodin, or Linlithgow (including part of Stirlingshire),Edinburgh, and Haddingtonshire; (4) Brynewh, Bernicia, that is, Berwickshire, Durham, and Northumberland; (5) Dyfr, or Deira, that is, Yorkshire. The ancient dioceses of Scotland, even as they existed in the 13th century, seem to mark out very well the ethnic condition of the Lowlands in the early part of the 6th century. The diocese of Galloway included the territory of the Irish Picts; the diocese of Lothian, which had three rural deaneries—(1) Linlithgow, or Manau Guοtodin (comprising the shire of that name, part of Stirlinghshire, and the most of Edinburgh), occupied by the Brithwyr, a mixed race of Picts and Britons, according to Mr Skene; (2) Haddington and the remainder of Edinburgh, that is, Guotοdin, in which, as we have said, there was an early settlement of Frisians, or Angles; and (3) Merse, that is, Berwick. The continued existence of a Goidelic or Pictish population on the south side of the Firth of Forth, even in Berwickshire, down to as late as the 8th century at least, seems to be shown by the existence there of churches belonging to the ancient diocese of Dunkeld. In the 13th century they formed a separate deanery of that diocese, which appears to have corresponded with the Goidelic population of Guotodín. Prydain, the Cymric or true British country of the Lowlands, was consequently conterminous with the diocese of Glasgow, comprising the five rural deaneries of Glasgow proper—Rutherglen, Lennox, Lanark, Kyle and Cunniughame, and Carrick; and the four deaneries of the archdeaconry of Teviotsdale,— Teviotsdale, Peebles, Nithsdale, and Annandale. This was the region called y Gogled, though it is probable that this term was applied to the whole of the independent British territory, that is, Cumbria as well as Prydaìn proper; but whatever was its extent, y Gogled was the cradle of the language and literature of Wales. It was the country of its prehistoric poets Aneurin and Llywarch Hên, and of the seer Merlin, whose fame was so great in the Middle Ages, and who is also reckoned among the early poets of the Welsh.

To complete this ethnic picture of Britain at the dawn of Celtic literature it would be necessary to give a sketch of the political and social state of the various Celtic tribes, so far as we could directly or by induction ascertain it. But as the articles Brehon Law and Clans give perhaps enough of this kind of information for the purpose we have in view, we refer the readers to those articles.

In the earlier stages of tribal organization among the Aryans and other races, the chief was priest as well as king. But the Celts appear to have already passed into a higher political stage before they came within the light of history, and to have established a distinct priesthood known to us as that of the Druids. Greek and Roman writers give us very little information on this subject, and the early Welsh records and poetry none at all. Modem Welsh writers have, however, made up for this want in their genuine literature by inventing an elaborate Druidical system of religion and philosophy, which, they pretend, survived the introduction of Christianity, and was secretly upheld by the Welsh bards in the Middle Ages. This neo-Druidic imposture has found numerous adherents, and has been supported with a good deal of misspent learning by several persons of considerable talent. It would be a waste of time to say anything further on the subject here. In Irish poems and tales Druids, and other organized learned classes, are frequently mentioned. From an analysis of these, and aided by whatever light the classical writers throw on the Druidism of Gaul and Britain, we may make the following induction as to their position and organization in Ireland, where they cannot have been very different from what they were in other Celtic countries. There are no definite accounts of the religious rites practised bj the pagan Irish, but there are several allusions, which, though vague, plainly show that such rites existed, and that it was one of the functions of the Druids to perform them. The Druids also invoked the divinities in favour of their friends and against their enemies, and for this purpose they made incantations upon a mound or elevated ground near the field of battle. They determined, by auguries from the heavenly bodies, clouds, wind, smoke, the flight of birds, and other phenomena, the propitious and unpropitious times for fighting a battle, or doing any other important action. They announced the Gaesa or things which it would be unlucky for a chief or a tribe to do, foretold future events, practised incantations of various kinds, kept events in remembrance^ and were, in a word, the depositaries of such knowledge às was possessed in Ireland at the time. Many of these functions belong equally to the persons usually called poets, and among the qualifications of the higher grade of the latter was a knowledge of certain kinds of incantation, some of which involved many pagan rites, the practice of which we find distinctly ascribed to Druids. That the latter were therefore only a higher degree of the order of poets seems certain. As such they naturally performed or superintended all the higher pagan rites, and hence the whole order, of which they were the highest representatives, were called Druids. After the introduction of Christianity the hieratic functions of the Druids ceased, and the term Druid, which had been the special appellative of the poets who performed those functions, gradually fell into desuetude. But the order of which they were the highest exponents did not disappear as it did in Gaul; there its lay functions were swept away by Roman law, whereas in Ireland they acquired new vigour. In pagan times the poets enjoyed great power and many privileges, both of which they are said to have abused to such an extent that it was proposed to banish them altogether out of Ireland. Through the intercession of the mythical king of Ulster, Conchοbar Mac Nessa, this, we are told, was not done; their number was, however, diminished, and their power and privileges curtailed. Among other changes said to have been then effected was that of depriving the poets of the functions of judge, which they had hitherto performed. This legend indicates the existence at some period immediately preceding the introduction of Christianity of a struggle between the lay and the spiritual power, in which the former were to some extent successful. The struggle continued even into Christian times, for in the 6th century it was again proposed to banish them, but on this occasion they were protected by St Columcillé, not, however, without a further diminution of their number and loss of power.

The organization of the learned classes, as we find it described in Irish manuscripts, is no doubt to be referred to the Dal or parliament holden at Druimceta about the year 575, at which were present the king of the Dalriadic or Scotic kingdom, the paramount king of Ireland, and many sub-reguli, and prominent above all St Columcillé. According to this organization there were three grades or orders,—the Gradh Ecna, the Gradh Fene, and the Gradh Fili. Ecιιa, wisdom, meant general as distinguished from special professional knowledge. A graduate of Ecna was called a Sai, sage, but there appear to have been several degrees of the title, the highest of which was the Ollamh Sai, sometimes called also the Rosai, or very sage, or Sai leitre, lettered sage. Ollamh (pron. Ollave ∖ we may remark, was the title of the highest degree in any profession. An Ollarnh Sai had the rank and was entitled to the retinue of a Rig Tuatha, or tribe king. All questions between the different tribes, the interpretation of the laws, the succession to chieftainships, and similar questions were decided by them. They were the genealogists or historians of the chiefs or kings. In pagan times the Gradh Ecna, which was only a branch of the order, call it which we will, of Druids or poets, was probably the highest, judging by the dignity and privilege of its Ollamh, and consequently the one whose members were specially called Druids. If this view be correct, it was to this branch that the functions of judge originally belonged. When the right of judgment passed from the Druids into the hands of the Rig, or chief, the latter no doubt acted as judge himself, or appointed some one to fill his place. This judge was called a Breithe%m, or as he is called from the pronunciation of the modern form of the word, a Brehon, and was always in early times a Sai, for Fenechas, or law, formed part of the knowledge comprised under the term Ecna, a fact which strongly supports the view above expressed, that the Sai was the successor of the Druid. In time the practice of law grew into a distinct profession, and every Breitheam of the higher class, that is every one who was a Sai, kept a kind of law school. Thus arose the Gradh Fene, or lawyers. One of the causes which no doubt helped to separate the study of Fenechas, or law, from the general study of Ecna, or wisdom, was the rise of schools in connection with religious establishments.

The class of persons whom we have above designated as poets were called File in Irish, and their art FUidecld. The latter is usually translated poetry, but it was rather vaticination in which they used verse. The Fili truly represents the Oùáretç, or vates, who formed one of the orders of Druids, mentioned by Strabo. Some of the forms of incantation practised by the Fili are described in Irish manuscripts, and, as we have stated above, are attributed to the Druid as well as to the Fili. Those which involved pagan rites, and which were consequently forbidden by St Patrick, fell into desuetude with the name Druid; but simple incantations by rhymes continued to be practised in Christian times. One of these, the Glam Dichinn, or an incantation of satirical verses accompanied by certain ceremonies, which was believed to be capable of raising blisters on the face, was much used, and supplies, perhaps, one reason of the great sensitiveness of Celts to satire. The Fili appears to have been distinguished in early times by some kind of tonsure, the exact nature of which we do not understand. Perhaps it was the same as that afterwards used by the Christian priests, which was one of the causes of difference between the early Irish Church and the Roman Church. It is at all events worthy of remark that the Irish priests were reproached with having the tonsure of Simon Magus, who in those times was the representative of all magicians or others who practised necromancy or vaticination. There were several degrees of the order of Fili, the highest being the Ollamh Fili, as we have already pointed out. A Fili of this rank was entitled to keep, that is, to have supported for him, a greyhound, a beagle, four stallions, two mares, and their foals —the maintenance of the horses, being we are told, at the expense of the church. The king fostered the Ollarnh’s sons as if they were his own; and the queen was bound to give dowries to his daughters. In return for all these emoluments and privileges the Fili, or poet, was bound to furnish a panegyric of the prince annually. In fact the chief function of the Fili when he became a mere poet was to eulogize the chief, and the chiefs family and ancestors. The designation, given to the Gaulish bards, of parasites wh(5 attended the Gaulish warriors on military expeditions to celebrate their praise, by Posidonius the Rhodian Stoic, who visited Gaul about 100 b.c., applies with equal truth to the Irish Fili. The flattery was not given without hope of reward, however. In the glossary attributed to Cormac, who was at the same time king and bishop at Cashel in the 9th century, which is at least as old as the 10th century, we are told that the reason why the second degree of Fili was called an Anruth was because of “the rich stream (Sruth) of beautiful praise which flows from him, and the stream of treasures which flows to him in return.” This was exactly the sentiment of the Gaulish bard who in eulogizing the magnificence of Bituitus the A,vernian chief said, “From the track of his chariotwheels sprang gold and blessings to mortals.” An 0llamh, or as we might call him a doctor, in FiUdecht was entitled to have a certain number of scholars who formed his retinue when he went abroad. One of his privileges was to make a circuit at certain times, the extent of which depended upon his rank. When, for instance, an 0llamh Fili became chief poet, and was invested with the Tugen, or cloak trimmed with white feathers, the symbol of his office, he might make a circuit of Ireland. During his circuit the 0Uamh Fili was entitled to maintenance and protection for a certain time, not only for himself but for his legal retinue, and their horses and dogs also. They could not, however, remain beyond the fixed legal time without special invitation. A Fili, or indeed any of the recognized learned professions, could not claim hospitality as a right from any one below a certain rank, which was measured by his own.

The bards who recited poems and stories formed at first a distinct branch from the Fili. According as the true Filidecht fell into desuetude, and the Fili became simply a poet, the two orders practically coalesced, and the names Fili and bard became synonymous. There were several degrees of bards, according to the number of poems and stories which the graduate should be able to recite. In pagan times, and during the Middle Ages, the Irish bards, like the Gaulish ones, accompanied their recitation of poems on a stringed instrument called a Crut, believed to have been a harp. The bard was therefore to the Fili, or poet, what the Jogler was to the Troubadour, and the Jongleur to the Trouvère. The Cruitire, or harper, who likewise played upon a kind of Rote called a Timpan, and who belonged to the privileged classes, while the players on other instruments did not, was probably the representative of the true bard.

One of the most interesting points in the history of Celtic literature is the relation of the transformed Druidic hierarchy just described to the Christian church. Independent of its own intrinsic interest some knowledge of this is necessary in order to understand the system of schools in Ireland in the early Middle Ages, and the position which the native literature occupied in them. Before stating what we have to say on the latter subjects we must therefore briefly describe the character of the early Irish Church.

The presence of British bishops at several councils, and the production of so distinguished a heresiarch as Pelagius, prove that there must have been an organized church in Britain in the 4th century. At that period there were many populous towns there, and much of the culture of a rich Roman province. The British Church must, therefore, have been organized upon the municipal type as in the rest of the Roman empire; that is, the jurisdiction of the bishops must have coincided with the civil government of the Romans, out of which the later diocesan system grew. The intercourse, partly commercial, partly hostile, which took place between Britain and Ireland in the 3d and 4th centuries could scarcely have failed to introduce Christianity into the latter country. Mediaeval writers state that Christianity existed in Ireland before St Patrick; and Celestius, the chief disciple of Pelagius, and, according to St Augustine, the real leader of the Pelagians, was an Irishman. Indeed, if we can trust the statement of Genadius, who flourished at the end of the 6th century, the parents of Celestins must not only have been Christians in Ireland in the year 369, but must have known the use of letters, for, according to the writer quoted, Celestius wrote three letters, in the form of little books, on the things necessary for all desirous of serving God. This primitive Irish Church appears to have been principally, if not altogether, confined to the south of Ireland, the province of Munster forming an independent kingdom at this period, or at least one having but little political connection with the other provinces. In after times, when the fame of St Patrick had become established, and he came to be regarded as the sole apostle of Ireland, the saints of the primitive church, many of whose names have come down to us, were assumed to have belonged to the Patrician period, or were confounded with persons of the same name. In this way St Brendan, the voyager, born on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in the county of Kerry, has been confounded with a later St Brendan who lived in the centre of Ireland. The church which grew up in the south of Ireland, though the offspring of the British Church, must necessarily have adapted itself to the political and social organization of the country, which was altogether tribal, and being without walled towns had none of the elements of municipal government which had moulded the church organization elsewhere. Some of the Irish legendary lives of saints of the early church, though, in the form in which we have them, not older than from the 12th to the 14th century, give us amidst a luxuriant growth of prodigies an insight into this highly interesting church, which the subsequent conversion of the rest of Ireland by St Patrick merely extended, but did not change. When a missionary had converted a chief and his Occa, or principal men, he became an adopted member of the tribe, and was considered to be a Sai ; in other words, he was given the same rank and privileges as the pagan priests had. Beyond building a round wicker oratory for the priest, no change whatever was made in the organization of the tribe. The course of study for the different grades of Ecna, Filideclιt, and Feηechas went on as before, except that in the course of Ecna, or wisdom, the Christian doctrine was added. The practice of the different kinds of verbal incantation which did not involve distinct pagan rites some centuries later by the poets shows this. Fasting, prayer, and vigils were practised, and those who wished to embrace the ecclesiastical state, that is, to join the new learned class called later the Grαdh Eclasa, or grade of the church, tonsured themselves, as did the students of Filideeld also, as we have before said. The Dun, or fortified residence, of the chief, around which lay always a village of the different classes of people who constituted the retainers of an Irish chief, became a kind of Cenobinm of a novel type. Some members of the Fine, or “House,” desirous of practising a higher degree of asceticism, went into the march-land, or waste land of the territory, and built a wicker hut and oratory. Others followed, and built their huts all around, and a new Cenobium, consisting of a village of huts and a circular oratory gradually grew up, which differed from the original one only by the absence of the ramparts and ditch forming the Dun. Afterwards the round tower, which was a mere extension of the circular stone Caisel, itself an imitation in stone of a circular wicker-house—afforded a refuge and place of safety for preserving from fire and theft the sacred vessels and books belonging to those religious establishments, which were directly established for religious purposes.

Whether a single Fine or the collection of “Houses” forming a Tuatlι, or tribe, became Christian, they were all of the same blood, and the right of succession to the property and government of the church remained with the Fine or “House” of the donor. The church within each Τuath, or tribe, which constituted the unit state of the Irish political system, was simply a spiritual Fine, or “House,” and could receive and hold land only in the same way as any other Fine. Hence the Comorb (coheir), or successor of the founder of a Cenobium, might be, and frequently was, a layman. This explains, too, the aristocratic character of the saints of the early Irish Church, who all necessarily belonged to the families of the chiefs, as the unfree classes could not form Fines, or “Houses,” or enter those in existence, except by adoption according to legal forms. When a person of low birth appears among the saints we are sure to have some legend showing how he came to be adopted by somebody. As a consequence of this system all the Cenobia which grew out of the first, and the chapels which were established in connection with Cenobia to supply the religious wants of districts remote from the latter, remained under the government of the parent establishment. Nay more, the Cenobia founded in neighbouring countries by missionaries often continued to acknowledge the headship of the parent establishment. They formed, in fact, a religious clan, in which the abbot of the parent establishment exercised the same kind of authority as the head of the ordinary clan. In this way it often happened that bishops, notwithstanding the higher order of their functions, were under the jurisdiction of priests, and even of women, as in the case of St Brigit. This peculiar organization of the church continued to exist unaltered in Ireland during several centuries, indeed with few changes, chiefly relating to the position of bishops, down to the Norman Conquest. The Irish carried this organization with them into Wales, Scotland, England, Gaul, Germany, and Switzerland, where it was finally supplanted by the Benedictine order.

When a Dun, and its surrounding village, in which lived the various classes who formed the household and retainers of a chief, became a kind of Cenobium, in which were associated together those who had formally adopted a religious life and those who had not, we can understand how a school could grow up in which Ecna, Filidecht, and Fenechas should be taught along with Latin and Christian knowledge. But even in the case of Cenobia which had a direct religious origin the same thing took place, because many persons of those professions embraced a religious life, and came there with their pupils, either with the object of increasing their own knowledge, or to partake of the literary life of the place. In the 6th century some of those schools had already acquired considerable reputation; while in the 7th and 8th centuries some had grown into small towns, and were much frequented by strangers. Bede-tells us that in 664 many of the nobility and lower ranks of the English nation were in Ireland leading a monastic life, or attending the schools, “going about from one master’s cell (hut) to another.” Incidentally we learn that one of those schools, namely, (Jill Belaigh, had seven streets of huts occupied by foreigners in the first half of the 8th century. From all this it will be seen that the teachers in the Irish schools, even when connected with Cenobia, or later with monasteries, were not necessarily ecclesiastics. Indeed some of the most distinguished men who taught in them were laymen, such as Mac Coise, Colman O’Cluasaigh, &c.; and even Flann, surnamed of the monastery, who was head-master of the school of St Buite, now Monasterboyce, in the first half of the 11th century, was a layman and married. This explains the circumstance, so unusual in other countries in the Middle Ages, of so distinguished a scholar as Johannes Scotus Erigeua being a layman.

The course of instruction included under the term Filidecht, which an Ollamk Fili passed through, as laid down in a special tract called the Leabhar Ollanιhan, or Book of Ollaves, occupied twelve years, eight of which were devoted to learning to read and write the grammar of the Irish language, the laws of the privileged classes, Filidecht proper, which besides vaticination, &c., included whatever knowledge was then possessed of the phenomena of nature, the elements of philosophy, Dinnsenchas or historical topography, and learning by heart about 270 tales and a number of poems, and the secret language of the poets, <fcc, The ninth and tenth years were devoted to the composition of various kinds of poetry; the eleventh year was employed in composing fifty major and fifty minor specimens of verse requiring the use of four kinds of metre. The studies of the twelfth year consisted in the composition of six orations, and the study of the art of poetry according to the precepts of four different authors, whose treatises are unfortunately either lost or unknown. The last two years of the course were for those who proposed to become 0llamhs. Whatever may have been the character of the teaching or the value of the outcome, it is the earliest example of the cultivation of any vulgar language in Europe. As an example of the importance attached to the native literature, it may be mentioned that the head-master of a school was obliged to go through the course just indicated, as well as to know Latin, “and from the Ten Commandments to the whole of the Scriptures.” The school here implied would be one of those connected with a Cenobium, or monastery, and had usually six teachers. The lowest of these taught the students to recite the psalms; the second taught the course of native literature just described up to the end of the 10th year. The fourth master taught Latin, arithmetic, and the elements of astronomy and geography; the fifth master was professor of divinity; and the sixth was the head-master, who was supposed to know the whole course, both profane and sacred.

Iu discussing the outcome of this system of education we can here of course take cognizance only of what has been written in Irish, and must consequently leave out of consideration the Latin hymns of the early church, the writings of Columbanus, Sidil or Sedulius, Johannes Scotus, Adamnan, and others who wrote in Latin. For the same reason we must in speaking of existing Irish manuscripts leave out of consideration the Latin ones, among which are some of the most remarkable illuminated books in Europe, such as the Book of Kells. In the Ambrosian Library in Milan, the libraries of the convent of St Gall and of Bern in Switzerland, of the University of Würzburg, and of Carlsruhe, there are several Latin manuscripts glossed more or less copiously with explanatory Irish words. There is also in the town library of Cambray a manuscript containing the canons of an Irish council held in 684, in the middle of which is preserved a fragment of an Irish sermon on selfdenial. These manuscripts, some of which belong to the 8th century and the others to the 9th, furnished materials to Zeuss for his Grammatica Celtica, a work which created an epoch in Celtic philology. With the exception of the last-mentioned none of these manuscripts contain a continuous Old Irish text. But according to Mone there is in the convent of St Paul, somewhere iu Carinthia, a manuscript altogether in Irish, containing among other pieces poems, copies of which are to be found in manuscripts of the 14th century in Ireland. In the Royal Library at Copenhagen there is one manuscript, partly vellum and partly paper, containing Irish poems, which formerly belonged to Professor Thorkelin, but we do not know its age. The manuscripts formerly belonging to the Irish College at Louvain were dispersed, the better portion being taken to the Franciscan convent of St Isidore at Rome, where they remained until within the last five or six years, when they were brought to the convent of the same order in Dublin. The remainder of the Louvain manuscripts, consisting chiefly of copies of Irish lives of the saints made for Colgan when preparing his Acta Sanctorum, are now in the Royal Library at Brussels. These are all the Irish manuscripts now known to exist on the Continent. The Irish manuscripts in the United Kingdom are very numerous, and by good fortune the majority of them, and these the most valuable, are in public libraries, and are thus at once more accessible to scholars and safer from fire, the danger by which Welsh literature has already suffered much loss. The number of Irish manuscripts which formerly existed must have been considerable if the File were as industrious as they were numerous and well rewarded. More than thirty books are mentioned by special names as sources from which some of the most important existing manuscripts were compiled, which are now lost, although some of them existed as late as the 17th century. Nearly all the most valuable existing books are to be found in four public libraries, namely, those of the Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College, Dublin, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the British Museum. The collection of Irish manuscripts belonging to the Royal Irish Academy is the largest of all, and comprises, besides a large number of paper manuscripts containing many things not found elsewhere, the valuable vellum manuscripts, Leabhar na h-Uidhri or Book of the Dun Cow, the Book of Ballymote, the Book of Lecan, the Leabhar Breac or Speckled Book, the Book of Fermoy. Next in importance stands the collection of Trinity College, Dublin, which contains the Book of Leinster (the most valuable from a literary point of view of all existing manuscripts), the yellow Book of Lecan, and a number of other manuscripts full of poems and prose tales, besides the most valuable of the existing law manuscripts. The collection in the Bodleian Library, though consisting we believe of only sixteen volumes, is very valuable. Besides a rare law manuscript it includes a manuscript compiled perhaps as early as the year 1100, and certainly not later than the first half of the 12th century, and containing some important poems not known to exist elsewhere. The British Museum Library has now a considerable number of Irish manuscripts, chiefly, however, written on paper. But besides some law manuscripts of value, there is one vellum manuscript, a small folio of 68 leaves beautifully written about the year 1460, formerly belonging to Sir Henry Spelman, which contains the best extant copies of several of the most celebrated historic tales. Of the vellum manuscripts in private hands the most important are the Book of Lismore, belonging to the duke of Devonshire, and kept at Lismore Castle in Ireland; a manuscript in the possession of the O’Connor Don, containing a largo number of poems of the 15th and 16th centuries; the Liber Flavus, a small folio manuscript of about the beginning of the 15th century; the manuscripts formerly belonging to the duke of Buckingham, and now in the possession of the earl of Ashburnham. The most important manuscript in this collection, which is inaccessible to scholars, is the larger fragment of the Book of O’Duvegan, Ollamh of Ui Maine, the O’Kelly’s country, who died in the year 1372. The other part of this manuscript is in the British Museum.

The contents of these manuscripts are of the most miscellaneous character, in fact many of them are mere scrap-books. The following classification will enable the reader to form some general notion of the nature of existing Irish literature :—(1) grammar and glossaries; (2) annals, genealogies, and pedigrees; (3) history, legendary and real, including a large number of narrative poems, some of which might be considered to be ballads, and prose historical tales; (4) mythological and other imaginative tales; (5) lyric poetry; (6) satire; (7) religious literature, including lives of saints; (8) law; (9) science, inclusive of medicine; and (10) miscellaneous translations from other languages. The manuscripts containing this varied literature were written after the 11th century; only three of the principal ones above mentioned are as old as the 12th, the remainder being written chiefly in the 13th and 14th centuries. The contents of a manuscript are at least as old as itself and may be much older. Sometimes the manuscript itself informs us that a particular piece was copied from another manuscript which is named. Again poems are attributed to authors who lived long before the manuscript containing them was written, even as far back as pagan times. Can we look upon those poems as the genuine work of the period they are referred to, in the same way as we accept the works of Greek and Latin writers, although we do not possess any manuscripts of them written within even centuries of the author’s time l and if not, how are we to determine the true age of the contents of an Irish or of a Welsh manuscript 1 The answer to this question necessarily affects everything that could be said on the character and growth of Irish and Welsh literature. We must, therefore, say a few words on the subject, especially with a view of pointing out some of the considerations which might help us to arrive at a true solution of the problem.

The first point which naturally suggests itself for inquiry is whether the Irish knew the use of letters before the introduction of Christianity. This question has been much discussed, but as there is not much evidence one way or the other, the discussion has not been profitable. Caesar says that the Gauls knew writing and used the Greek alphabet, showing that their knowledge of letters probably came from the Greek colony of Massilia; and the Gauls of North Italy used the Etruscan alphabet long before the time of Caesar. But these facts do not necessarily imply that their brethren in the British Islands had also a knowledge of letters before the arrival of the Romans, nor have we any evidence even after that event that the British language was written. The Celtic names on British coins prove nothing one way or the other. As regards Ireland the only piece of evidence of the existence of a knowledge of writing before St Patrick’s time is the statement of Gennadius respecting the letters of Celestins. This, it must be admitted, would be very slender evidence to found a conclusion upon unless supported by more definite facts.

In certain parts of Ireland, and in those parts of Wales once occupied by the Irish, are found rude stone monuments. upon the edges of which are cut inscriptions consisting of a number of long and short lines. This method of writing, which ia called Ogam, was practised in Christian times even as late as the 9th and 10th centuries, for marginal entries written in Ogam characters are found in some of the manuscripts of St Gall; and in the vellum manuscript in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, called the Book of Ballymote, compiled near the close of the 14th century the different styles of Ogamic writing and the value of the letters are explained in a special tract on the subject. The character of many inscribed monuments, and the circumstances under which they are usually found, seem to favour their pre-Christian use also. On this point, however, there is still much uncertainty, and the utmost that we could venture to say is that the archaic character of the grammatical forms of Ogamic words, and especially the case of one bilingual inscription, places their relative antiquity beyond question. The geographical distribution of 0<7<m-inscribed stones is worthy of attention; they are almost exclusively confined in Ireland to Munster, and chiefly to the south-western counties. In the provinces of Leinster and Connaught only a few have been found at one or two spots, and but one has been found in Ulster; they are, in fact, most abundant in the district where, according to tradition, the Milesians or Scots first landed in Ireland. In Wales they seem also to be chiefly confined to the districts formerly occupied by the Gwyddel, or Gad. Notwithstanding the use of Ogam by Irish scribes in the 9th century, and the existence of the key in the Book of Ballymote, the deciphering of the inscriptions has not been hitherto very easy, perhaps, as some think, because many are cryptic. Those that have been deciphered with certainty are very simple, and evidently marked the grave in some instances, perhaps in every case, of a Sai or Fili, that is, if used in pagan times, of one of the Druidic order. If we can trust to the authority of some of the oldest of the romantic tales, Ogam was used in the north of Ireland as well as in the south; there, however, it was cut on sticks or twigs, as Venantius Fortunatus tells us the barbarians cut their runes. In some Irish poems mention is made of Duile Feda, which has been interpreted to mean “Books of Wood,” and may have been Qyαm-inscribed tablets. But as no specimen of this literature has come down to us, and as they must, if they were ever used at all, have been an inconvenient and imperfect mode of recording the product of thought, we may leave them out of consideration. Whatever opinion then may be held as to the existence in Ireland of a knowledge of letters in prehistoric times, we may safely assume that literature in the true sense of the word began there with Christianity. In saying this, however, we are not to be understood as denying that a record of events, accounts of battles, panegyrics of warriors, may not be orally transmitted in verse. Metre, alliteration, rhyme, and assonance are powerful aids to the memory, and a bar to the introduction of new matter, and consequently prevent two different streams of traditions from mingling. But in time, and especially among a highly imaginative people possessing the power of improvising in verse, the streams of verse did mingle, enlarge, and modify themselves. Nevertheless it is marvellous how perfectly long poems of the most complex metrical structure may be transmitted by oral tradition for centuries. Poems transmitted in this way follow of course all the phonetic changes of the language, and, when at length they are written down from memory, look as if they had been composed at first in the living language. In this way an essentially pagan literature may come as it were into existence long after paganism itself had passed away. The Kalevala, or heroic epopee of the Finns, and the Kalevi Poeg of the Esthonians, are examples of this. In order that this should take place, the manners, customs, and general state of culture should undergo but little change. When any serious change in these respects occurs, the stream either ceases altogether, or becomes so modified and admixed with foreign elements that a new literature may be said to begin. One of the most marked changes which takes place under such circumstances is the substitution of vague descriptions of dress and arms, and a vague toponomy, for the full and definite descriptions and precise toponomy of the primitive poems.

The knowledge of writing does not necessarily involve the entire supplanting of tradition by written narrative. Many Asiatic nations who possess alphabets from olden time nevertheless still transmit their history by oral tradition. The account which we have given of the organization and method of instruction of the poets clearly shows that in early times genealogies, laws, history, tales, &c., were transmitted orally, or, as was said, “from mouth and tongue.” This should always be borne in mind when discussing the antiquity or genuineness of poems, prose tales, or histories. Here it may be well to remark that verse is a better vehicle for the oral transmission of knowledge than prose. Besides being more difficult to remember than verse, prose offers greater facility, not to say inducements, to introduce new matter by way of explanation or commentary, or to fuse legends of different kinds. Hence laws were transmitted in verse, and wherever we have a legend embodied in verse, it will be found to be both more archaic and purer than when in prose. The use of prose seems to indicate the passage from oral to written tradition. Another point which should be kept in view in judging of such literatures as those of Ireland and of Wales, is that after the traditions of a country have been committed to writing the different kinds of knowledge will not be transmitted in equal purity or preserve their original form and language equally. Every fresh copy of an account of a battle, a legend, or a life of a saint, or of a narrative or description, would follow the change in the spoken language, and to some extent in the accessories of the picture, such as dress, arms, &c. ,∙ in other words it would be a new and popular edition made intelligible to all. On the other hand, the exact words of a law or decision are important and would be sure to be copied without other changes than what the carelessness or ignorance of the scribe would produce. As vellum was dear and not easily procured everywhere the words were written close together and contractions were used, especially for the terminations; here was a fertile source of error and of the corruption of grammatical forms by ignorant and careless scribes. The most cursory examination of Irish manuscripts will illustrate the preceding remarks. In the same manuscript may be found pieces which differ in language by centuries. If the manuscript contain law-tracts, or pieces on subjects not of common or popular interest, they will be found written in obsolete language, and generally noted with explanatory glosses or commentaries. The language of the tales and popular poems on the other hand will represent exactly the period of the compilation of the manuscript; and yet they may have been originally composed long before the law.

We need not dwell on the first category of Irish literature further than to observe that Irish scribes seem to have had a special liking for glossing, and that if all the existing glossaries, old and new, were added together we should have at least 30,000 words besides those in printed dictionaries, a richness of vocabulary unequalled perhaps by any living language. Among the old glossaries we may mention that attributed to Cormac Mac Cuilennáin, king and bishop of Cashel, who was killed in 903, as an early attempt at comparative etymology, the author referring to Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Norse, and British. Many of these derivations are no doubt wrong, but as an early attempt it is curious. The earliest copy of this glossary is to be found in the Book of Leinster, compiled in the first half of the 12th century, but though some articles may have been added, there is no reason to doubt that it was the work of Cormac. As grammar formed an important subject of the course of Filidecht we might expect to find many treatises on it in Irish manuscripts. Several are mentioned, but they appear to be lost. There is, however, one deserving of much attention, written perhaps in the 9th or 10th century; the oldest copies now known, however, are those in the Books of Ballymote and of Lecan, manuscripts compiled towards the end of the 13th century.

Annals form a notable element in Irish literature, but we can do little more than mention a few of the more important compilations. During the 11th century attempts were made to synchronize Irish events with those of other countries. Of these may be mentioned the synchronisms of Flann of Monasterboyce, already mentioned. But the most notable attempt to synchronize events is that made by Tighernaclι 0'Braοin, abbot of Clonmacnoise, who died in 1088. Tighernach in his Annals displays considerable scholarship, and for the time fair critical power. He was probably the first to introduce the common era into Irish annals. The oldest copy, and unfortunately only a fragment, is in a manuscript of the 12th century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, nor can a perfect copy be made out of the six or seven other copies which are known. The Annals called by most writers since the times of Usher and Ware the Annals of Ulster, but more correctly the Annals of Senat Mic Maghnusa, or Mac Manus, compiled or copied by Cathal Maguire in 1498, in an island in Upper Lough Erne called Senat Mic Maghnusa, and continued in some copies to 1604, are of special importance, because the book contains notices of comets, eclipses, and other natural phenomena, which appear to have been recorded by eyewitnesses, as is proved by the day and hour of the eclipse of the sun on 1st May 664 being correctly recorded, while Bede, who records the same eclipse post-dates it, as the result of calculation, by two days, as does the Saxon Chronicle also. Tighemack, like the Annals of Ulster, gives the right date. This fact shows that both Tigliernach and the compiler of the Annals of Ulster must have had access to contemporary documents, at least as old as the middle of the 7 th century. But the most extensive though the latest-compiled Annals is the collection called by Father John Colgan, editor of the Acta Sanctorum Hibemioe, the Annals of the Four Masters, the chief of whom was Michael O’Clery, a Franciscan friar, who, after collecting materials from the then existing Irish manuscripts, commenced in 1632, amidst the ruins of the convent of his order in Donegal, the compilation of this very remarkable monument, and in four years completed it. The Annals of the Four Masters extend from fabulous antiquity to 1616. Down to the 4th century the entries are little more than lists of kings, but thenceforward they become fuller and more trustworthy.

The political and social organization of Ireland, and especially the custom of gavel-kind, made pedigrees and genealogies matters of great importance. The Irish genealogies are usually carried up to Noah, and include on the way many eponyms and even divinities. The Biblical portion may be easily removed without detriment to the Irish part; but it is not so easy to say where the legendary and the true touch. Within the historical period the pedigrees and genealogies afford great help in historical inquiry, though it should not be forgotten that a Sai was quite as capable of inventing a pedigree as any modem herald. Topography may be said to be the complement of pedigrees, and like the latter was of great use to Irish families, and was accordingly, as we have already pointed out, well attended to. Of this kind of literature the most curious and valuable example is the tract called the Diηnsenchas, said to have been compiled at Tara by a Sai, named Amergiη Mae Amalgaidh, or Macauley, about the year 550. This work, the oldest copy of which is in the Book of Leinster, gives an account of the legendary origin of several places of note, and thus preserves invaluable mythological materials.

Every successive race which peopled Ireland had, we are told, its historian, whose names are given, and in some cases particular verses and even long poems are attributed to them. These are, of course, mythological personages, but this fact is in itself a proof of the antiquity of the system of recording in verse the history of the country. Without going back to Coirbre, the son of the goddess Etain, wife of Ogma “ of the sun-like face,” a long list of •poets beginning with Ailill Olum, a king of Munster in the 2d century, the supposed progenitor of the chief Celtic families of the south of Ireland, may be made out. There are three poems in the Book of Leinster attributed to the Ailill just named. It is needless to say that in their present form these poems could not be the work of a poet who lived a thousand years before the Book of Leinster was written, even if the poet were not, as is probable, only an eponymous ancestor of Munster clans. To the same or a somewhat later period belong several other mythological personages to whom poems still extant are attributed, and of whom we shall have something to say presently,—namely, Finn son of Cumall, contemporary of Cormac son of Art, “the lone man,” and a reputed author himself, Oisin the son of Finn (the Ossian of later romance), and his brother Fergus, and his cousin Cailte. In Niall of the Nine Hostages, who was killed on an excursion into Britain in 405, we have probably an undoubted historic personage, and in Torna Eigeas or the learned,” his Fili, a real poet. There are many poems attributed to him still extant, but in their present form they belong to a period not perhaps earlier than the 11 th century. His contemporary Laideenn was the author of an Art of Poetry which has not reached us. After the conversion of the whole country in the 5th century there cannot be any doubt that the poets whose names occur in the Annals, and to whom poems are attributed in manuscripts, were real personages. Some of the poems attributed to the earlier ones have come down in such an archaic dress that it is probable we have the genuine work of the poet. The works of the poets of the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries are either their genuine productions or at most slightly modernized versions. Between the first of those centuries and the 14th the change in the language was not very great. Among the names of authors of historical poems who lived between the 5th and the 11th century the following deserve special mention :—Bishop Fiacc, author of a metrical life of St Patrick which survives nearly, if not quite, in its original form; and Dalian Forgaill, a contemporary of St Columcillé, and author of an elegy on that saint, which is to be found in the oldest manuscript written wholly in Irish now in Ireland, the Leabhar no h-Uidhri, or Book of the Dun Cow, which was compiled before 1106. The poem in question is glossed and accompanied by a kind of commentary on the difficult words, so that the language was already so obsolete in the end of the 11th century as to be practically unintelligible. In the 7th century the most prominent names are the following. Senchán Torpeist, the successor of the Dalian just mentioned as chief poet of Ireland, flourished about the year 600. Senchan is one of those to whom the authorship of the existing form of the principal Irish tale, the Tâin Bo Cuailnge, is attributed. Finntann, poet of Raghallach, king of Connaught, killed in 648, has attributed to him the authorship of a very spirited ballad on the deeds and death of his patron. The language of this poem, admitting it to have been written by Finntann, has been modified to some extent in the way above suggested. St Moling was the author of several poems of considerable merit, some of which only come under the present category. Two of St Moling’s poems have been found by Mone in the manuscript in the convent of St Paul in Carinthia above mentioned, and scarcely differ in orthography from the copies which exist in manuscripts in Ireland compiled six hundred years later than the St Paul codex, assuming the latter to be, as Mone suggested, of the 8th century. Cennfaeladh “the Learned,” the reputed author of the grammar of the Irish language above mentioned, died in 678. During the 8th century the number of writers appears to have been smaller than in the preceding and succeeding centuries. This was no doubt due to the great number who went abroad, for during that century, and the early part of the 9th, Irishmen were to be found in every part of Europe. In the latter century Fothadh, Flanagan, and Flann Mac Lonáin occupied a prominent position as writers of historical poems. Laitheog, the mother of Flown Mac Lonain, deserves mention also as a poetess, and as showing that women shared in the literary cultivation of the period. In the 10th century the most prominent poets were Cormac “the Learned,” Cinacdh O'Hartogon, and Echaid O'Flinn ; andin the 11th century, Echaid 0'Ceirin, surnamed “the Learned,” author of a curious historical poem descriptive of one of the great fairs or Oenechs, held in Ireland; Mac Liag, Mac Coise, Cuan O'Lothcain, and Flann of the Monastery. The historical poems attributed to the writers of the 10th and 11th centuries are, as might be expected, much more numerous than those of preceding ones. Indeed we might make an epitome of the whole history of the country, especially of the legendary part, from the poems of the writers just mentioned, the poets of one period deriving the materials of their own poems from those of their predecessors.

• In the 11th and 12th century prose came largely into use, as is shown by the large number of prose historic tales and romances which were written at this time. It is difficult to draw a line between real history and historical fiction in an early literature, but in Irish it is especially so, for we find many of the so-called historical tales so free from the miraculous, and so sober in the narrative, that at first sight we could scarcely refuse to accept them as history; and yet one of them to which this description applies is undoubtedly an account of a war between deities. In general, however, we can follow all the stages from a simple historical narrative up to a fullblown romance. The circumstances under which this kind of literature was produced show why this should be so. The business of the Fili, or poet, was to praise his chief, celebrate the achievements of his ancestors, and find him amusement when he regaled his Sobaid, or props, as the chief men of the tribe were called, in his alehouse. For this purpose a simple narrative of a foray or a skirmish required to be embroidered with a little romance; hence the number of accounts of battles, deaths, feasts, &c., which though in the main founded on real events belong by their treatment to fiction. There are, however, some productions which though not free from invention may yet be classed as attempts at writing prose historical narrative. Perhaps the earliest of this class of compositions is the History of the Borromean Tribute, or great tribute of cows levied in the province of Leinster by Tuothol, surnamed Teachtmor, or “the Legitimate,” whose death is variously stated to have occurred at from 106 to 160. and who consequently belongs to the dawn of the historic period. This tribute was abolished by the paramount king of Ireland Finnoclιia, surnamed “the Festive,” at the instance of the St Moling above mentioned, but imposed again in the beginning of the 11th century by Brian, surnamed from this circumstance Boroimhé, or “Brian of the Cow Tribute,” as a punishment of Leinster for supporting the Danes. This interesting work is found in the Book of Leinster, and was therefore probably written at the time of the reimposition of the tribute. Another work of the same period is the Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, or the history of the invasions of Ireland by the Danes and Norsemen. The only perfect copy of this work known is one in the handwriting of Michael O’Clery, chief of the Four Masters, in the National Library at Brussels, but there is a fragment of it in the Book of Leinster, the remainder being lost. The existence of this fragment shows that it was written at latest within a century of the brittle of Clontarf; but from curious incidental evidence it must have been written by an eye-witness of the battle, or by some one who received his information from one who had been there. It is mentioned in the history that the tide in Dublin Bay coincided with sunrise on the 23d of April 1014, the day the battle of Clontarf was fought, and that the returning tide in the evening aided in the defeat of the Danes; astronomical calculations have shown that the first part of this statement is quite correct. The style of this work is poor, the descriptions are wanting in precision and accuracy of detail, owing to the redundancy of nearly synonymous adjectives, and it was evidently written by a partizan of Brian. But with all its faults it is a work of some interest even from a literary point of view. The Wars of Turloch, written by John Mac Grath, historian of the Clans of Thomond, now the county of Clare, about the year 1459, is a third example of historic prose, and one which gives us an insight into the nature of the feuds and struggles for power between rival claimants for a chieftancy, and the part which the Norman adventurers played in these intestinal contests, which ultimately allowed them to become masters of the country. The immediate subject of the history in question was the war between Turloch O’Brian and his uncle Brian Ruadh O’Brien, and the sons of the latter, aided by the De Clares; but it may be said to be a history of Thomond for more than two hundred years, from the Anglo-Norman invasion to the death of Robert de Clare and his son. Like the work last mentioned the style of this history is very redundant, the descriptions being overloaded with adjectives almost identical in meaning, and often incorrectly applied; it is not, however, devoid of skill in the narrative, and many of the incidents are described with vigour and force. Perhaps if we had the original texts of this and the Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, we should find the style purer. One of the ways in which scribes corrupted the texts of the works they copied was by adding meaningless adjectives to give as they thought dignity and ornament to the descriptions.

The Book of Munster, though of uncertain date, and not known to exist in any old manuscript, is a work which illustrates very well the peculiarities of Irish historical compilations. It begins with an account of the Creation taken from Genesis, which serves as an excuse for tacking on the Biblical genealogies to the Irish ones; then follows the history of the Milesians from Eber, son of Miled, the eponymous ancestor of the Munster tribes, to Brian Boroimhe. The legendary part of the work is to be found in most of the principal Irish manuscripts; but the part relating to the period from the 7th to the 10th century is of great interest, and contains much not found elsewhere. The ethnic legends just referred to, which form so prominent a feature in Irish historical compilations, have been all brought together in what is called the Book of Invasions. This work is a link between genealogies and historical narrative proper, and consists of the legendary histories of the successive tribes supposed to have peopled Ireland, and of their eponymous leaders, into which are introduced many curious so-called historical poems, the matter of which, if not the language, is of considerable antiquity. The oldest copy of the Book of Invasions, the author of which is not known, is that in the Book of Leinster; the one which existed in the Book of the Dun

Cow in 1631 has been unfortunately since lost, with much of that valuable manuscript. Michael O’Clery, chief of the Four Masters, compiled from the copy just referred to and others, a condensed version, the original of which is now in the possession of Lord Ashburnham. In speaking of the Book of Invasions we are reminded of the first attempt made to write a general history of Ireland, by Geoffrey Keating, a parish priest in the county of Tipperary, in the beginning of the 17th century. His work, which is written in the spoken Irish of the period, and compiled under very unfavourable circumstances, is an epitome of the copious mixture of legend and fact which is found in Irish manuscripts, and among other things contains much borrowed from the Book of Invasions. He appears to have had access to many manuscripts since lost, and though he makes no attempt to examine his materials critically, the work has considerable value, and bears comparison with similar attempts made under analogous conditions in other languages.

The learning of stories formed, as we have seen, an important feature in the course of Filideclιt. An Ollamh Fili, for example, was bound to know two hundred and fifty prime stories, and one hundred secondary ones. In the 11th and 12th centuries the number of stories current must have been very considerable. There is a list of one-hundred and eighty-one tales in the Book of Leinster classified under the heads—Destructions, Cow Spoils,. Wooings, Battles, Adventures in Caves, Wanderings and Voyages, Deaths or Tragedies, Feasts, Sieges, Adventures,. Abductions, Slaughters, Irruptions of Lakes, tfcc., Visions. Loves, Expeditions, Marches or Progressions. More that one hundred of these are still extant, and of these nearly one half are to be found in manuscripts as old as the 12th century, into which they were copied, as in many instances· we are distinctly told, from older books. The existing tales belong to six categories :—(1) ethnic, or those relating to the peopling of the country, and the subsequent struggles of the different races; (2) voyages, expeditions-to Scotland, the Isle of Man, or Britain, and the sieges, battles, adventures, deaths, and abductions which took place there; (3) mythological stories connected with the Side ; (4) tales forming the heroic cycle of Queen Medb and Cuchulaind; (5) the tales of the Fennian or Oisianic period; and (6) miscellaneous tales belonging to pagan and Christian times,, but chiefly to the periods of the 3d and 7th centuries.

The Book of Invasions is simply an attempt to put the principal stories of the first category into a methodical order. The staple of the stories of this class is unquestionably of considerable antiquity, though in the present form they are not much older than the 12th century. Of the existing ones the most important are the accounts of the battle of Mag Tuired Conga, supposed to have been fought between the Firbolgs and the intrusive Tuatlιa Dé Danann, and the battle of Mag Tuired of the Fomorians, supposed to have been fought between the latter and the Tuatha Be Banann. The first of these tales has the terseness and simplicity of a Norse Saga, and depicts a rude and early state of society wholly unlike that in the later stories. The supernatural is so little developed in them that, notwithstanding the chief personages are the gods of the Irish pantheon, they must represent real ethnie struggles.

The stories we would propose to place in the second category have little in common save that they refer to what we might call the prehistoric relations of Ireland with Britain. Some relate to personages of the heroic or mythological cycles; others to Scotic invasions of Britain; and others again to the Christian Dalriadic kingdom. Of the tales of this second category two are of great value in the history of romance—namely, the Abduction of Blathnαd daughter of Paìll by Cúchulaind, and the Voyage or Exile of Breccán. The Paill of the first story appears to be the Pawl of the Welsh Mabinogion, which we shall mention further on; and in her second husband we have the Corτοi mab Dayry of a Welsh poem, which gave rise to much discussion. The Breccán of the second story was, according to Cormac’s glossary, the son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, one of the Scotic invaders of Britain, who traded with a fleet of fifty boats between Ireland and Alba, but was wrecked, and he and his whole fleet lost, in a whirlpool formed by the meeting of the tidal currents in the channel between the two countries, which on this account was called Coire Breccâin or Breccán’s cauldron. Dr Reeves thinks this was between the mainland of Antrim and the Island of Rathlin; but it has since migrated with the legend to the channel between Jura and

“Scarba’s Isle, whose tortured shore Still rings to Corrievrekan’s roar.”

Breccán has also left footprints of himself not only in Welsh legend but also in Welsh hagiology, and as we have already mentioned in Welsh toponomy, for he is the Brychan, the founder of one of three families of saints, who has given his name to Brecknock.

The mythological tales all relate to the inhabitants of the Side or Celtic Elysium, whose chiefs were the mythical Tuatha De Danann leaders, and who form, as we have pointed out above, an extensive pantheon. Among those who figure in the tales are Etain, Lêr, Manandan his son, the Dagda, Tuirenn Bicrenn or Delbaith and his three sons, and Lug Max Eithlenn. These tales may be divided into three classes. In the first of these the actors are all Tuatha Dé Danann, or these associated only with personages of remote antiquity, and in the second the same divinities are associated with personages of the heroic period, especially with Medb and Cúchulaind, and those in which historic or semi-historic personages are associated with the deities of the Side. The Wooing of Etain, the Exile of Bri Leith, the Death of the Sons of Tuirenn, are examples of the first class. The Seirglige Cοnchulaind, or Bed of Decline of Cúchulaind, one of the most remarkable of all the Celtic mythological tales, is an excellent example of the second. The third class embraces such tales as the Wooing of Becuma by Conn u of the Hundred Battles,” and the Adventures of Cοndla the Beautiful, son of the Conn just mentioned. In the third class might also be placed a number of curious tales in which pagan myths are transformed into Christian ones. We may observe this transformation of the pagan into the Christian myth in every stage of the process; thus in the tale called Tomaidm Locha Eachach, or the Irruption of Loch Neagh, or, as it is called in the Leabhar nah-Uidhrτ, Aided Echach Mac Maireda, the Death of Echaid son of Μaired, we have a legend more than half of which is pagan, but which in the latter part is changed into a Christian myth without affecting the general pagan character of the whole. The Fate of the Children of Lêr, or Lear, is a legend of the same kind; indeed the same pagan myth serves as the basis of the Christian part of the myth in both tales. In the Birth of Aed Slane, king of Ireland, who died in 600, we have an Aryan myth completely transformed into a Christian one. Diarmait, son of CerbeoU Aed's father, had two wives, Murend and Murgán, the former of whom was bald, and was provided with flowing hair by the aid of St Ciaran, or Kyran; the latter was barren, but becomes fruitful through the aid of St Finden and of a bishop named Aed (fire, spark), who gives her a drink of blessed water which renders her pregnant of a lamb; a second drink causes her to bring forth a silver salmon; but the third drink gives her a son called Aed.

There is a special class of legends, the Immrams or Wanderings by sea, which we have not included in any of the foregoing categories, but which, as examples of the fusion of pagan and Christian elements in a legend, may be disposed of here. The origin of the Christian Imrnram is to be found in several pagan tales such as the Visit of Conn “ of the Hundred Battles” to the Land of Promise, which forms part of the Wooing of Becunιa, already mentioned. The principal Immrams are—the Voyage of St Brendan (the most celebrated of all), the Wandering of the sons of Ua Corra, and the Wandering of Maeldun. In these the transformation of the pagan myth is so complete that we should not have been able to trace their origin but for the existence of the pagan tales just mentioned.

There is another class of compositions—the Fisa, or Visions, which, though strictly belonging to the category of religious literature, offer so many analogies to the Inιmrams or Wanderings, in some of the incidents, that it is better to say a few words on them in this place. In several pagan tales we have examples of visions, some brought about by pagan rites, which are the prototypes of the later Christian visions, such as those of St Adamnán, and St Fursey. The Christian visions of Hell and Heaven owe something to Virgil, but the extent of the obligation is much smaller than might at first sight be supposed, for we can trace the growth of the ideas under which the Fis or vision was evolved and developed to the fusion of pagan, Celtic, and Christian notions. Several of the adventures of Brendan, Maeldun, and the sons of Ua Corra contain scenes which have the same origin as many of those depicted in the visions.

The tales which we propose to include under the head of heroic tales form a large and well-marked epic cycle. The central tale of the series is the Táin Bo Cuailnge or Cattle Spoil of Cualnge, vwm Cooly, in the county of Louth, which relates the history of the war w aged by Medb, queen of Connaught, the Queen Mab of fairy mythology, and her husband Ailill, with Condιobar Mac Nessa, king of Ulster, for the possession of the mystic brown bull of Cualnge, in which the hero Cúchulaind defends Ulster single-handed, while the king and his champions are in a peculiar state of debility inflicted upon them for a savage act of the former. The existing tales of the series amount to about thirty, exclusive of the tale of the Táin itself and of the prologues and fore-tales narrating the preparations for the great cow-prey. In these tales as a whole we have one of the most complete epic cycles in any literature. We have a narrative of the life of the great hero of the series from his conception to his death, of Medb, the chief heroine, and of all the chief personages on both sides, male and female— Conchobor Mac Nessa, Fergus Mac Roigh,Ailill, husband of Medb, Conall Cemaclι and Loi- guire or Leghaire Buadach, companions of Cúchulaind, the sons of Uisnech, and Ferdiad; Deirdriu,Eτner, and the other women who take part in the action. In some of the stories Curoi Mac Daire, the Munster king, Conaire Mbr, the paramount king of Ireland, Manaendan Mac Lir and his wife Fand, and many other personages of Celtic mythology come in. The principal tales of this remarkable series exist in manuscripts written in or before the early part of the 12th century, and the others in vellum manuscripts of good authority. The stories are mixed prose and verse, the latter being generally more abundant in the oldest copies; the finest episode of the Táin itself, descriptive of the single combats between Cúchulaind and Ferdiad, consists of about equal parts of both. Prose, as we have said above, marks a transition period, and it is therefore likely that the whole series originally consisted of poems which the bard in reciting introduced by brief prologues which served to connect the subjects of the several poems into a kind of connected narrative. This may be regarded as the first stage in the composition of national epics, that is, when the isolated poems fashioned by different rhyme-smiths are first welded into some kind of connected whole. A second stage would be the linking together of the separate episodes by a permanent setting of prose which would connect, continue, and expand the stories of the separate poems into a continuous coherent narrative. A third stage would be the forging of the whole material, poems and prose settings, into one continuous epic poem. The elder Edda, which consists of thirty-eight poems collected from the mouths of the Skalds, perhaps in part composed by Saemund Sigfusson, towards the end of the 11th century, gives us the first or embryonic stage of growth. Snorro-Sturleson’s prose Edda, made in the beginning of the 13th century out of the poetic Edda and other materials, gives us a second stage; and after a long interval a third stage was reached in Oehlenschläger’s Nordens Guder, or “Gods of the North.” In this case the original materials underwent complete fusion in each stage. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer are examples of epics in a third stage, but we do not know their previous stages. The Finnish Epic, Kalevala, made in the present century shows us that an epic may be fashioned directly from the popular poems without passing through a prose stage at all. The Táin Bo Cuailnge is clearly in the second stage, a fact which should not be forgotten in comparing it with other national epics, as for iustance with the Nibelungen Lay, which is an epic in the third stage. But the Irish epic not only belongs to a different stage of poetic workmanship, but, owing to the comparatively isolated position of Ireland, to a relatively much earlier and more archaic type of society than that of the German epic, which moreover was recast, or at all events reached its third stage in the 12th century in the times of the brilliant Hohenstaufen.

Who the author of the Tain Bo Cuailnge or of any of the tales of the heroic period was is not known. A curious legend points to Senchán Torpeist, a poet who flourished about 600, as the person who gave the Tdin its present form; another tradition assigns the work to St Ciaran of Clonmacnoise. The language of the portion of the Tain in the Book of the Dun Cow is not older at most than the beginning of the 10th century; the text of the Book of Leinster, which contains the whole story, is more modern, although the two manuscripts do not differ in age perhaps fifty years, the language of each copy evidently following, as we have before pointed out, the current of the spoken language. The tales of the heroic cycle, whenever originally written, are essentially pagan, and represent an early state of society still unaffected by Christianity or by Roman influence. That real persons may become the heroes of legends, and very simple everyday acts the roots of myths, is too well known to require proof. Indeed, it may be doubted whether a real personage may not always be necessary as a lay figure for the myths to gather round in the first instance. Be this as it may, Cvxhulaind, Medb, and the rest of the personages of the heroic period, notwithstanding their complete anthropomorphism, are a phase of Irish mythology. The connection of the Tuαtha De Danann pantheon and the actors in the heroic tales is direct and explicit. Thus the rival bulls, which are the direct cause of the war, are but metamorphoses of two hostile personages among the inhabitants of the Side, the representatives perhaps of the Teutonic Aesir and Vanir. Fedelm, the Ben Fdth, prophetess, from the Sid of Cruαchan, appears to Medb and describes to her Cúckulaind ; Badb, the Mor Rigu, forewarns Cúchulaind of his death; the latter in the tale of the Bed of Decline, which we have referred to in speaking of the mythological tales, is bewitched by the woman of the Sid ; Fand, wife of Manandan Mas Lir, falls in love with him; he visits Tir Tairng ire, or the Land of Promise, and assists the people of the Side in a battle against their enemies. Medb, too, has power over the Geiniti Glindi, or Spirits of the Glen, and in many ways shows her divine nature.

The poems and tales which we have called Fennian, or Oisianic, form a cycle entirely distinct from the heroic one. Their history, too, is curious. Finn, or Find, the son of Cuτnall, the chief hero of the tales, is supposed to have flourished in the second half of the 3d century and to have acted as commander of a body of mercenaries. He therefore lived at a time which may be considered, if not actually within the historic period, at least upon its threshold. The struggle of the various races for mastery was ended, and this militia or standing army was evidently intended to keep the subject races in check. That the idea of such a force was suggested by the Roman army in Britain there can be little doubt. Perhaps to the existence of this body is due the considerable scale upon which the subsequent invasions of Britain by the Scots took place. As Finn appears in the accounts of the battles which he is supposed to have fought, he has all the air of an historical character, and is almost entirely devoid of legendary accessories. The same may be said of his son Oisin, the poet, and of his grandson Oscar. In the Book of Leinster are two poems ascribed to Oisin, and only two or three tales belonging to the Fennian cycle—one of which has reached the present time—are mentioned. Indeed in the older manuscripts there are few references to Finn, or to any of the personages of the Fennian romances. In the 12th century it would appear, therefore, that Finn and the other Fenuians had only just begun to become the heroes of romance. But between the end of the 12th and the middle of the 15th century a rich body of poems and tales came into existence. This new Fennian epos possessed considerable vitality, for it continued to grow even down to the present century, and at least one entirely new tale belongs to the 18th century, and many received considerable expansion during the same time. The cause of this very remarkable growth of legend is obscure, and would be well worth investigating in connection with the history of romance. The two streams of romance are perfectly distinct and never mingle; at least we never find any of the heroes of the heroic period mentioned as actors in genuine Feunian tales. No better proof of the spurious character of a legend could be given than the co-existence in the same poem or story of actors belonging to the two romantic cycles.

The Fennian or Oisianic legends are very numerous and very romantic, and there is a distinct Fenuian toponomy, which has not obscured or invaded that of the heroic period. Finn is still a popular hero, while Cŭchulaind has become a shadow. In the current Fennian literature, as distinguished from the mere corrupt popular plastic legend on the one hand, and the Fennian poems and tales contained in good manuscripts of the 15th century on the other, there is an increasing disregard of relative chronology, and of consistent toponomy. There is not the same terseness and clearness of expression in the new as in the old stories; they are evidently the work of a people who are no longer in the same stage of Culture. The descriptions of the dress and arms of the actors are vague, the number of those slain in battle is greater. The romances of the 14th and 15th centuries are full of magic and wild prodigies, but nevertheless they have the aroma of the forest and the mountain heather; one hears the echo of the huntsman’s horn, and sees the rude life of the Dun, and the deep drinking of the chief’s ale-house. The prose tales lack the refinement of the Welsh Mabinogion, and the poems the polish of the Welsh ones, but they are truer products of the national culture of the period.

The sixth or miscellaneous class of legends do not require special notice, the more so as we have already included among the mythological tales some that might come under this head. Nor do the limits of this article permit us to say anything on the subject of lyric poetry. We have spoken of the incantations in verse of the File, and of the satirical poetry which originated in them, and which for a long time was endowed by the popular mind with baneful powers. This belief was the source of the Fiiïs influence in Christian times, and encouraged him to indulge in satirical compositions. Some of these possess considerable merit, and two of them deserve to be specially mentioned as early examples of a form of satire which was used by the French writers of fabliaux, and which in the hands of Rabelais and Swift gave rise to great works. The first is the Aislinge or Phantasy of a certain A nier, the son of Conglinn, who lived at the end of the 8th century. He was at first a theological student, but soon relinquished divinity for satire and the free life of a Fili. He betook himself to Cork, to Cathal, king of Munster, who happened to sufferat the time from the disease of a voracious appetite, for which he sought everywhere a cure. Anier undertakes it and succeeds. The piece opens with a kind of prelude in which a northern hag boasts that Maeldun, king of Ailech in Ulster, Cat hat's rival for the paramount sovereignty of Ireland, is about to go to the south and carry off its spoils; a southern hag defies him, and says he will stop on the way. The poet, as if to raise his own importance, gives in a short poem the names, tribes, and places of eight scholars of repute, among whom is of course the poet himself, who had studied together at the school of Armagh. Having thus given himself the necessary importance, he describes his preparation for his journey to Cork, and the journey itself. On his arrival there he goes to the guest-house of the Cenobium, but not finding it an agreeable place, and the food being not to his liking, he writes a severe satire on the place, for which he is treated badly by the abbot Anier revenges himself by writing a singular genealogy of Manchan, the abbot, whose ancestors up to Adam he represents to be various forms of luxurious viands. He then acquaints the abbot with his object in visiting Cork, and relates a vision which he had of an island of wheaten bread in the midst of a lake of new milk, on which was a house of butter and other articles of food. He fancies himself ferried over to this island in a boat of beef, and finds at the house a singular doorkeeper dressed in clothes of beef, curds, fish, butter, &c., and ornamented with garlands of sausages. Here he learns how to cure his voracious appetite, which he feigns to be the object of his search. The result of this account of his vision is that Manchan sends him to the house of a certain Pichan, where he has an interview with king Cαthαl, and relates to him another vision of a mansion made of the most delicious viands, with the object of enticing the Lοnchraes, or voracious demon, with which the king was supposed to be possessed, to come forth. By such stratagems he ultimately succeeds in enticing the demon out, and curing the king. The personification of viands in this curious piece forcibly reminds us of the French fabliau of the Bataille de Karesme et de Cliarĭlage in which the combatants on one side are fish and the various dishes permitted in Lent personified, and on the other the various kinds of flesh meats.

The Dream or Phantasy of Anier Mac Conglinne is in a manuscript, of about the year 1400, called Leabhar Breac, the Speckled Book, but the language of the piece even in its present state proves that it is much older. There seems, indeed, no reason to doubt that it really was written in the 8th or 9th century, and that the orthography has been only a httle changed by the scribes who copied it. The contrast between the dishes, the mere recital of which it was hoped would entice the demon from Cathal ’ s stomach, and those mentioned in the French fabliau are very instructive as regards the kinds of food in use, and the relative degree of skill in the culinary art, and the general culture of Ireland and France at the periods when the Aislinge and the fabliau were respectively written.

The second piece referred to above is the Plunder of the Cathair of Mael Milscothach, or Mael “of the honeyed words,” written by Erard Mac Coise, who died about the year 1023. The poet had a Cathair, or residence, at Clartha, now Clara in Westmeath, which was plundered and demolished in his absence by some of the O’Neills, and his furniture, ornaments, and cattle carried off. Mac Cοise not being in a position to demand redress directly, had recourse to his art. Going to the Dun of Dοmnal O’Neill at Ailech, near Derry, the king, as was customary, asked him what tales he could recite; the poet names those he knows, all of which the king has heard before save one called the Plunder of Mael Milscοthach , s Cathair, which he desires to hear. Mac Cοise then describes the attack and destruction of his house, using allegorical names for all the actors in the outrage. He first gives the pedigree of Mael “of the honeyed words,” from the god Dagda. As the hostile party approach the Cathair the nymph of poetry ascends to the top, and asks who they are, and what they seek. The spokesman of the enemy gives a number of allegorical names, which when interpreted mean the O’Neills themselves. The nymph asks would they not prefer the jewels of poetic eloquence and eulogy to the torturing lash of satire, for she possessed abundance of both, from the panegyrics of Mac Lonáin, the satires of Moran, the eloquence of Laidech, the stories of Leach Liathmhuim, the proverbs of Fithal, the wisdom of the Ferceirtnês, the intellect of the poetess Etain, the brilliancy of Nera, the clear truths of the princess Mor Mumhan. The marauders heed not the question, but burst into the house and plunder it. On going to the cellar they are met by the guardian Dathghel, who enumerates the male and female defenders of the place; these are no other than the various household articles personified, such as “Bellows, son of constant Fire-place;” “Blanket, son of Women’s Work;” “Broom, daughter of Tidiness,” and so on. The result of this clever piece of satire was the restoration of the poet’s property, and compensation for his loss.

The subject of law and its literature will be found fully treated under the heading Brehon Law, vol. iv. p. 252.

Among the gods of the Irish pantheon mentioned above was Diancécht, that is, Dia na Cécht, the god of the powers (of healing). In the Tain Bó Cuailnge, a Fâth-Liag, or prophet-leech, heals the wounds of Cuchulaind after his fight with Ferdiad. It is probable, therefore, that in pagan times the Liag, leech, belonged to the order which may be conventionally called Druidic, and that charms and incantations formed part of the means of cure, like those of the Gallo-Roman physician Marcellus Burdi-gaH ensis. The position assigned to the leech by the laws in the Middle Ages was a very high one. He ranked with the smith and the Cerd, or artist in gold and silver; and the 0llamh, or doctor in leechcraft, ranked with an Aire Ard, that is, one of the highest grades of lord, who had ten free-stock tenants and ten base-stock tenants. He had also a distinguished place at assemblies, and at the table of the king. Leech-craft became hereditary in certain families, some of whose names indicate their profession, as O’Lee, that is O’Liaigh, the descendant of the leech; and O’Hickey, O'IHceadha, the descendant of the healer. The heads of these families kept schools of leechcraft, as the Breitheams kept schools of law. many of which were in existence in the 16th century, for Campion, who wrote in 1571, says of both classes of schools, “They speake Latine like a vulgar language, learned in their common schooles of Leachcraft and Law, whereat they begin children, and hold on sixteene or twentie yeares conning by roate the Aphorismes of Hypocrates, and the Civill Institutions, and a few other parings of those two faculties.” Many of the books of these families still exist in the libraries of the Royal Irish Academy, the King’s Inns, &c., in Dublin. These books show that the Irish leeches were well acquainted with the works of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Galen, Avicenna, Rhazes, and most of the medical writers of the Continent of their time. They also contain early translations into Irish of several medical works of repute.

With the exception of the hymn of St Colman O , Cluasaighe, published in the Liber Hymnorum of the early Irish Church, some fragments of poems attributed to St Bee Mae Dé, and some others, everything ecclesiastical which could with certainty be referred to an early period is in Latin, and therefore outside the scope of this article. The Leabhar Breac, or Speckled Book, now in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, contains chiefly religious writings, which give us the means of estimating what may be called the popular religious literature in the 13th and 14th centuries. It contains homilies on moral, scriptural, doctrinal, and ritualistic subjects, e.g., on the duties of kings and subjects, on charity, almsgiving, the ten commandments, the commandments of the church, the different festivals, prayer, fasting, and abstinence, baptism, the ceremonies of the mass, &c.; an epitome of Bible history from the Creation to the Ascension, which often so closely follows the text of the Scriptures, that we may regard it almost as a translation; the legends of the Finding and Exaltation of the Holy Cross, embodying much of the Gospel of Nicodemus, which was popularized in every country in Europe in the Middle Ages; the acts of several saints, which are found in Early English, French, and German literature; the lives of the three principal Irish saints, Patrick, Brigit, and Columcillé, and of some others; the elegies of St Colum Cillé, and St Senán, &c. There are also many legendary lives of the saints of the early Irish Church in some of the principal vellum manuscripts. It will thus be seen that the popular religious literature in Ireland did not differ from that of neighbouring countries, and on the whole bears favourable comparison with it.

We have no direct evidence that the Pictish language was ever written, but inductive reasoning is rather against the supposition, for no trace of a poem or legend has survived. The cause of this is not far to seek. The Pictish language, as we have already pointed out, was a Goidelic dialect, which at the period of the principal Dalriadic settlement in the west of Scotland did not perhaps differ from Irish more than Low German or Alemanian does from High German, if even so much. There was just difference enough to make intercourse between the Scots and the Picts at first somewhat difficult. This close relationship of language is no doubt the explanation of the readiness with which Scots and Picts allied against the Britons. In the 5th and 6th centuries, when the Irish kingdom established in Alba began to become an important factor in the affairs of that country, the Irish were a lettered people. The Irish Fili, or poet, followed in the track of the Irish missionary, and carried the poems and historic tales of Ireland among a kindred people, having the same eponymous ancestors, and nearly identical mythological traditions. For several centuries after the conversion of the Picts, Alba, as Scotland was then called, was a second home to the Irish Ceilĕ Dé, or monk, and the Irish poet and harper. Even in the 12th and 13th centuries the Irish poets and musicians included Scotland in their circuit, and took refuge, or sought their fortune there. We shall mention one instance as it happens to be instructive in another way, that of Muiredĭiach O’Daly, better known, on account of his long residence in Scotland, as Μuiτedhach Albanach, or Muireaxh the Albanian, or as we should now say, the Scotchman. Did we not know the whole history of this man, who is believed by the Rev. Dr T. M*Lauchlan to be the ancestor of the great race of Mac Vurrichs, bards to MacDonald of Clanranald, we should never have suspected him to have been an Irish Fili. It is easy to understand how under these circumstances the literary and cultivated language came to be Irish. But beneath this literary language there was the under-current of the original Pictish, which was gradually modified under the influence of the Irish, in the same way that a literary language always influences the spoken language. Nor should we forget that in this case the action was more potent because it was directly exerted on the people through the preachers, and by the bards reciting their poems and telling their stories. Towards the middle of the 15th century Irish literature began to decline and the Irish language to recede. Irish poets aud musicians still continued, however, to include Scotland in their visitations, but the connection between the two countries began to be weakened, and the Scottish dialect accordingly gradually rose into literary importance. Poems and tales began to be written in it; and those originally written in Irish were recast in the local· dialect. There can be no doubt, too, that the legends and historical traditions brought over from Ireland, which had been transformed by, or had absorbed into them, the primitive Pictish traditions of the same kind which grew from the same original stem, began to be recast and modified, and a new growth of legends to spring up indigenous to Scotland. In this way a Gaelic literature arose, of which some examples are to be found in the Dean of Lismore’s Book. Its development was, however, arrested by the Reformation. This would have been only a temporary check, but for the political changes which followed, and which by gradually bringing the most remote part of the Highlands into the current of a wider and more active political life, and by drawing to the capital and within the direct influence of modern European culture the Scottish nobility, gave an additional stimulus to the spread of English, and reduced the Gaelic to a peasants’ patois. Under other and more favourable circumstances the translation of the Bible into Gaelic, and the composition of a Gaelic liturgy, together with the change in the whole current of religious ideas, might have given rise to a new type of Celtic literature.

The success which attended some translations made by James MacPherson led him to make a tour in the Highlands, and to gather as many poems and other specimens of Gaelic literature as he could find. It was no doubt during this tour that he matured his idea of using the legends preserved in the popular memory, written down in Scottish Gaelic, and existing in the Irish MSS.; which he came across in his travels, as materials out of which to compose the poems which have since become so celebrated under the name of the poems of Ossian. We mean of course the English poems, for in the usual sense of that word no Gaelic originals existed. The so-called originals are a very curious kind of mosaic, constructed evidently with great labour afterwards, in which sentences, or parts of sentences of genuine poems are cemented together in a very inferior word-paste of MacPherson’s ow n. We have pointed out that the personages of the two cycles of romance, the heroic and the Fennian, are never mingled as actors in genuine national poetry or tales. This is, however, done commonly by MacPherson. Thus in Dar-thula, which is based upon a tale of the heroic age called the Exile of the Sons of Uisnech, we have Deirdriu (Dar-thula), Nois (Nathos), Ardan, and Catld>ad (Cathba) the Druid, actors of the original tale, associated with Oisin and C or mac who belong to a different time and another phase of Irish legend. In Temora we have Find son of Ournall (Fingal), his son Oisin (Ossian) and grandson Oscar, and Cor mac Mac Airt, associated with Catkaeir Mór, Nois (Nathos), Cúchulaind (Cuthulin), and the antediluvian Carill. Again, in Fingal, which has manifestly been written under the influence of the Tain Bô Cuailnge, we have Carill, Cúchulaind, Cathbad, Conlaech (Conloch) son of Cúchulaind, Ferdiad son of Daman (Ferdia), associated with Finn (Fingal), Oisin (Ossian), Oscar, Goll Mac Morna (Gaul, son of Morna), and other heroes of the Ossianic period. This mingling of the heroes of two different cycles of romance would be sufficient to prove, did we possess no other test, that MacPherson had no original. The old Celtic tales are especially characterized on the one hand by the detailed descriptions they give of the personal appearance, dress, and arms of the chief actors in a tale, and of the internal arrangements of the houses, &c.; and on the other by the absence of descriptions of scenery, except when Tir Taimgire, the Land of Promise, is in question. The aspects of nature were familiar tò those who listened to those tales, what they wanted to realize was the actors and their deeds. MacPherson’s poems on the contrary are full of word-pictures of nature, sometimes no doubt bombastic, but generally giving beautiful, and often grandly poetic, descriptions of the most characteristic features of the scenery of the Highlands. But the actors in his epic are like figures seen through a mist, barely sketched in outline, whose dress, ornaments, and arms are so generally and vaguely described as to lose all peculiar and distinctive character. The Poems of Ossian are thoroughly modern, more so even than the current legends of the west of Scotland which retain many things—talking ravens, soothsaying, &c., which savour of old times. An examination of the poems and prose tales of the Irish Oisianic cycle is very instructive in this connection; the older they are the more detailed are the descriptions of the actors and of their dress and arms; the newer the vaguer and more general—the more like MacPherson’s heroes do they become. In this respect MacPherson did no more than what he was entitled to do, and what has been done by others who have used similar materials for the construction of poems. The author of the Nibelungen Lay fused in the 12th century legends of the Horny Siegfried with those of a different and newer cycle concerning Attila, Dietrich von Bern, Brunhild, &c. So the romances of Arthur and the St Graal, though of a totally different origin have mingled together. So, too, the mediaeval German poets took many liberties with the French romances, which served them as materials. What he had no right to do was to call his poem a translation. It is unfortunate for his fame that he should have supported this comparatively trivial error by the grave one of producing his pretended original. Let us add that the publication of a selection of the poems in the manuscript known as the Dean of Lismore’s Book by Mr W. F. Skene and the Rev. T. M i Lauchlan, and Mr J. F. Campbell’s collection of Popular Tales of the West Highlands, have done more to settle the Ossianic controversy than all that had been written by the combatants on both sides.

The number of Welsh manuscripts is considerable, but with the exception of those in the British Museum, the library of Jesus College, Oxford, and that of the university of Cambridge, they are all in private collections. Of these the most important is the Hengwrt collection, consisting of the manuscripts collected by Mr Jones of Geliy Lyvdy, between the years 1590 and 1630, and by the antiquary Mr Robert Vaughan of Hengwrt, who died in 1666. The two collectors arranged that their manuscripts should be united on the death of one of them, the survivor to become the possessor of the whole. According to this arrangement they became the property of Mr Vaughan, and hence got the name of the Hengwrt collection. Some years ago Sir Robert Vaughan bequeathed the collection, comprising, we believe, about four hundred volumes, to Mr W. W. E. Wynne of Peniarth, in whose possession it now is. But although Welsh manuscripts are numerous there are very few of any considerable antiquity, the others being comparatively modern compilations, often the work of ignorant scribes, the contents of which seem for the most part to have been in the first instance taken from the old books just spoken of. Of such old books there are, exclusive of law manuscripts, only five of such antiquity or importance as to deserve special mention here. The first is a copy of the hexametrical paraphrase of the Gospels of Juvencus in the University Library of Cambridge, as old at least as the 9th century. The only Welsh it contains are some glosses and two short poems written in Irish characters; but as the oldest specimens of Welsh known they are invaluable as a standard wherewith to compare the language of other manuscripts. The second is the Black Book of Carmarthen, a small quarto vellum manuscript of 54 leaves, written in Gothic letters by various hands in the reign of Henry II. (1154-1189). This manuscript originally'belonged to the Priory of Black Canons at Carmarthen, and was given by the treasurer of the Church of St David to one of the commissioners appointed by Henry VIII. for the suppressed monasteries, Sir John Price. It is now in the Hengwrt collection at Peniarth. The third is the Book of Taliessin, also in the Hengwrt collection, a small quarto manuscript consisting of 38 leaves of veUum written in Gothic letters throughout in one hand, some time in the early part of the 14th century. Its history before it came into the possession of Robert Vaughan, the antiquary, is not known. The fourth is the Book of Aneurin, a small quarto manuscript of 19 leaves of vellum, written probably in the end of the 13th century. It was purchased by the late Sir Thomas Phillips of Middlehill, and may have been formerly in the Hengwrt collection. The fifth is the Red Book of Hergest, so called from Hergest Court, one of the seats of the Vaughans, for whom it was probably compiled. This important manuscript, the chief repository of Welsh literature, is a folio volume of 360 leaves of vellum, written in double columns at different times, from the early part of the 14th to the middle of the 15th century, and is now in the library of Jesus College, Oxford.

The text of a large number of the poems and other compositions contained in Welsh manuscripts has been published in a work in three volumes, called the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales. The first volume, containing poems, and the second, chronicles and historical documents of various kinds, were published in 1801; and the third, moral, didactic, legal, and miscellaneous pieces, in 1803. This publication is due to the noble patriotism of three men,—Owen Jones, a furrier in London, and the son of a Welshman, with whom the idea originated while still a young man, and who devoted no inconsiderable portion of his fortune to its realization; Edward Williams, a stonemason, better known by his assumed name of Iolo Morganwg, the chief contributor to the collection; and William Owen, who afterwards assumed the name of Pughe, the author of the principal dictionary of the Welsh. Had the critical judgment and knowledge of the editors equalled their patriotism, the work would be of great value.

Welsh manuscript literature may be classed for our purpose under the following heads:—(1.) Glossaries and grammars ; (2.) The Bruts, or annals, genealogies, and histories; (3.) Poems; (4.) Mabinogion, and other prose tales; (5.) Laws; (6.)'Medicine and science. There are very few Welsh glossaries, because there exist in fact few examples of obsolete or old Welsh. The oldest Welsh laws are attributed to Hοιοel Dda, who died in 950, and the oldest codex containing them is believed to have been written in the 12th century. If this codex contained the laws in their original form they would probably require no gloss to explain them, because the language did not change very much in the interval between the framing of the laws and the writing of the manuscripts. But like all Welsh manuscripts, even the oldest copy of the laws gives us an edjtion in the language of the time. A grammar of the Welsh, said to have been made by Edeyrn Dafod Aur, by the order and at the desire of three Welsh princes, in the second half of the 13th century, has been published by the Rev. J. Williams ab Ithel, from a copy made in 1832 from another copy made in 1821 from a manuscript of Edward Williams, or Iolo Morganwg. Whatever may be the intrinsic scientific value of the treatise itself, this is a very doubtful source to derive historical value from. Mr Williams has also published in the same volume a work on the rules of Welsh poetry, originally compiled by Daυydd Ddu Athraw in the 14th century, and subsequently enlarged by Simwnt Vychαn in the 16th century. We have no evidence as to how much belonged to the former and how much to the latter, but it all appears to belong to the 17th century. Mr Williams has also added a great deal of matter of his own, which is distinguished from the text by being printed in smaller type. His object was to combine in one volume as complete a body of information on the subject as possible. It would be outside the scope of this article to criticise this laborious work.

If we might judge by names alone, the British, between the departure of the Romans and the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, possessed many historians. Welsh anti quaries give a long list, and some find a place even in the works of English, and foreign writers; but with the exception of Gildas and Nennius, the titles only of their writings are known, nor are these above suspicion. Bede quotes Gildas, and so far we have proof that as early as his time there was a belief in the existence of such an author. The works now known as those of Gildas and Nennius are written in Latin, and are properly outside our scope, but they are so inseparably connected with the Bruts or Annals, and with the history of romance, that we must say a few words concerning each. Gildas was the son of a British king of Ailclyd, the present Dumbarton, and was therefore from that part of Britain referred to in Welsh works as y Gogled. Several dates have been assigned for his birth and death, but we prefer for the former 516, and for the latter 570, and his book De Excidio Britannioe, if genuine, seems to have been written about 560. According to his legendary lives, he went to Ireland on the invitation of St Brigit, founded monasteries there, and taught at the school of Armagh. His work above named is written in an inflated style, and is a mere sketch of British history under the Romans, and in the period immediately succeeding their withdrawal from the country, and so includes the period of the wars of the Britons with the Picts, Scots, and Saxons; it is fall of blunders and anachronisms. Mr Skene suggests, very reasonably, that the well-known letter of the Britons to Aetius, asking for Roman aid, is misplaced, and that if put in its proper place the discrepancy between Gildas’s account of the departure of the Romans from Britain and that of Greek and Roman writers will disappear.

Nothing is known of the person called Nennius, to whom the short History of the Britons known by his name is attributed. In the earliest known manuscript of it, written about the middle of the 10th century, and now in the Vatican Library, it is ascribed to a certain Marc, who is believed to be the Marc who with his nephew, Moengal, better known as Marcellus (little Marc), came to the monastery of St Gall about the middle of the 9th century, having with him many books and a considerable retinue. Bestowing his wealth on his followers, and reserving for himself only the books, he and his nephew remained at St Gall, where the latter became celebrated as the teacher of Notker, Ratpert, and Tutilo. Mr Skene thinks it was originally written in British in Cumbria, or y Goglcd, and was afterwards translated into Latin. To this nucleus was added the genealogies of the Saxon kings, down to 738; the above-mentioned Marc appended, probably about 823, the life of St Germanus, and the legends of St Patrick, which were subsequently incorporated with the history. Some South Welshman added to the oldest manuscript of the history in these countries, about 977, a chronicle of events from 444 to 954, in which there are genealogies beginning with 0wain, son of Howel Dda king of South Wales. This chronicle, which is not found in other manuscripts, has been made the basis of two later chronicles brought down to 1286 and 1288 respectively. It is consequently not the work of one author. A Sai and Fili, named Gilla Caomhan, who died 1072, translated it into Irish, and added many things concerning the Irish and the Picts.

The Historia Britonum is more valuable for the legendary matter which it contains than for what may be accepted as history, for it gives us, at least as early as the 1 Oth century, the British legends of the colonization of Great Britain and Ireland, the exploits of King Arthur, and the wonderful birth and prophecies of Merlin, which are not found elsewhere before the 12th century. The date of the book is of the greatest importance to the history of mediaeval romance, and there can now be no doubt, especially since the publication of the Irish Nennius, that it is earlier than the Norman Conquest, and that the legends themselves are of British origin. The books attributed to Gildas and Nennius contain the germs of the fables which expanded into Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of Britain, which was written in Latin sometime before 1147, the date of the epistle dedicatory to Robert, earl of Gloucester, the son of Henry I. by Nest, only daughter of Rhys ab Tewdwr, and was a manifestation of the great advance which took place in Welsh literature consequent on the restoration of the Welsh prince just named, and of Gruffyd ab Cynan, and of which we shall have more to say hereafter. In the epistle just referred to Geoffrey states that Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, had given him a very ancient book in the British tongue, giving an account of the kings of Britain from Brutus to Cadwaladyr, and that he had translated it into Latin at the archdeacon’s request. But in the Welsh version of Geoffrey’s chronicle in the Myvyrian Archaiology, the Brut Geoffrey ap Arthur, there is this postscript: “I, Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, did turn this book out of Welsh into Latin; and in my old age I turned it a second time out of Latin into Welsh.” That Geoffrey drew his materials from British sources, and did not coin any of them, seems to us the legitimate conclusion to be drawn from a careful study of the whole subject. His book is, however, a compilation and not a translation, at all events no book now exists which can be regarded as his original, while all the Bruts or chronicles are posterior to Geoffrey’s book and based upon it. Of these there are the Brut Tysilio and the Brut Geoffrey ap Arthur, both of which are also called Brut y Brenhinoedd, or Chronicle of the Kings. The copy of the latter in the Red Book is followed by a chronicle in continuation which, according to an entry in a later hand, was called Brut Twysogion, or Chronicle of the Princes. In some manuscripts there is also added a chronicle of Welsh events interspersed with Saxon ones, which is from this called the Brut y Saeson, or Chronicle of the Saxons; in one manuscript this is attributed to Caradoc of Llancarvan. The chronicle of events from 444 to 954, which is contained in the British Museum manuscript of the History of Nennius, and two other chronicles, already mentioned, bringing events down to 1286 and 1288, have been printed together as the Annales Cambrioe. These later chronicles ought not, as Mr Skene properly remarks, to have been incorporated with the older one, which alone possesses the special value of having been written before the Norman Conquest, and a century and a half before the Bruts.

Besides the chronicles or Bmts there are no historical works properly so called in Welsh, unless we include the Triads, a curious kind of literature peculiar to Wales; for although there are some Irish Triads they are imitations of the Welsh ones, an imitation which fortunately did not extend very far. The Triads are an arrangement of similar subjects, similar events, or things which might be associated in the mind, or be worthy of remembrance, &c., in series of three, eg., “ Three ornaments of a hamlet—a book, a teacher versed in song, and a smith in his smithy;” or “Three punishments for theft in hand—the first is imprisonment, the second is cutting off a limb, the third is hanging.” This kind of composition appears to have come into use in the 12th century, the earliest specimen being the Triads of the Horses, which are in the Black Book. The Triads of Arthur and his warriors are perhaps as old as the 13th century. The Red Book contains the Triads of the Island of Britain, which include those last mentioned, an enlarged edition of the Triads of the Horses, and many others. The Triads of Dyfnwal Moelιnud, a supposed ancient king of Britain, are perhaps as old as the beginning of the 16th century.

The poetic literature of the Welsh, which is very extensive, maybe conveniently divided into—(1.) Poems attributed to poets who lived before the 12th century, and anonymous poems in the Black Book; and (2.) Poems written by or attributed to poets who lived in the 12th and succeeding centuries. The claims of the Welsh to possess an ancient literature rests altogether on the poems of the first category, hence they have been the subject of much discussion. The grounds upon which such discussions have hitherto rested have altered considerably within the last few years. The labours of Zeuss and others who have worked at Celtic philology, and the discovery of specimens of Old Welsh in the Cambridge Codex of Juvencus, furnish us with much safer canons of criticism than existed in 1849, when even a learned Welshman, the late Mr Thomas Stephens, who did more than any one else to establish the claims of his country to a real literature, doubted the authenticity of a large number of the poems said to have been written by Taliessin, Aneurin, Merlin, and Llywarch Hên, who are supposed to have lived in the 5th century. Mr W. F. Skene has done a very great service to Welsh literature by the publication of the texts of those poems from the four principal manuscripts now known, the Black Book, the Book of Taliessin, the Book of Aneurin, and the Red Book. In addition to the texts Mr Skene has given translations of the poems specially made for him by the Rev. D. Silvan Evans and the Rev. Robert Williams, so that next to the Welsh Laws, and Stephens’s Literature of the Kymry, his Four Ancient Books of Wales is the most important contribution to Welsh literature yet made.

If we judge by the test of language alone, the poems which we have included in our first category, and which are nearly all to be found in Mr Skene’s book, are not in their present form older than the 1lth century. But while the form may be new the substance may be old, as we have already pointed out in the case of many Irish poems. It is probable that many of the poems attributed to Aneurin, and several of the mythological and religious poems, are only popular editions of much older poems, and further that the change effected in some of them may be so small that we have substantially the original poems. Others again have been so deeply modified that they may be regarded as new poems on an old theme.

The following classification of those poems shows their origin, and will help to render the few observations we can offer here more intelligible.

1. Poems referring to events in Romanized Britain, or to the east frontier of Wales.

2 Poems referring to events on the Mercian frontier and in South Cumbria.

3. Poems referring to personages and events connected with the Gwyddel or Goidelic occupation of Wales and Cornwall.

4. Poems referring to the Gwyr y Gogled, or Men of the North.

5. Poems relating to or attributed to Taliessin of a general character.

6. Proverbial poetry attributed to Llywarch, Hên.

7. Poems attributed to poets between the 7th and 11th centuries.

8. Anonymous religious poems in the Black Book.

9. Poems referring to personages and events of Welsh history in the 12th and subsequent centuries.

The first class is represented by one poem in the Book of Taliessin, The Reconciliation of Llud the Less, which would be unintelligible but for a Mabinogi to which we shall refer later. The poem has no mark of antiquity about it, and belongs to the 13th century. To the second class belong the Death Song of Erof, and other pieces in which that warrior is mentioned, and the Death Song of Uthyr Pendragon, all of which are in the Book of Taliessin, and in form and substance are not older than the 12th century. The poems of the third class are of considerable importance, but here we shall merely give the names of a few as examples, reserving what we have to say concerning them until we come to the Mabinogion. The following are good examples of the class—The Death Song of Corroi, The Battle of Godeu, and The Chair of Ceridwen, from the Book of Taliessin∙, the Preiddeu Annwn ; Daronιvy, and the poems relating to Gwydyon ap Don, from the Black Book, the Book of Taliessin, and the Red Book. The poems which belong to the fourth class are the most numerous and important. Among them may be mentioned first of all the Gododin poems, those relating to Urien Rheged, the war between the sons of Llywarch Hen and Mwg Μawr Drefydd, poems relating to the battle of Adderyd, as for instance the Avail man, or Apple Trees, and poems relating to Cadwallawn and Cadwaladyr. We have already explained that y G ogled was that portion of Britain which lay between the Walls of Hadrian and Antoninus, and had been erected into the Roman province of Valentia. As it was a loose terra, it may have included all the independent British country north of the Ribble. This country, and especially that part of it forming the ancient diocese of Glasgow, was the cradle of the Welsh language and literature. It was the only part that could have been this. Here the question naturally suggests itself, to what extent was Britain Romanized î That it was not so to the extent usually supposed may be shown in many ways. It is obvious that, if the southern Britons were as thoroughly Romanized as Gaul or Spain, the language of Cornwall should have been a Romance dialect, and that of Brittany an allied one. Again, if the Welsh were a remnant of the Romanized Britons driven westward by the conquering Saxons, the Welsh language also should be a Romance dialect, oj ’ its vocabulary should contain a large intermixture of words borrowed from the Latin, and especially of words connected with law, trades, <fcc. But this is not so. The fact is the population of Britain was not Romanized to any extent. In the towns the principal citizens no doubt spoke Latin, as they speak English in Calcutta and other large towns in India. A large British population iu part bilingual gathered round the cities and towns, as the Irish did about the Anglo-Norman towns of the Pale, and as the Letts, Esthonians, and Russians do about the German towns of the Russian Baltic provinces. We should also not forget that the legionaries in the 2d and 3d centuries were only Roman in name, being recruited from every part of the empire, and consequently could not contribute to Romanizing the inhabitants among whom they were located. The peasantry continued British, but the nobility, no doubt, learned to speak Latin, but not for home use. When afterwards the Saxons on the east and the Irish on the west of what is now Wales displaced the ruling families, the Romanized part of the independent British population, hemmed in between the two hostile peoples, and with an ever-encroaching Saxon frontier on one side, gradually merged into the Celtic-speaking peasantry, and lost the use of the Latin tongue. This was not a state of things favourable for the development of a literature. In the north especially, between the Walls of Hadrian and Antoninus, in the province of Valentia, which never had Roman towns, only camps occupied by legionaries, who for the most part probably spoke no Latin, the whole population must have remained essentially British after the withdrawal of Roman power. Here if anywhere the first germs of a British literature should show themselves, and accordingly tradition makes Taliessin, Aneurin, Llywarch Hên, and My r din or Merlin, to whom most of the supposed ancient Welsh poems are attributed, natives of this region. Here also the actors in the events referred to in the poems lived, and the places where those events are supposed to have taken place are to be found. The greater part of this region, too, enjoyed substantial independence down to the end of the 9th century, with the exception of the interval from 655, when they were subjected to the kingdom of Northumbria by Oswy, after the defeat of Cadwallawn and Penda, to the battle of Dunnichen in 686, when Ecfrid, king of Northumbria, was defeated. From the 7th to the 9th century Cumbria, including under that name all the British territory from the Ribble to the Clyde, was the principal theatre of British and Saxon conflict. The τise of the dynasty of Mailcun, who according to Welsh tradition was a descendant of Cunedda, one of the Gwyddd or Goidelic Picts of the district called Guotodin, brought Wales into close connection with the Cumbrian kingdom, and prepared both North and South Wales for the reception of the northern traditions and the rise of a true Welsh literature.

Whether the poets of Cumbria really wrote any of the poems which in a modified form have come down to us or not, there can be no doubt that a number of lays attributed to them lived in popular tradition, and that under the sudden burst of glory which the deeds of Cadwallawn called forth, and which ended in the disastrous defeat of 655, a British literature began to spring up, and was nourished by the hopes of a future resurrection under his son Cadwaladyι', whose death was disbelieved in for so long a time. These floating lays and traditions gradually gathered into North Wales, according as the nobility and bards sought refuge there from the advancing conquests of the Saxon kings in the north. The heroes of Cumbria became Welshmen, and the sites of the battles they fought were identified with places of similar name in Wales and England. When Howel Dda became king of all Wales, the legends of the north passed into South Wales, and like the legends of Oisin in Scotland, became so thoroughly identified with their new home, that they seem to have first originated there.

Of all the poems attributed to the four ancient Welsh bards, the one which has most claim to be considered genuine, and the only one we can specially allude to here, is that known as y Gododin. As published by Mr Skene from the Book of Aneurin, it consists of 94 stanzas, and is both obscure and fragmentary. The latter character Mr Skene explains, and we think successfully, by supposing that it consists in reality of two distinct poems, referring to two events separated by a long interval of time. The first event is the battle of CaUrαeth, the Bellum Miathorum of Adamnan, fought between the Britons and Scots under Aedan, king of Dalriada, and the pagan Saxons and their British subjects in Devyr and Bryneick or Deira and Bernicia, and the half-pagan Picts of Guotodin, a district corresponding to the northern part of the Lothians along the Firth of Forth. Cattraeth was the adjoining district on the Forth where the great Roman wall terminates at Carriden, the Fort of Eidinn. If this view be correct, and it is the best that has yet been proposed, the Mynydawg of the poem was Aedan Mac Gabran, and the battle the one fought in 596, of which Columcillé prophesied that Aedan would be unfortunate but victorious,—the misfortune being doubtless the loss of his four sons in the battle, one of whom was named Artur (Art). The second and later portion of the poem, Mr Skene thinks, refers to the battle of Strathcαimnn, now Strathcarron, in which Domnal Brec, king of the Dalriadic Scots of Alba, was slain, 642. In the brevity of the narrative, the careless boldness of the actors as they present themselves, the condensed energy of the action, and the fierce exultation of the slaughter, together with the recurring elegiac note, this poem (or poems if it be the work of two authors) has some of the highest epic qualities. The ideas and manners are in harmony with the age and country to which it is referred. The poems called the Gordians, which are also found in the Book of Aneurin, and refer to the personages and events of the Gododin, possess many of the characteristics of that poem, and are probably the work of the same time, if not of the same poet.

Still more celebrated than Aneurin, the reputed author of y Gododin, was Talixssin, a name which has been interpreted as “Splendid Forehead,” and has consequently been the subject of a good deal of mysticism. The number of poems in the Book of Ι'alisssin supposed to have been written by him is considerable; in language they are not older than the 12th century, though many of them may be what we have called in other cases popular editions of older poems. Several belong to the fourth class which we have been just considering; the poems which we would include in a special fifth class are those which have been made the subject of bardic speculation in consequence of their generality and vagueness, such as the Fold of the Bards, Hostile Confederacy, Song to the Wind, Mead Song, Songs to Great and Little Worlds, Elegy of the Thousand Sons, Pleasant things of Tαliesrin. Many of these poems possess considerable merit, and even as the work of the 12th and 13th centuries might bear comparison with similar compositions in other European literatures of the period.

The poems of the sixth class attributed to Llywarch Hên are in the Red Book, and are the work of some Tupper of the 14th century, too disinterestedly proud of his work to put his own name to it. They are curious and interesting examples of a sort of proverbial philosophy in which each proverb or wise saw is accompanied by a reference to some natural feature, such as “Bright the tops of the broom,’’ which serves as a kind of mnemonic catchword. This catchword is sometimes the same in every verse, as in the poem Eiry mnyd, mountain snow.

Welsh tradition has preserved few poems of the period between the end of the 6th century and the end of the 11 th, a period of 500 years, nor for the matter of that even the names of poets, a circumstance which is intelligible enough if we consider that Welsh literature really began with the 11th century, but inexplicable according to the ordinary views of Welshmen. In the Black Book are five poems attributed to three poets who lived in the early part of the barren interval,— Meigant, whose name also occurs in Irish literature; Elaeth, to whom are attributed two out of the five poems, which are of a religious character; and Cukelyn, a bard of the 9th century. The two poems attributed to the last are of very great importance, because in them occurs the earliest mention of the goddess Cerixlwen, who plays so conspicuous a part in the modern bardic system of Neo-Druidism. The anonymous religious poems of the Black Book, apart from the language, may belong to any time from the 6th to the 12th centuries; they probably belong in great part to the 11th and 12th centuries, and were most likely the work of the monks in whose monastery the Black Book was compiled. The ninth and last division of the early Welsh poems are those which covertly allude to passing events in Wales, and can therefore be no older than those events. Two of them refer to Powys in Norman times, the Satire of Cynan Garwyn, son of Brochwael, in the Book of Tăliessin, and the elegy on Gyndylan in the Red Book. The others are the poems which Mr Skene groups together under the head “Poems which mention Henry or the son of Henry;’’ the most important of them are those attributed to My rdin or Merlin, such as the Dialogue between Myrdin and his sister Gwendydd, a Fugitive Poem of Myrdìn in his Grave, containing a number of predictions, and the Songs of the Little Pigs, each stanza of which begins with “0ian a par-chellan," “ Listen, 0 Little Pig.” The structure of the last poem being like that of the poem called the A vellenau, each stanza of which commences with that word “Sweet Apple-tree,” both are classed together, and in the Myvyrian Archaeology are attributed to Merlin. The Avellenau is, however, found in the Black Book, and is every way an older poem; but it is needless to add that none of the poems of Merlin are genuine, and that with the exception perhaps of the Apple-tree poem, they all refer to times later than the 12th century, and to the present Wales.

Before discussing the second division of Welsh poetic literature, or poems written by or attributed to poets who lived in Wales in the 12th and succeeding centuries, we must say a few words on the Welsh bards. The organization of the classes of learned men in Wales was far less developed than in Ireland. According to the laws each king or prince had a household bard, who appears to have performed the functions of the Irish Sai and Fili, and also that of harper. His position was honourable, and on investiture he was presented by the king with a harp, and by the queen with a gold ring. Beside the Bardd Teuleu, or household bard just spoken of, a Pencerdd, chief of song, is mentioned in the laws, who in North Wales was an officer of the household, but in South Wales was not,—his position there being apparently that of a privileged personage entitled to make a circuit and so spend his time where he pleased. The chief of song was also called a chaired bard, because he was one of the fourteen entitled to a chair at court. The installation of a bard to a chair appears to have been attended with some ceremony, for the judge of the king’s court was entitled as a perquisite of his office to the bugle-horn, the gold ring, and the cushion which was under the bard on the occasion. The Pencerdd represented the Irish 0Uam]ι Fili, and like him appears to have kept a school of poetry, for he was entitled to receive 24 pence from each minstrel who completed his course of instruction, to their services “as a man placed in authority over them,” and to the Gobyr or Amobyr of their daughters, that is to the fee payable to the lord on the marriage of a maiden. Among his emoluments was a fee of 24 pence from every maiden on her marriage. In the court his seat was on the side of the judge of the court, and he lodged with the Edling, that is the heir-apparent of the king or prince, corresponding to the Irish Tanaiste. A villain or serf could not become a bard, nor a smith without the permission of his lord; nor could a bard practise his art after he had taken holy orders. Should a serf or a stranger happen to become a bard he became personally a free Cyrn,ro or Welshman, but his children were not free, though the time in which his descendants might rise to the privileges of a free Cyrnro was shortened. A minor bard was forbidden to solicit a gift without the permission of the Pencerdd, but the latter might ask a gift though all others should be forbidden to do so. The duty of the chief of song was to commence the singing or recitation of poetry by singing two songs on entering the hall, one concerning God and the other about kings; the household bard then repeated the third song below the entrance of the hall. This is nearly all that the laws contain about bards. There is not a word about the Ovydd, or the Druid-bard, nor about the sky-blue dress of the former, the emblem of peace and truth, nor of the white robe of the Druid, nor of the green robe of the Ovydd, the colour of nature, nor of the robe of the Aιcenydd or bardic student striped with the three colours, nor of the Gorsedd or assembly of bards. If any of these things existed in the 12th century, the most brilliant period of Welsh poetry, we should expect to find them in the Welsh laws. But so far from any relics of the ancient Druidic organization having survived at that period, it is probable that even the organization above given from the laws was in part at least the work of Gruffyd ab Cynan. They are, in fact, the inventions of later times when Wales had lost its political liberty. We have the first stage of the invention in the Triads, and it seems to have been completed by that extraordinary man Edward Williams, whom we have already mentioned as one of the editors and the principal contributor of the Myvyrian Archaiology, who pretended to be the head of the bardic order of South Wales, and accordingly assumed the bardic title of Iolo Morganwg from his native county of Glamorgan. He is probably the source whence the Rev. Edward Davies derived the chief part of the material for his marvellous system of Neo-Druidic philosophy. According to the supporters of this system, the religion of the Druids, a medley of sunworship and Jewish Noachian traditions, the emblems of which were the bull, the horse, and fire, survived the introduction of Christianity, and continued to be believed by the bards, and its rites practised in secret by them. The principal source whence evidence was derived in support of this assumption was the early poems which we have been discussing. Davies gave what he called translations of some of those poems, in which the simplest and plainest phrases are made to express mysterious and abstruse doctrines. In the religious poems which contain such expressions as “Christ the Son,” “Merciful Trinity,” Mr Davies omits the latter, or treats them as mere phrases introduced to deceive the uninitiated, and make them believe the pagan bards were Christians. Among the doctrines attributed to the Neo-Druids was that of metempsychosis. The chief source from whence evidence was derived in support of this assumption outside a pretended work called Barddas, or treatise on the whole system of the bards, which Iolo Morgαnισg possessed, was the Romance called Hanes Taliessin, or history of Taliessin, which though partly prose, and therefore coming under the head of the prose romances, of which we shall speak later, may be more conveniently referred to here. A fragment of the Welsh text of this history was given in the Myυyrian Archaiology ; the whole tale was afterwards published by Dr Owen Pughe; and Lady Charlotte Guest published it again in the third volume of her Mabinogiσn from two fragments, one dated about 1758, and the other belonging to Iolo Morgαnwg. The romance of the Hanes Taliessin in its existing form belongs to the beginning of the 17th century. Of the thirteen poems contained in Lady Charlotte Guest’s book, only two are found in the Book of Taliessin, the Ode to the Wind and the Mead Song. It is evident that a number of poems attributed to Tediessiu were floating about in popular tradition, and were strung together in the 16th century into a romance. Although of these so taken up only the two just mentioned find a place in the special manuscript of Tαliessin ’ s poems in the 14th century, we are not therefore entitled to assume that the other poems did not therefore exist at that period. It is singular that the compiler of the Hanes Taliessin did not include such poems as the Canu y Meirch, or the Song of the Horses, which would find its place after the account of the contest of Elphin against the 24 horses of Mailcun, the Ale Song, which is the counterpart of the Mead Song, the Chair of TaUessin, and the Chair of the Sovereign (Kadsir Teymon). In all these there is no mythology, nor indeed anything indicative of a secret. But when the Elegy of the Thousand Sons, a religious poem on the saints before and after Christ, which is in the Book of Taliessin, is believed to contain the doctrine of metempsychosis, any doctrine whatever may be drawn from the Welsh poetry. But while the whole of the Neo-Druidic speculations must be looked upon as fables, it does not follow that there are no mythological allusions in Welsh poems as old as from the 12th to the 14th century. We have already alluded to the occurrence of the name of the goddess Ceridwen in two poems in the Black Book attributed to Cuhelyn, a bard of the 9th century. The following poems in the Book of Taliessin also contain traces of mythology :—Song concerning the Sons of Llyr ab Brochure!, the Chair of Ceridwen, the Spoils of Annum, Daronwy, and the Angar Gyfindawd. But as the mythology of the poems is intimately connected with that of the prose tales we shall reserve our observations on the subject until we are considering the Mabinogion.

Whether the poems we have been hitherto considering were really first written after the 1Oth century, or, as seems much more probable, were composed at an earlier period and transmitted by popular tradition, their language undergoing the same changes as the spoken language, they must be considered from a merely literary point of view as the products of the period from the 11th to the 13th century inclusive. But apart from those poems there is another and a perfectly legitimate Welsh literature which may be said to have commenced with the restoration of the old royal families of North and South Wales. Rhys ab Tewdwr, the reputed legitimate heir to the throne of South Wales, returned from Brittany in 1077 bringing with him no doubt the Armorie legends of the Round Table; and Gruff yd ab Cynan came in 1080 from Ireland, where he was born and had been educated, and where he must have become familiar with its poetry and music. Indeed, we know on the authority of Welsh writers that Gruffyd reorganized the bards and improved the music, and in other ways gave a great and beneficial impulse to Welsh literature. Among the changes which he effected in the organization of the bards may have been the institution of bardic Gorsedds or meetings, of which the modern Eisteddfod is an imitation. In Ireland the poets did not, so far as we know, hold separate meetings of this kind, but they took a prominent part in the great periodic gatherings called Aonechs or fairs held fora threefold purpose,—for promulgating laws, for public games, and as a market. At these gatherings poems were sung, stories narrated, and prizes awarded.

One of the earliest poets whose productions we can be certain of is Meilyr, bard of Trahaearn, whom Gruffyd ab Gynan defeated at the battle of Carno, and afterwards of the conqueror Gruffyd himself. His best piece is the Death-bed of the Bard, a semi-religious poem, which is distinguished by the structure of the verse, poetic feeling, and religious thought. Meilyr was the head of a family of bards; his son was Gwalchmai, one of the best Welsh poets; and the latter had two sons, Einion and Meilyr, some of whose poetry has reached us. Gwalchmai was a true poet, and not a mere professional bard. In his Gorhoffedd Gwalchmai, Gwalchmaís Delights, there is an appreciation of the charms of nature, the murmuring of brooks, and the songs of birds not unworthy of one of the modern Lake poets. His Arwyrain i 0wain is an ode of considerable’beauty, and full of vigour in praise of 0wain Gwynedd, king of North Wales, on account of his victory of Tai y Moelvre, part of which has been translated by Gray under the name of “The Triumphs of Owen.” This translation, though not very literal, preserves the terseness and boldness of action of the original. Kynddelw, who lived in the second half of the 12th century, was a contemporary of Gwalchmai, and wrote on a great number of subjects including religious ones; indeed, some of his eulogies have a kind of religious prelude. He had command of words and much skill in versification, but he is pleonastic and fond of complicated metres and of ending his lines with the same syllable. There is a certain obscurity about some of his poems which has given him an importance among the disciples of the Neo-Druidic or bardic philosophy. Among the other poets of the second half of the 12th century may be mentioned 0wain Kyveilwg and Howel ab 0wain Gwynnedd. The first-named was prince of Powys, and was distinguished also as a soldier. The Hirlas, or Drinking Horn, is a rather long poem marked alike by originality and poetic merit. The prince represents himself as carousing in his hall after a fight; bidding his cup-bearer fill his great drinking-horn, he orders him to present it in turn to each of the assembled warriors. As the horn passes from hand to hand he eulogizes each in a verse beginning Diwallaw di venestr, “ Fill, cup-bearer.” Having thus praised the deeds of two warriors, Tudyr and Moreiddig, he turns round to challenge them, but suddenly recollecting that they had fallen in the fray, and listening as it were to their dying groans, he bursts into a broken lamentation for their loss. The second was also a prince; he was the eldest of the many sons of 0wain Gιcynnedd, and ruled for two years after his father until he fell in a battle between himself and his step-brother David. He was a young man of conspicuous merit, and one of the most charming poets of Wales,—his poems being especially free from the conceits, trivial common-places, and complicated metres of the professional bards, while full of gay humour, a love of nature, and a delicate appreciation of woman. Some of his love songs especially are charming. There are two other poets, who, though they lived into the 13th century, belonged perhaps more to the 12th, namely, Llywarch ab Llewelyn and Gwynvardd Brycheiniοg. Mr Stephens attributes the Songs of the Pigs to the former, and believes that the poet covertly alludes to the events which occurred in the reign of Llewelyn ab Ioτweτth, grandson of 0wain Gwynedd; but as this poem occurs in the Black Book it can hardly be the work ot Llywardι. The poems which are distinctly referred to him are marked by much power of delineation and poetic feeling, of which his address to Llewelyn ab Ioru<erth affords a good instance. The Welsh poets, as we have said, went circuit like their Irish brethren, staying in each place according as hospitality was extended to them. When departing, a bard was expected to leave a sample of his versification behind him. In this way many manuscripts came to be written, as we find them, in different hands. The Irish manuscript known as the Book of Fermoy is just such a book kept in the house of David Roche of Fermoy in the 15th century. Llywarch has left us one of those departing eulogies addressed to Rhys Gryg, prince of South Wales, which affords a favourable specimen of his style. Gwynvardd Brycheiniog's poem on St David, in which he enumerates all the churches dedicated to the saint, is a typical example of a kind of topographical poem abounding in Irish. There is an early anonymous example of this kind of poem in the Black Book, the Eιglynniοnn y Bedeu, The Verses of the Graves, which is the exact counterpart of the Irish Lay of the Leachts, and some other poems of the same kind.

The following are a few of the poets of the 13 th century whose poems are still extant. Davydd Benvras was the author of a poem in praise of Llewelyn ab Iοrwerth ; his works, though not so verbose or trite as bardic poems of this class usually are, do not rise much above the bardic level, and are full of alliteration. Elidyr Sais was, as his name implies, of Saxon origin, and wrote chiefly religious poetry. Einiawn db Gwgaιvn is the author of an extant address to Llewelyn ab Iοrwerlh of considerable merit. Phylip Brydydd i or Philip the poet, was household bard to Rhys Gryg (Rhys the hoarse), lord of South Wales; one of his pieces, An Apology to Rhys Gryg, is a striking example of the fulsome epithets a household bard was expected to bestow upon his patron, and of the privileged domesticity in which the bards lived, which as in Ireland must have been fatal to genius. Prydydd Bychan, the Little Poet, was a South Wales bard, whose extant works consist of short poems all addressed to his own princes. The chief feature of his Eηglynniοηn is the use of a kind of assonance in which in some cases the final vowels agreed alternately in each quatrain, and in others each line ended in a different vowel,—in both cases with alliteration and consonance of final consonants, or full rhyme. Llygad Gwr is known by an ode in five parts to Llewelyn ab Gruffyd written about the year 1270, which is a good type of the conventional flattery of a family bard, Howel Voel, who was of Irish extraction, possessed some poetical merit; his remonstrance to Llewelyn against the imprisonment of his brother 0wain is a pleasing variety upon the conventional eulogy. It has many lines commencing with the same word, eg., gwr, man. The poems of Bleddyn Vardd, or Bleddyn the Bard, which have come down to us are all short eulogies and elegies. One of the latter on Llewelyn ab Gruffyd is a good example of the elaborate and artificial nature of the Welsh versification. There are seven quatrains, the first, second, and fourth of which all end in -af. With the exception of the first and last stanza the first three lines of each stanza begin with gwr, man, or a compound of it, “manly.” The second, third, and fourth lines of the first stanza also begin in the same way; the fourth line is a kind of refrain, which in the first two stanzas begins like the other lines with gwr or a compound of it; in the third and last it begins with yn, and in the fourth, fifth, and sixth with hyd. The best of all the poets of the century was Gruffyd ab yr Ynad Coch, whose elegy, notwithstanding its alliteration and conventional use of the same initial word, or of words having the same fore-sound, has the ring of true poetry. His religious poems, too, possess considerable merit. But of all the religious poems in early Welsh we have seen, that which best deserves the name is one written by Madawc ab Gwallter.

The death of Llewelyn and the subjugation of all Wales, and especially the social and other internal changes which took place in the Principality, necessarily checked literary efforts. A general revival took place, however, in the time of 0wain Glyndwr and the Wars of the Roses, with which the Welsh had much to do. In the meantime a considerable improvement had taken place in the aesthetic feeling of the people. The bardic system, which had helped to raise the Celtic people in their tribal stage above other barbarous peoples, but which at a later period had fettered their intellectual and political development, was, at least so far as regards exclusive privileges, at an end; inter-tribal wars had ceased, aud great improvements in the houses, churches, dress, and food of the people had taken place. Love supplanted war as the theme of song, and much attention w as paid to language and versification. Nature, too, was made a theme of poetry by several poets. We have already had occasion to notice some examples of this love of nature; but at the period we are now considering, one cannot help being struck with the power of observation of natural phenomena, and the keen sense of objective natural beauty, which many Welsh poets exhibit; nor is there wanting the higher poetic feeling of subjective beauty. These high qualities are, it is true, often marred by artificial systems of versification. Among the poets who flourished in the 14th century, the following may be mentioned. Gu'ilym Ddu is the author of two odes to the unfortunate Sir Gruffyd Llwyd, one of which, the Odes of the Months, written in 1322, was composed while the subject of it was in prison. Forty-three out of sixty-three begin with the word neud ; it is moreover strongly alliterated, and many of the lines end iη-ed. He is also the author of an elegy on the poet Trahaeam, son of Gτoηwy, a contemporary poet. This poem, which is a panegyric on Welsh poets past and present, is skilfully constructed. A considerable number of writers of love Englynnionns flourished at this time, among whom may be specially mentioned Iorwerth Vychan, Casnodyn, who is believed to be the same as the foregoing Trahaeam, and Gronwy ab Davydd, who was probably the father of the latter. But the representative poets of this period are Rhys Goch ab Rhícert and Davydd ab Gwilym. The verses of the former to a Maiden’s Hair, though strongly alliterated aud rhymed, are smooth and less intricate and conventional than most poems of the period, and possess a good deal of the character of the love romants of the time, in Southern Europe, with which he undoubtedly was acquainted. Both Rhys Goch and Davydd ab Gwilym, the Cambrian Petrarch, as he has been called, were great lovers of nature, and no modern poets sing more sweetly of the woodland, wildflowers, the voice of birds, and other charms of the country. It is amidst such scenes they place their lovers, who are real swains and maids, and not the mock ones of the pastoral poetry of the 18th century. Two hundred and sixty two poems, chiefly pastoral of Davydd ab Gwilym are said to exist, some of which, as for instance his exquisite Ode to Summer, would be worthy of any literature.

The most distinguished poet of the 15th century was Lewis Glynn Cothi, more than one hundred and fifty of whose poems are known. The period o,f the civil wars in the 17th century had its poets, the best known of whom, Huw Morus, was on the Royalist side. Since then a new literature has grown up which, however, lies outside the scope of this article.

We have already alluded to the probability of the tales in verse, whether historical or romantic, being earlier than those in prose. Most of the heroes of the earlier poems, whatever may be their real age, are also the subjects of prose tales. In the poems, as a rule, if there be any definite picture of the actors, they appear as men, and there is very little necromancy surrounding them; the prose tales, on the other hand, are full of marvels and magical transformations. In the older prose tales there is a certain unity in the personages and events; gradually two or more streams of romance mingle, as in MacPherson’s Ossian. The Welsh prose tales all belong to South Wales; the poems, on the other hand, belong to a large extent to North Wales. The prose tales which still exist are few in number, and are evidently only a small part of those which were once current. The reason of the small number of prose tales preserved, as compared with the very large number of poems, is doubtless to be explained by the fact that the poets were a privileged class, who formed part of the households of the lords; while the prose tales were chiefly told by the strolling minstrels, against whom, and not against the bards properly so called, so many severe enactments were made. The privileged bards despised the tales of the story-teller, and hence, unfortunately for the history of romance and of comparative mythology, so few have been preserved.

In the Red Book there are eleven prose tales, which have been published by Lady Charlotte Guest, together with the Hanes Taliessin, of which we have spoken above, under the name of Mabinogion, though that name is applied in the Red Book to four only. We may classify them thus according to their origin. I. Roman-British—(1) The Contention of Llu<Ll and Llevdys; (T) The Dream of Maxen Wledic. II. Irish Romances—(3) The Tale of Pwyll, Prince of Dιjved ; (4) Branwen, daughter of Llyr ; (5) Manawyddan, the son of Llyr ; (6) Math,, son of Mathonwy. HI. Arthurian Romances—(7) The Lady of the Fountain; (8) Peredur, son of Eυrawc ; (9) Geraint, son of Erbiii. IV. Mixed Romances—(10) The Story of Kilhwclι and Olwen ; (11) The Dream of Rhonabwy. To the category of mixed romances may also be added, as a third kind, the story of the St Graal contained in a Hengwrt manuscript.

The first story relates to Lludd, son of Bell the great, son of Manogan, who became king after his father’s death, while his brother Llevdys becomes king of France, and shows his brother how to get rid of the three plagues which devastated Britain :—first a strange race, the Coranians, whose knowledge was so great that they heard everything, no matter how low soever it might be spoken; second, a shriek which came into every house on May eve, caused by the fighting of two dragons; and third, a great giant, who carried off all the provisions in the king’s palace every day. The second relates how Maxen or Maximus, emperor of Rome, has a dream while hunting, in which he imagines that he visits Britain, and sees a beautiful damsel, Helen, whom he ultimately succeeds in finding and marrying. The personages of this tale are mentioned in the earliest form of the Brut Gruffyd ab Arthur, but the account is different. Both tales seem to be British, and to be traceable to Roman times.

We have called the second group Irish romances, not only because the action in some of them is placed occasionally in Ireland, and some of the actors are distinctly stated to have been Irishmen, but because they are unmistakably relics of the period of the occupation of the coast of Wales by the Gwyddel or Irish. The group of four romances form a cycle of legends, and are the only ones called Mabinogìon in the manuscript from which they have been taken. In the first tale the principal characters are Pwyll, prince of Dy fed, and Arawn, king of Annwn or Annwyvn; in the second Bran and Manawyddan the sons, and Branwen the daughter, of Llyr, and Matholwch, king of Ireland; in the third Manawuddan, son of Llyr, and Pryderi, son of Pwyll ; and in the fourth, Math, son of Mathonwy, king of Arvon and Mona, Gwydyon ap Don and Arianrod his sister, and Llero Llaw Gyffes and Dylan eil Ton, the sons of Arianrod. These personages are mentioned in several of the poems attributed to Taliessin, in whose reputed works curiously enough the relics of the ancient mythology are chiefly found. Among these poems we may mention the following, some of which are in the Book of Taliessin, while others are not:— Kadeir Kerrituen,oτt ∖ iQ Chair of Ceridwen, the Spoils of Annwn; the Kat Godeu, the Battle of Godeu; Murwnat eil Ton, the Death Song of Dylan, son of the wave; Daronwy; Angar Cyflndawd; the story of Llyr ab Brochu ’ el Powys ;— in other words, all the so-called mythological poems. In these tales and poems we have undoubtedly the relics of the ancient Irish mythology of the Tuatha Dé Danann, sometimes mixed with later Arthurian myths. The Goer Sidi is the Sid of Irish mythology, the residence of the gods of the A es Side. The seven other Caers or resid ences mentioned in the poem on the Spoils of Annum are the various Side of the immortals. Llyr is the Irish seι-god Lêr, and was called Llyr Llediaith, or the half-tongued, implying that he spoke a language only partially intelligible to the people of the country. Bran, the son of Llyr, is the Irish Bran Mac Allait, Allât beingone of the names of Lêr. This Bran is probably the same as Brian, son of Tuirenn, though according to the Irish genealogies, Brian would be the nephew of Lêr. Manawyddan ap Llyr is clearly the Manandan or Manannan Mac Lir of Irish mythology. In one derivation of his name, if correct, we have a most important link in these romances. According to this etymology, Manannan comes from Man, lord, and Annan, of the foamy sea, Lêr, his father’s name, meaning also the sea. In Annan we would have the Annum of the poems, and of the story of Pwyll, and commonly identified with hell, but really corresponding to the Tir Taimgire or Elysium of the Irish. R1ιi- annon, the wife of Pwyll, who possessed marvellous birds which held warriors spell-bound for eighty years by their singing, comes from Annwn, and her son Pryderi gives her, on the death of Pwyll, as a wife to Manawyddan. With Annum or Annwvyn we naturally connect the Irish Ana, the mother of the gods, or Mór Bigu, and wife of the Dagda. She was the mother of Aed, the Welsh Aed Mawr, and was probably the same as Ceridwen. In a previous part of this article we have made the Dagda the same as Delbaith Dana or Tuirenn, the father of Lêr ; if we are right in our conjecture, Ana would be the mother of Ler, the sea, as well as of Aed, fire. Rhiannon, daughter of Heveydd Hen, and wife of Pwyll, and afterwards of Manaιvyddan, is perhaps also to be connected with Ana and Annwn. Again, the Gaer Sidi above mentioned, where neither disease nor old age affects any one, is called the prison of G weir in one of the poems. This Gweir, we have no doubt, represents Gaiar, son of Manandan Mac Lir, the Atropos who cut the thread of life of Irish mythology. In one legend Gaiar is made the son of Uisle and of Deirdriu, celebrated iu the story of the sons of ljisnech, and the foster son of Manandan, who aids him in banishing Gonehobar Mac Nessa to Alba on account of his killing the sons of īīisnech, and becoming king of Ulster in his place. Afterwards, Gaiar relinquishes the kingship by the advice of Manandan, who takes him to Ernhaim Abhlach, or Ernain of the Apple-trees, where he dies. Gaiaι∙ ’ s sister Aeb-greine, the Sunlike, married Rinn, son of Echaid Iuil of Tir Tairngire, or the Land of Promise. This Rinn takes part in the contests between the swineherds of Ochull Ochne and Badb, chiefs of the rival Side, who after a series of metamorphoses become the Finnuenduch, or bull of Con ∙ naught, and the Donn Gualngiu, the celebrated bull of the Táin Bo Cuailnge. Math, son of Mathonwy, may be connected with Mat, the great Druid of the Tuatha De Danann. The necromancer Mathsne or Lonán, the companion of Art, of whom we shall have something to say presently, maybe a relic of the older mythology. Nor should we forget to mention in connection with this name that the mother of Queen Μedb or Mab was Mata Muirisc. Γhe Llew Llaw Gyffes of the tale of Math, son of Matkοnwy, is Lug Lám Fada, king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, whose mother was Ethlenn or Gethlenn, daughter of Balοr of the Evil Eye, a Fomorian chief This Lug was known by several names, among which was that of the Sab Ilda-ιιach, or Skilful Pillar, because he knew or supported all arts, a name which connects him with Illanach or lldanaeh ( Skilful), son of Manandaιι. Lug, according to Irish legends, was the first who introduced fighting on horseback into Ireland, and who established funeral games. Gwydyon, son of Don, who fills so important a part in the early Welsh poems and tales, was the brother of Ariaenrod, the mother of Llew Llaτυ Gyffes and of Dylan, Son of the Wave, and the grandson of Daronwy, the son of Brynach or Urnach Wyddel by Corth, daughter of Brychan, by which another line of legend, originating also in Ireland, is brought int¢ connection. Gwydyon ∖ s> an enchanter of wonderful power, his master being Math. He produces a woman írom blossoms, and the forms of horses from springing plants. The tale of JΛz∕Λ,son of Matlωmoy, is full of such transformations as those of the swine-herds in the preface to the Táin Bo Cuailnge. Thereare alsosimilar transformations in the poem of the Kat Godeu, or Battle of Godeu. The Milky Way is called Caer Gwydyon; the constellation Cassiopeia is Llys Don, the court of Don; and the Corona Borealis is Caer Arianrod, the residence of Arianrod, daughter of Don, and mother of Llew Thus Arianrod is the same as Ethlenn. There are several Dons or Donne in Irish romance:—the chief of the Munster fairies, or people of the Side, was Down Firinns of Cnoc Firinne, now Knockfierna, in the west of the county of Limerick; Donn Durnhach, or Donn of the sandbank at the mouth of the Eidhneach near Ennistymon, in the county of Clare, and Donn Chnuic na n-0ss, now Knockanoss, in the county of Cork, were also chiefs of Side. These examples show that Don, the fath er of Gwydyon, may be connected with the Acs Side. Manandan Mac Lir had a son who was Ech-Dσn M6r, or the great Ech-Don, who is probably the Donn mentioned in the Fennian Agallarnh na Senorach, or Dialogue of the Sages, as having been slain by a certain Derg Dianscothash in a war between Ilbhreash of the Sid of Eas Ruadh and Ler of Sid Finnachaidh. It may be remarked here that whenever the Aes Side are brought into the Feunian romances there is generally some confusion. Thus in the romance just mentioned Lér is represented as at war with Ilbhreash, who in the genealogies is made the son of Manandan. Before leaving those curious tales, it will be better to discuss one of the mixed romances, The Story of Kilhweh and Olwen. By mixed romance we mean one in which two distinct streams of legends have mingled. The one just mentioned belonged originally to the same class of legends as the four Mabinogion we have been discussing, but it got mixed up with the Arthurian romance Kilhwch asks for wife Olwen, the daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr, who imposes upon him a number of tasks before he would give him his daughter, the final one being to fetch the comb and scissors which were between the ears of the Twrch Trwyth. All these he effects through the aid of his cousin Arthur. Among the personages mentioned are— Amaethon, son of Don, who is represented as a great husbandman, and Govannon, son of Don, a smith. Among the actors are Gwyther, the son of Greidawl, who is betrothed to Creiddylad, daughter of Lludd Llaw Ereint, that is Cordelia, daughter of Lear. Gwen Ap Nudd, however, carries off Creiddylad, but Arthur makes peace between them, the condition being that the maiden should be restored to her father’s house, and Gwen and Gwyther should fight for the yellow-haired maiden on the first of May each year. This very curious tale is altogether based on Irish mythology. Govannon is Goibniu, the Irish Vulcan, the brother of Diancscht or Dia na-cécht, the god of the powers (of healing). Creiddylad is the Irish Creide of Tir Tairngire. The Twreh Trwyih is the Irish Tore Triath, the King Boar. Indeed the story puts him in Ireland, aud says that he cannot be hunted without Garselit the Gwyddelian, the chief huntsman of Ireland. This king boar belonged to Brigit, the poetess daughter of the Dagda, the Minerva of the Irish. Nudd, the father of Gwen, is apparently Neit (battle), the god of war, and Kilhwch himself seems to represent Coin Ceallach — son of Delbaith, son of Neit, the god of war—who received the name Eladan (art, skill) in consequence of the skill he displayed in preparing ropes for capturing Masazι, king of Britain.

By an Arthurian romance we mean a tale in which Arthur is a chief hero, and the scene of which is laid in Wales or South England. The legends of Arthur in this sense belong chiefly to South Wales, and must have origf nated there in great part, though they were afterwards mucìj modified by new elements introduced from Armorica oy Rhys ab Tewdwr and his followers at the end of the 11 th century. At this period South Wales was more civilized than North Wales, because less mountainous and more fertile, and also because it had considerable intercourse with France. These very circumstances led to its conquest by the Normans earlier than North Wales, which maintained its independence nearly a century longer. Before the advent of the Normans in South Wales, stone-built castles and churches existed, but they erected much stronger and more splendid castles, and the clergy whom they introduced built fine churches and great abbeys. The Norman castles and walled towns and trained men at arms, always ready for war, must have afforded more protection to commerce and agriculture than it could enjoy under the Welsh tribal system. The wants of the new nobility, too, were greater, their courts were more splendid, their dresses and arms more costly than those of Welsh princes; and corresponding splendour was introduced into the ceremonies of the church. The Norman baron was not prouder, but he was graver and more courtly than the Welsh lord. All these things acted on the popular stories and gradually transformed them, as manners improved, into elegant romances of chivalry. The abundant materials of romance which existed in Wales were the property, so to say, of the strolling minstrels and peasantry, and were despised by the lettered bard with whose poems the popular tales competed. Carried into Armorica, they became, as it were, ennobled, and assumed a more polished and courtly form; and when brought back by Rhys ab Tewdwr, almost entirely displaced the conventional poems of the bards, which were chiefly eulogies of the Jiving, and elegies of their dead patrons. This is the reason why South Wales produced so few poems from the 12th to the 15th century. These romances were soon translated, or rather new ones constructed upon the same themes, by the Norman Jongleurs, who soon spread them among the Norman nobility everywhere. The heroes of y G ogled were well adapted to serve as actors in the courtly romances. They appear in the poems which we have discussed above as so many lay figures upon which to put the rich dresses and armour of the Normans, and who might be put into a fine castle anywhere without incongruity. The necromancy seems to have been largely borrowed from the Irish legends, a great many of which, of the same character as the Mabinogion, must have still existed in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The position assigned to Arthur in romance is due to accident. No one of the name occupied so prominent a position in the north as to give him of right the place occupied by Arthur in those productions. Some tale or ballad, in which a hero called Artur was the chief actor, might have had perchance the necessary elements for popular success; and around this as a nucleus gathered the legends of other Arturs. One of the sons of Aedan Mac Gabran, killed at the battle of Cattraeth, was named Artur; and there were doubtless many others of the name, both Scots and Britons. The name Art has a place in Irish romance also. Thus Art, “ the loue man,” son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, was beloved on account of his great fame by Becuma of the fair skin, wife of Labrad of the quick-hand-at-sword, and probably the same as Etain, a goddess already so often mentioned, and who had been unfaithful with Gaiar, son of Manandan Mae Lir. Becuma, driven out of Tir Taimgire or Elysium on account of her offence, is sent adrift in a boat, and lands on the Hill of Howth in Ireland, where, under the name of Delbh Caemh, daughter of Morgan, she presents herself to Conn and marries him. She next insists on the banishment of Art from Tara. Evil, however, comes on the country on account of Conn’s marriage, and the Druids announce that it could only be averted by sprinkling the blood of the son of an undefiled couple on the door posts. Conn sails away in search of such a youth, finds him in Tir Tairngire, Elysium, and brings him to Ireland. Then we have a scene of exactly the same character as that told of Gorti-gem, but the boy is ultimately saved from immolation by the appearance of his mother, who tells them they must banish Becumα. The latter then plays a game of chess with Art the son of Conn, and he wins, and imposes upon her the obligation of getting the champion’s wand which was in the hand of CuroiMacDaire when making the conquest of Eriu, and of the whole world. She visits the Side, and at length finds it, and brings it to Art. They play again, and this time Beσuma wins, and sends him in search of Delbh Caemh, daughter of Morgan, i.e., herself, whom he would find in an island in the middle of the sea. He sails away, and arrives at a beautiful island full of apple-trees, flowers, birds, and spotted horses; in which too there were joyous ever-blooming women, and Crede, the ever beautiful. Again Art was named Oenfhir, “ the lone man,” because his brother Condla, “ the beautiful,” being invited by a Ben Side to rule over Magh Mell, il the plain of honey in the Laud of Promise,” went thither and left him without a brother. Art is also credited with having anticipated Christian belief; and consequently it is supposed that neither he nor his son Cormac was buried in the pagan cemetery on the River Boyne.

It should be remembered that this Art lived either at the beginning of the Scotic invasions of Roman Britain, or immediately before that period, for his son Cormac, according to Irish legends, was expelled from Ireland, and, going over the sea, obtained the sovereignty of Alba, and his fame must have been carried into Wales, where he must have been the subject of many legends. These legends were the nucleus around which gathered all the floating traditions which came down from the north into North Wales, and thence into South Wales. Some obscure Arthur of the north, perchance Aedan ’ s son, was clothed in the legendary glory of Art, and was made a Guledig or generalissimo, and paramount king of Britain. From South Wales these legends passed into Cornwall and Armorica, where it is probable the Round Table was invented or borrowed in the same way that at a later period the legend of the St Graal, which there is reason to believe originally came from Provençe, was carried by the Jongleurs into Brittany, and thence into Wales. If the preceding view be correct, the Arthurian legends attained considerable development in Wales before the Round Table was developed, and were’carried by itinerant story-tellers and musicians among the Normans before Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his history. That book gave a value to the popular tales which they otherwise could never havo attained, and afforded a key by which to correct them. To the Norman clerics the romances owe their polish, and to a large extent their chivalry. But the germs of mediaeval chivalry, and even of knight-errantry were already in the original legends, associated, no doubt, with much barbarism.

Besides the Bruts, poems, Mabinogion, genealogies, and some miscellanous pieces including a few legendary lives of saints and the grammatical works alluded to in a preceding part, the only other early works in the Welsh language which have been printed, are two medicine books, and a music book. The two medicine books belonged to a family of leeches of Mydvai in Carmarthen, descended from Rhiwallon, family leech to Rhys Gryg or Rhys the Hoarse, prince of South Wales, in the 13th century. The oldest of the two books is in the Red Book, and may possibly have been copied from the Book of Rhiualloìi himself, or of his sons; the second is the Book of IIowd Veddyg, or Howel the Leech, a descendant of Einion, son of Rhiwallon, and was written probably towards the end of the 17 th century. Both books are mere dispensatories, and contain very little which would enable us to judge of the theoretical knowledge of disease possessed by the Welsh leeches, and cannot represent the real state of leechcraft in Wales in the 16th and 17th centuries. In Wales the practice of leechcraft was, as in Ireland, hereditary in certain families, who held land by the tenure of medical service. The rank and privileges of the family leech to the king are given in the Welsh laws; and in Wales he was obliged, as in Ireland, to take a guarantee from the kindred of his patient equal to the sum which should be paid for the homicide of a man of his rank, in case he might happen to die from his treatment, otherwise he should answer for his death. The music book, published in the Myvyriαn Archaiology, which is believed to contain some of the ancient music of Wales, and a peculiar system of musical notation, contains merely the music of the lute or some stringed instrument, perhaps the Welsh Crwth or Crowd, with the notation in common use for such instruments in every part of Europe, and there is no evidence that it contains any of the ancient music of Wales.

The literature of the Cornish dialect of the British, which was once the spoken language of the centre and south of England, is very limited indeed. There is first the Pascon Agan Arluth, The Passion of our Lord, consisting of 259 stanzas, each of which is a quatrain of four double lines, in rhyme, or eight single heptasyllabic lines with alternate rhymes, the final vowel and consonant in the rhymes being almost always the same ^n each stanza. This important monument of the Cornish language has been printed with a translation by Mr Whitley Stokes. Secondly, there is the Ordinalia, a MS. of which is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It forms a dramatic trilogy, consisting of three miracle plays—the Beginning of the World, the Passion, and the Resurrection of our Lord. The latter piece is divided into the Resurrection and the Ascension, with a curious interlude of the putting of Pilate to death. These dramas are founded on the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus or Acts of Pilate, and several legends which were current all over Europe in the Middle Ages. They are probably translations or adaptations of French mlracle plays of the end of the 14th century. The metre is syllabic, with few exceptions, each line having seven syllables, like the lines of the poem of the Passion. A great many of those lines are arranged in stajιzas of eight or of four lines, with alternate rhymes, as in the poem just mentioned; others in stanzas of six, in which the third rhymes with the sixth, and the others together or in pairs. Occasionally there are eight-lined stanzas, in which the first, second, and third lines, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh lines form triplets rhyming together or separately, and the fourth and eighth lines rhyming together. In lyric and declamatory passages, the lines are occasionally only tetrasyllable. There are many other varieties of metre, but those here described make up more than three-fourths of the whole. The late Mr Edwin Norris published the Ordinalia with a translation under the title of the “Ancient Cornish Drama.” The third relic of the Cornish language is a miracle play founded upon the life of St Meriasek, son of a duke of Brittany, and called in Breton St Meriadec. This piece, which was written in 1504, was found a few years ago by Mr Whitley Stokes among the Hengwrt manuscripts at Peniarth. The language is newer than that of the Ordinalia, the admixture of English being also greater; the metre employed is, however, much the same. The fourth work is also a miracle play, The Creation of the World, with Noah’s Flood, written in 1611 by one William Jordan. It is written in a more corrupt language than those above mentioned, is full of English words, and imitates, in some instances almost copying, passages in the Ordinalia. The remaining literature consists of two versions of the Lord’s Prayer, the Commandments, and the Creed, and two indifferent versions of the first chapter of Genesis, a few songs, a short tale, and a few proverbs, and lastly a Cornish Glossary, explanatory of Latin words. The oldest copies of the poem on the Passion is a vellum manuscript in the British Museum of the 15th century; the age of the principal manuscript of the dramatic trilogy is about the same. The Glossary is the most ancient monument of the Cornish language, for the manuscript which contains it belongs probably to the end of the 12 th or beginning of the 13th century; and it was copied into this from a more ancient MS. The miracle plays, as we learn form Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, printed in 1602, were played down to the beginning of the 17th century, in earthen amphitheatres in the open fields as in France and Germany, which in the 18th century, when Borlase wrote, were popularly known as “Rounds.”

Armorie like Welsh is a living language, but no monument of the old form of the language exists and the relics of Middle-Breton literature consist of two miracle plays, a prayer-book or “Hours,” a dictionary, and the chartularies of two monasteries. Of this small list only one of the plays and the dictionary are known to exist in early manuscript originals or copies. The play, which is founded on the life of St Nonna or Nonita, is in a paper manuscript, which has been purchased by the National Library at Paris, and is believed by Zeuss to belong to the 14 th century. This piece which, with the chartularies of Rhedon and Landevin, was the principal source whence Zeuss drew the materials for the Armorie part of the Grammatica Celtica, was published together with a translation in 1837, under the title of Bahez Santez Nonn. The second play, the Burzud braz Jezuz, the Great Mystery or Miracle of Jesus, is also referred to the 14th century, but no manuscript of it is known to exist. Μ. Hersart de la Villemarqué has reprinted it from copies, probably unique, of two editions printed in Paris in the years 1530 and 1622. It consists of two parts—the Passion and the Resurrection, and is treated somewhat differently from the corresponding parts of the Cornish trilogy. It possesses some literary merit, which the elegant translation of the editor does ample justice to. Only two copies of the “Hours,” printed apparently in 1524, are known. From these Mr Whitley Stokes has recently reprinted it, adding extracts from a missal printed in 1526, and a catechism printed in 1576. One of the most valuable of the Middle-Breton documents is the Breton-French and Latin Dictionary of Jean Lagadeuc or Lagadec, curé of Ploegonen, a manuscript of which, extending to the middle of the letter P, dated 1464, is in the National Lib rary of Paris. Under the title of Le CathoUcon it has been printed several times, the earliest edition being that of 1499.

Miracle-plays died out in France and England in the 16th century, but in Cornwall, as we have seen, they continued to be played down to the beginning of the 17th century, and in Brittany almost down to our own time. The Great Mystery of Jesus, modernized and otherwise altered, was in great repute in the 18th century. One of the widest known and most popular mysteries which have come down to modern times is that of St Tryphine and King Arthur, which Μ. Luzel has published. The language is more modern than in the two plays above mentioned, and is largely mixed with French expressions, hence we did not include it among Middle-Breton documents. The Breton miracle-plays, as well as the Cornish ones, are free to a great extent from the disgusting realism, coarse expressions, and indecent buffooneries of the English and French plays of the 15th century.

Although modern Breton literature, like modern Welsh literature, is outside the scope of this article, we should except from this category popular poems and tales, for, though modern in form, they contain materials for comparative mythology and linguistic studies, and exhibit the whole intellectual life, belief, and customs of the people, and the impressions which the events of their history have left on the popular mind. Of such collections the most important is Μ. de la Villemarqué’s Barzaz Brciz, the fruit of many years’ labour in every part of Lower Brittany. This collection consists of gwers, or short heroic, historical, or mythological ballads; sons, or love and festive songs; and religions poems. The language is, of course, modern, but is full of archaisms, showing very well how old poetic material becomes modified in the current of popular tradition. The Breton text is accompanied by an elegant translation into French, an introduction and notes, and in the sixth edition all the pieces have the original airs noted. Mr Tom Taylor published in 1865 a translation of the Barzaz Breiz. Μ. Μ. F. Luzel, already well known as the author of a volume of excellent Breton poetry (Bepred Breizad, Morlaix, 1865), and by his edition of Sainte Tryphine et le roi Arthur, published in 1868 a volume of gwers or popular ballads collected in a part of the ancient diocese of Tréguier, under the name of Gwerzion Brei∑- tzel. Similar collections have been made in other parts of Brittany, especially by MM. Penguern, G. Milin, Goulven-Denis, &c., which have not, so far as we know, been yet published. Μ. Luzel has also published some popular tales in the Tréguier dialect, and Colonel A. Troude and G. Milin an interesting collection of seven in the Léon dialect.

In concluding what we have had to say on the literature of the respective dialects, it may be well to add a few words on a subject which belongs to all alike, upon which Μ. de la Villemarqué has given a short essay by way of introduction to his edition of Le Grand Mystère de Jesus, and upon which Μ. Luzel has also some remarks in his Sainte Tryphine et le roi Arthur, namely, the theatre of the Celts. Μ. de la Villemarqué assumes that there is no evidence of a drama among the Goidelic branch of the Celts, but he thinks that it existed among the British branch, at least in an embryonic state, and refers to the Welsh poems in dialogue as evidence. Mr Stephens had already drawn attention to these poetic dialogues, eg., those between Arthur and Gwenhwyvar, Gwalchnιai and Trystan, Taliessin and Myrtin (Myrdin or Merlin), <fcc., and given it as his opinion that written dialogue seems to indicate the existence of drama of some sort, and that dialogues such as those referred to are inexplicable on any other hypothesis. If this argument were admissible, we cannot see how the existence of the dramatic form should be denied to the Irish, inasmuch as dialogue is very frequent in Irish poems and tales. Indeed, the “Fight of Ferdiad and Cúchulaind, ” and other episodes of the Táin Bo Cuailnge, the Briáthar chath ban Ulad, or “Wordy War of the Women of Ulster,” the Siαbur charpat Conculaind, or “Phantom Chariot of Cúchulaind,” possess as much of the character of incipient drama as any poetic or prose dialogues in Welsh literature. The truth is, however, neither the Welsh nor the Irish had the drama in the proper sense of the word, for the sufficient reason that though, like other Aryan peoples, they may have possessed the germ, it could not be developed among a people who had no civic life. The miracle-plays of the Cornish and Bretons are of foreign and ecclesiastical origin, and merely prove that there existed a closer contact between their churches and the great body of the church in Europe than between the latter and the Irish and Welsh churches. No Welsh miracle-play is known, if there ever was one; nevertheless, it is possible that the words lvud a lledrith, which are explained “illusion,” “phantasm,” may have really referred to some exhibition of the kind, though the explanation of those words given in the Iοlο MSS , upon the authority of a certain Ieuαn Vawr αp y Diwliths, who, according to Mr Edward Williams (Iοlο Mοrgαnwg), wrote his treatise on Welsh metres about the year 1180, looks very suspicious. Μ. de la Villemarqué also alludes to a rustic fête, known as le jeu de printemps et de la jeunesse, in which three characters, two young men and one maiden, acted, while the spectators formed the chorus, and repeated the dialogued chants of the principal actors while dancing. Although this fête seems to be a survival of pagan times, and to possess to some extent the elements of an incipient drama, yet in the absence of written monuments or ancient evidence, no argument as to the existence of a native drama among the Celts can be legitimately drawn from it.

Celtic literature, although it has no great masterpiece of its own to point to, has exercised a considerable amount of influence on the creations of modern European literature. This influence was exerted by several distinct currents of legends. The first is that of the legends of the Aes Side and those of Queen Mebd or Mab and the heroic period; of these the existing Irish legends, and the modified form of them in the Welsh Mαbinοgiοn, give us one type. In Britain this first current, modified and mixed with foreign and especially Teutonic elements, has gone on altering, growing, and decaying until the traces of its origin are almost unrecognizable. It is from this source that much of our fairy mythology is derived, and that Chaucer and Spenser obtained materials. To it also may be traced the legends which formed the groundwork of Shakespeare’s immediate sources for King Lear and Midsummer Night’s Dream. The legends of the second stream were in reality but modifications of those of the first—all secondary streams of legend must be necessarily but branches of the primitive stream. These legends were translated into Latin at an early period, and thus, while they spread far and wide, and passed into every language of Europe, we are better able to follow the current up to its first sources. These legends are the Irish Immrams or Wanderings and the Fisa or Visions which we described above. The idea of a land without winter, of never-ending day, in which the flowers of spring and summer should coexist with the fruits of autumn, and in which bodily ills and old age should be unknown, is common to all lands and to all times. The belief in perpetual youth and especially of abundance of fruit at all times was spread over all Western Europe, and found expression in the popular legends of Schlauer-affenlαnde, Pays de Cοcaigne, <fcc. The Irish idea of this kingdom of the dead, an idea common to all the branches of the Celtic race, and to the Teutonic races also, is given us in the descriptions of Tir Tairngire, The Land of Promise; Magh Mell, The Plain of Honey; and the Country of the Side. Thither went several of the heroes of romance — Cúchulaind, Find, Conn, and his son Ari.

In some legends the land of the Aes Side was reached through caves, as in Virgil’s Cave of the Sibyl; in others, and more usually, by water,—it being conceived in such cases as an island. In the legends of Conn and Art this island lay to the eastward, that being the direction in which all the expeditions of the Irish went, the direction in which lay the wealth of the Roman towns of Britain and the metals for bronze of Cornwall. In early Christian times asceticism carried many to the headlands and islands along the west and south-west coast, and the Land of Promise followed the setting sun. A comparison between the Irish pagan and Christian legends of Tir Taimgire, the terra repromissionis of the Latin mediaeval writers, and those of the Teutonic Glasberg, or heaven, shows very clearly the common origin of the two streams. The individual features of the Celtic and Teutonic notions of the kingdom of the dead are the same, though their combinations may differ according to age and other circumstances. The great sea cat and the island of cats in St Brendan’s voyage—the island being also met with in other lmnιrams — are connected with the sacred animal of Freyja or Holda; the island of black faced dwarfs of the Irish legends reminds us of the dwarfs dwelling in Glasberg. Like Holda s soul-kingdom, Tir Taimgire was an island hidden in a cloud-mantle, enjoying never-ending day and perpetual Lgless summer, full of fine mansions surrounded by grassy, flower-bedecked lawns, whose flowers never wither, abounding in apple trees, bearing at the same time flowers and fruit—a land rich in milk, ale, and pork, whose air was ever filled with sweet music, and whose inhabitants enjoying perpetual youth were of spotless innocence, free from blemish, disease, or death. Of all the qualities of Tir Tairngire abundance of apples, the only important fruit known to the northern nations, seems to have been the one which conveyed the highest notion of enjoyment. Hence the soul-kingdom was called by the Welsh the island of apples, Ynys yr Avallon, and sometimes Ynysvitrin or Ynysgutrin, Glass Island, a name which identifies it with the Teutonic Glasberg. When these names passed into other languages untranslated, so that their meaning became obscured or forgotten, the kingdom of the dead was localized at Glastonbury, the Anglo-Saxon Glaestinga buι∙h. There, according to legend, Arthur lies buried, but another popular tradition has it that he was carried away to the island of Avallon by his sister the fairy Morgana, the Morgue la Fαe of French romance. This Morgana is the Becuma, “the fair skinned” daughter of Morgan, in search of whom Art, “the lone man,” visits Tir Taimgire, as already mentioned. When Art reaches the Land of Promise, the lady he finds is Crede, “the ever beautiful.” In the romance of Ogier le Danois, when Ogier, who Morgue lα Fae determines shall be her lover, arrives at the palace of Avallcm, he finds there besides Morgana, her brother King Arthur, and her brother Auberon, the Oberon of fairy romance, and. Mallabron, a sprite of the sea. A curious legend in the vellum manuscript called the Book of Lismore connects Brendan with Crede. According to this legend a certain tribe king named Doburchu, whose wife’s name was Credx, was transformed through the curse of St Breιιxlan into an otter. Another link in the chain which connects all these legends with Celtic mythology is the introduction of Brendan into the curious legend of the irruption of Loch Neagh, beneath which lived in her sun-house Liban, probably the same as Becuma, and therefore as Morgana, whose lapdog was transformed into an otter when she herself became a salmon. In the Christian Immrαms or Wanderings the pagan soul-kingdom was simply changed into a place where souls were to await the final resurrection. It is probable, however, that a tradition of real wanderings among the rocky and inaccessible islands along the western coasts of Ireland and Scotland, and on the ocean itself, served as a nucleus around which gathered and fused together the pagan and Christian notions of the kingdom of the dead. The islands of birds, and the whale serving as an island (in the Latin St Brendan Iαsconius, i,e,, Irish iasc-inù, fish-island), support this view.

The Fisa, or prophetic Visions, are merely a different type from the Immrarns or Wanderings of the same fundamental legends; although perfectly pagan in their origin the better known ones belong to Christian times when the Celtic Soul-Kingdom, and the Christian story of the Day of Judgment, and the Elysium and Tartarus of the Romans, as depicted by Virgil in the sixth book of the Aeneid, which became known to the Irish as early at least as the 6th century, were fused together. The visions when translated into Latin passed into European languages. The original Irish of some of them is not now known; perhaps some of them were first written in Latin; their thoroughly Irish character, however, and the existence in Irish only of one of the most perfect of them, the Vision of Adamnán, lead to the opposite conclusion. The Wandering of St Brendan, the Purgatory of St Patrick, and the Vision of Tundale represent three distinct types of the second stream of legends. The first is the way of getting at the soul-kingdom by water, the second by a cave, and the third by a fis or vision, which in pagan times would have formed part of the Filidecht of the poet. These three legends, which are to be found in every European language in the Middle Ages, constitute three out of the five main sources of the plot of Dante’s great poem. The effect of St Brendan’s Voyage upon geographical discovery does not come within our scope, and we shall therefore only add that his island, which was simply the Celtic soul-kingdom, is to be found on maps of the 17th century, and was the subject of an article in a treaty between Spain and Portugal in the 18th.

The third current we have already touched upon. It was formed by the fusion of the legends of Art, son of Conn, the necromancy of the Aes Side, and the legendary history of the struggles of the Britons and Saxons in the North of England and the South of Scotland, which latter legends supplied heroes, a toponomy, and events. To this stream flowed afterwards, as we have pointed out, the Armorican tributary stream of the Round Table, and the Provençal stream of the St Graal. The effects of this stream of legend, which in its early course belongs to South Wales, on the literatures of Europe is too well known to require discussion here further than to point to its threefold action :— (1 ) much of the romantic literature of Europe may be traced back directly or indirectly to those legends; (2) they helped as the vehicle of that element we call chivalry, which the church infused into them, to fashion and mould the rude soldiers of feudal times into Christian knights; and (3) they expanded the imagination, and incited the minds of men to inquiry beyond the conventional notions of things, and thus materially assisted in creating modem society.

Bibliography. —In the following list we have included only the more important works bearing more or less directly upon the subjects treated of in the foregoing article. We have been consequently obliged to exclude many valuable works on the history of Celtic peoples, and especially the numerous and interesting books on Celtic antiquities. Although the Neo-Druidic heresy may be considered to be now fully exploded, we have, nevertheless, deemed it necessary to include a few of the principal works of the upholders of that singular delusion, because of the historic interest which they possess.

Celtic Languages, Ethnology, Ac., in general.— Zeuss, J. G.. Grammatica celtica, 2 vols., Lipsiae, 1853; second and greatly improved edition, Berlin, 1871, ed. by Prof. H. Ebel, embodying all the emendations of Celtic scholars to the time of its publication. Glück, C. W.: Die bei Caius Julius Caesar vorkommenden Keltischen Namen, München, 1857. Stark, Dr Franz: Keltische Forschungen, Keltische Personennamen nachgewiesen in den Ortsbenennungen des Codex Traditionum Ecclesiae Ravennatensis aus dem VII.-X. Jahrhundert, Wien, 1869. Flechia, Prof.: Di alcune forme de’ nomi locali dell’ Italia Superiore, Torino, 1871. Roget, Baron de Belloguet: Ethnogénie Gauloise, Paris, 1858-1861. Diefenbach, Lorenz: Origines Europas», Die Alten Völker Europas, Frankfurt, 1861; Dr Diefenbach was the first who systematicaUy included the Celtic languages in comparisons with the Germanic languages In his Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der Gennanischen Sprachen, 2 vols., Frankfurt, 1851. Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der Arischen, Ccltischen, und Slawischen Sprachen, herausgegeben von A. Kuhn und A. Schleicher, vols. 1-8. This periodical contains the most important contributions made to Celtic phUology since the publication of the first edition of Zeuss’s Grammatica Celtica, such as those of Ebel, Stokes, Schleicher, Cuno, Becker, Aufrecht, Lottner, Pictet, <tc. Prof. Ebel’s valuable contributions, “Celtische Studien,” have, with the exception of those on the verb, been translated into English (“Celtic Studies from the German of Dr Hermann Ebel,” <fcc,, by william K. Sullivan, London <fc Edin burgh, 1863). The Beiträge has been fused with the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung, hcrausgegeben von Dr Adalbert Kuhn. The volume for 1876 contains a remarkable article on the Perfect tense in Irish by Professor Ernest Windiβch, who has also done good service by contributing comparisons from the Celtic languages, especially Irish, to the 4th edition of Curtius’s Grundzüge der Griechischen Etymologie (Leipzig, 1873), and to Professor Fick’s work on Greek Proper Names. The Revue Celtique, commenced in 1870 by Prof. H. Gaidoz, is the only periodical in Europe exclusively devoted to the scientific study of Celtic, and contains papers by most of the scholars of Europe who devote themselves to the subject—Ad. Pictet, Dr Stokes, Mr J. Rhys, Μ. Μ. Perrot, d'Arbois de Jubainville, Le Men, Sauvé, Luzel, «fcc.

Celtic Epigraphy — Gaulish Inscriptions. — Professor J. Becker’s paper, “Die Inschriftlichen Ueberreste der Keltischen Sprache," published in the 3d and 4tħ volumes of the Beiträge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung (1863-1865), is an exhaustive summary of what was known about Gaulish Inscriptions up to that time; see also papers in the Beiträge (by Pictet and Stokes) and in the Revue Celtique. Ogam Inscriptions. — The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy contain the papers of Bishop Graces, Dr Samuel Ferguson, the late Mr R. R. Brash, who are those who have occupied themselves with the subject in Ireland. Dr Ferguson has also contributed a paper on the subject to the journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Society of Ireland. The Archaeologia Cam brensis may be consulted on the Welsh inscriptions, and in connection with thetr. we may specially mention the name of Mr J. Rhys.

Irish — Fac-Simües of MSS., published by the Royal Irish Academy.— Leabhar na h-Vvlhri; a collection of pieces of prose and verse in the Irish language, compiled and transcribed about 1100 a.d., Dublin, 1870. Leabhar Breac, the Speckled Book, otherwise styled Leabhar Mór, Dvna Doighre, the Great Book of Dún Doighre; a collection of pieces in Irish and Latin compiled from ancient sources about the close of the 14th century, Dublin, 1872-1876. Book of Leinster, a MS. of the first half of the 12th century, and the richest repository of poems and tales in the Irish language, now in the library of Trinity College, DubUn.

Language, «fcc.—o ’ Donovan's Grammar of the Iris!ι language; Dublin, 1845. O’Reilly’s Irish English Dictionary, with a supplement by Dr O’Donovan, Dublin, 1864. Stokes, Dr Whitley: Irish Glosses; a mediaeval tract on Latin declensions with examples explained in Irish, together with the Lorica of Gildas and the Middle Irish Gloss thereon, from the Leabhar Breac. Three Irish Glossaries:—Cormac’s, o’Davoren’s, and a Glossary to the Calendar of Oingus, London, 1862; Cormac’s Glossary, translated and annotated by o’Donovan, Calcutta, 1868. Goidelica, or notes on the Gaelic manuscripts preserved at Turin, Milan, Bern, Leyden, the Monastery of St Paul in Carinthia, and Cambridge, with eight hymns from the Liber Hymnorum, and the old Irish notes in the Book of Armagh, Calcutta, 1866; also a revised edition. Remarks on the Celtic additions to Curtius’s Greek Etymology, and on the Celtic comparisons in Bopp's Comparative Grammar, with notes on some recent Irish publications, Calcutta, 1875. Nigra, Cavat C.: Glossae Hibemicae veteres codicis Taurinensis, Lutetiae Parisiorum, 1869; and Reliquie Celtiche—I. Il Manoscritto Irlandf se di S. Gallo, Torino 1872 (this gives the marginal notes in Ogam from the fit Gall MS.) Prof. G. L Ascoli is bringing out the Irish Glosses at Milan.

Annals, &c. — o’Connor’s Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres, London, 1814-1825, 1826, 4 vols. Annals of the Four Masters, edited, with a translation and copious notes, by o’Donovan, 7 vols., Dublin, 1851. Chronicon Scotorum; a chronicle of Irish affairs from the earliest times to 1135 a.d., with a supplement containing the events from 1141 to 1150, edited, with a translation, by W. Μ. Hennessy, London, 1866. The Annals of Loch Cé: a chronicle of Irish affairs from 1014 a.d. to 1590 a,d., edited, with a translation, by Hennessy. The War of the Qaedhü with the Oaill, or, the Invasions of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen, edited, with a translation, by Dr Todd, Dublin, 1867.

Literature — o’Reilly, Edward: A chronological account of nearly four hundred Irish writers, commencing with the earliest account of Irish History, and carried down to the year of Our Lord 1750; with descriptive catalogue of their extant works, Dublin, 1820. O’Connor, Rev. Charles, D.D; Bibliotheca MS. Stowensis, a descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the Stowe Library, 2 vols., and an appendix to vol. i,, Buckingham, 1818, 1819. The Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, vol. L, Dublin, 1808, contain Deirdri, or the lamentable fate of the sons of Uïtnech, with a translation by O’Flanagan. O’Curry, Eugene: Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History, Dublin, 1861. On the manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, A Series of Lectures, edited by W. K. Sullivan, Ph,D., 3 vols., London, 1873. Brooke, Miss Charlotte: Reliques of Irish Poetry, consisting of Heroic Poems, Odes, Elegies, and Songs; translated into English verse, with notes, Dublin, 1789. Hardiman, James: Irish Minstrelsy or Bardic Remains of Ireland, with English poetical translations, 2 vols, London, 1831. Ossianic Society, Transactions of, 6 vols., Dublin, 1854-1861, containing nearly all the tales yet printed of the Ossianic Cycle. Celtic Society, Publications of :— Leabhar na g-Ceart, The Book of Rights, translated by O’Donovan, 1847; Cambrensis Eversus, 3 vols., 1848-52; Miscellany of the Celtic Society, 1849; Cath Mhuighe Léana— The Battle of Afagh Leana, together with the Tochmarc Moméra, or the Courtship of Moméra, translated by Eugene O’Curry, 1855. Irish Archaeological Society, Publications of:—Tracts relating to Ireland, vol L, containing The Circuit of Ireland, by Muircheartach MacNeill, a poem of the 10th century; Cath Muighi Rath, the Battle of Magh Rath, with translation by O’Donovan; Account of the Tribes and Customs of the District of Hy-Many, commonly called O’Kelly’s Country, with translation and notes by O’Donovan. Account of the Tribes and Customs of the District of By Fiächrach, with translation and notes by O’Donovan. The Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society (this contains an ancient poem attributed to St Columcillé, with a translation by Dr O’Donovan, Irish Charters, Ac.); The Irish version of the Historia Britonum of Nennius (or as it is called in Irish MSS. Leabar Brethnach, the British Book), edited, with a translation and notes, by Rev. Dr Todd, and an introduction and additional notes, by the Hon. Algernon Herbert. Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society (publications of the Amalgamated Societies) :—Liber Hymnorum, the Book of Hymns of the Ancient Church of Ireland. Parts 1 and 2, edited by Todd; Life of St Columba by Adamnan, ninth Abbot of Hy, edited by Reeves; Three Fragments of Ancient Irish Annals, edited, with translation and notes, by O’Donovan; The Topographical Poems of Sean O'Dubhagain and Gilla-na-Naomh o'Buidhrin, edited, with translation and notes, by Q’Donovan; Felire na Naomh n-Erennach, or Calendar of Native Saints of Ireland, usually styled the martyrology of Donegal, with a translation by Dr o’Donovan, and notes, Ac., by DrsTodd and Reeves. The Book of Fenagh in Irishand English, originally compiled by St Caillin, Archbishop, Abbot, and Founder of Fenagh, alias Dunbally of Moy Rein, tempore St Patricii; revised and annotated by W Μ. Hennessy, and translated by D. H. Kelly, Dublin, 1875. Crowe, o’Beime: The Amra Choluim Chilli of Dalian Forgaül, with translation, notes, Ac, Dublin, 1871. Stokes, Dr whitley: Fis Adamnain, Vision of Adamnán from the Lebor na h-Uidri, with an English translation and notes, Calcutta. The Atlantis, conducted by members of the Catholic University of Ireland, 4 vols., London. 1858-1863, contains four tales, with translations by Prof. O’Curry. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy—Irish MSS. series, vol. i., Part. 1. (the only part published), contains two tales, with translations by Mr O’Beime Crowe and Prof. O'Looney. The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, besides many valuable papers on antiquarian and historical subjects, especially concerning the Anglo-Norman period, contains various Irish pieces, with translations by Mr O’B. Crowe. St Patrick, Life of, by Μ. F. Cusack; with Appendix by W. Μ. Hennessy. Todd, Rev. J. H., D.D.: St Patrick Apostle of Ireland, A Memoir of his life and mission, Dublin, 1864. Reeves, Rev. Win., D.D.: The Culdees of the British Islands as they appear in History, with an Appendix of evidences, Dublin, 1864. Ferguson, Mrs Μ. C.: The Story of the Irish before the Conquest, from the Mythical Period to the Invasion under Strongbow, London, 1868.

Gaelic. —Dictionarium Scoto-Celticum, A Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, compiled and published under the direction of the Highland Society of Scotland, 2 vols., Edinburgh and London, 1828. A Gaelic Dictionary, in two parts, to which is prefixed a new Gaelic Grammar, by R. A. Armstrong, London, 1825. MacAlpine’s Pronouncing Gaelic-English English-Gaelic Dictionary, with rudiments of Gaelic Grammar, 4th ed., 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1863. The Book of Common Prayer, commonly called John Knox's Liturgy, translated into Gaelic, 1567, A.D., by Mr John. Carswell, Bishop of the Isles, edited, with an English translation, by Thomas M 1 Lauchlan, LL.D., Edinburgh. Skene, W. F.: Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, Edinburgh, 1867. The Book of the Dean of Lismore, a selection of ancient Gaelic Poetry from a manuscript collection made by Sir James M l Gregor, Dean of Lismore, in the beginning of the 16th century, edited, with a translation and notes, by the Rev. Thomas M l Lauchlan, and an introduction and additional notes by william F. Skene, Edinburgh, 1862. Campbell, J. F.: Popular Tales of the West Highlands orally collected, with a translation, 4 vols., Edinburgh, 1860-1862. Leabhar na Feinne, vol· i.—Gaelic text; Heroic Gaelic Ballads collected in Scotland from 1572 to 1871, copied from old MSS. and rare books, and orally collected since 1859, with lists of the collections and an account of the documents quoted, by Campbell of Islay; privately printed, 1872.

Manx. —Kelly, Rev. J.: A practical Grammar of the ancient Gaelic, or language of the Isle of Man, usually called Manks, edited, together with an introduction, Life of Dr Kelly, and notes, by Rev. W. Gill, 1870. Manx Dictionary, in two parts — Fodcleyr Manninagh as Baarlagh ; edited by Rev. W. Gill, 1866.

Welsh — Language, Ac.— Dosparth Edeyrn Davod Atιr, or the ancient Welsh Grammar, which was compiled by royal command in the 13th century by Edeyrn, the Golden-Tongued, to which is added y Pum Llyfr Kerddwriaeth, or the rule of Welsh poetry, Ac., with English translation and notes by the Rev. John Williams Ab Ithel, Llandovery, 1856, 8vo. Rowland, Rev. Thomas: A Grammar of the Welsh Language, 2d ed., London, 1857. A Dictionary of the Welsh Language, to which is prefixed a Welsh Grammar, by W. ûwen Pughe, 2 vols., 2d ed., Denbigh and London, 1832.

Hittory, Annals, Laws, Ac.—Gildas de Excidio Britanniae, London, 1838. The Historia Britonum commonly attributed to Nennius; from a manuscript lately discovered in the library of the Vatican Palace at Rome, edited in the 10th century by Mark the Hermit; with an English version, Ac., by the Rev. W. Gunn, London, 1819. Nennii Historia Britonum, London. 1838. A more correct text from the Vatican MS. appears in Appendix ad opera edita ab Angelo Maio. Romae, 1871. Historiae Britannicae, Saxonicae, Anglo-Danicae, Scriptores XV.: ex vétustés Codd. MSS. editi opera Thomae Gale, Οχοη, 1691. (The first article contains Gildas’s work.) Monumenta Historica Britannica, or Materials for the History of Britain from the earliest period to the end of the reign of King Henry VII.; vol. i. (as far as the Norman conquest), 1848, foL Wright, Thomas: Biographie Britannica Literaria—Anglo-Saxon Period; London, 1842 (Gildas, Nennius, St Columbanus). Gottfried’s von Monmouth Historia Regum Britanniae mit literarhistorischer Einleitung und ausführlichen Anmerkungen, und Brut Tys-ylio, Altwälsche chronik in deutscher Uebersetzung, herausgegeben von San-Marte (A. Schulz), Halle, 1854. Six old English Chronicles, edited, with illustrated notes, by J. A. Giles, London, 1848. Annales Cambriae, edited by the Rev. John Williams Ab Ithel, London, 1860 (Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland); this edition brings down the Annals to 1288, that in the Monumenta Historica only to 1066. Brut y Tywysogion, or The Chronicle of the Princes, edited by the Rev. John Williams Ab Ithel, London, 1860, (Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland); this edition comes down to 1288, that in the Monumenta Historica only comes down to 1066. Roberts, Rev. Peter, A.M.: The Chronicle of the Kings of Britain, translated from the Welsh copy, attributed to Tysilio, collated with other copies and illustrated with copious notes, to which are added original dissertations on the following subjects, viz., on the history and epistle attributed to Gildas, on the authority of the Brut, on the primary population of Britain, on the laws of Dyfnιcal Moelmyd, and on the Ancient British Church, London, 1811, 4to. Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, with an English translation of the Welsh text, by Aneurin Owen, 1 vol., fol, 1841: there is an 8vo ed. in 2 vols. Walter, Ferdinand: Das Alte Wales, Bonn, 1859.

Literature. — The Myvyrian Archaiology (sic) of Wales, collected out of ancient manuscripts; London, vols, t and ii., 1801; vol. iii. 1807, 8vo; new issue in one vol royal 8vo, Denbigh, 186L Skene, William F.: The Four Ancient Books of Wales, containing the Cymric poems attributed to the Bards of the 6th century, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1868. Villemarqné, Th. Hersart de la: Poèmes des Bardes Bretons du VI e . Siècle, Paris, 1850. Nash, D. W.: Taliesin, or the Bards and Druids of Britain, London, 1858. Y Gododin, a Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth, by Aneurin, a Welsh Bard of the 6th century, with an English translation, and numerous historical and critical annotations, by Rev. John Williams Ab Itħel, Llandovery, 1852. Llywarch Hên, Prince of the Cumbrian Britons; Heroic Elegies and other pieces in Welsh, with a literal translation by William Gwen, 8vo, 1792. Stephens, Thomas: The Literature of the Kymry, being a critical essay on the History of the Language and Literature of Wales, Ac., Llandovery, 1849. Iolo Manuscripts, a selection of ancient Welsh manuscripts in prose and verse from the collection made by the late Edward Williams, Iolo Morganwg, Llandovery, 1848. Williams, Edward (Lolo Morganwg)∙. Cyfrinach Beirdd ynys Fnydain, edited by his son Taliessin Williams, 8vo, 1829. Lewis Glyn Cothi, Poetical works of, in Welsh, edited, with notes, Ac., by the Revs. W. Davies and J. Jones, oxford, 1837. Jones, Rhys: Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru ; new Flodan godidow-grιcyddawen, Amwythig, 1773 (Poetry of the 15th century). Huw Morns: Eos Ceiriog, 2 vols. 12mo, Wrexham, 1823 (Poems of the Welsh Cavalier poet). Evans, Rev. Evan: Some specimens of the poetry of the ancient Welsh Bards translated into English, with notes, Ac., London, 1764. The Physicians of Myddvai, Meddygon Myddfai, or the medical practice of the celebrated Rhiwallon and his sons of Myddvai, Ac., translated by Pughe, and edited by Williams Ab Ithel, Llandovery, 1861. Williams, Rev. Robert, M.A.: Enwogion Cymru, a biographical dictionary of eminent Welshmen, Llandovery, 1862. Rees, Rev. W. J.: Lives of the Cambro-British Saints of the 5th and immediately succeeding centuries. Llandovery, 1853. Rees, Rev. Rice, M.A.: An Essay on the Welsh Saints, or the primitive Christians, usually considered to have been the founders of churches in Wales, London, 1836. The Cambro-Briton, 3 vola 8vo, London, 1820-1822. Transactions of the Cymmrodorion, or Metropolitan Cambrian Institution, London, 1822, 1828-1843. Archaeologia Cambrensis, a journal which worthily sustains the cause of Cymric literature and archaeology, commenced in 1846.

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