Old Celtic Romances

[I.] In the Book of Leinster, a manuscript now in Trinity College, Dublin, which was transcribed about the year 1130, there is a very interesting list of ancient historic tales--187 in all--classified in the manner indicated above, which an ollave was obliged to master, so as to be able to repeat any one of them from memory, whenever his patron required him to do so. (See O'Curry, "Lectures on the MS. Materials of Irish History," pages 243 and 584.)

[II.] Macpherson never sinned in this way. He caught the true keynote; and his "Poems of Ossian," however perverted in other respects, are always dignified in thought and expression. Among other examples of the true interpretation of the spirit of these old romances, prose and poetry, I may mention Miss Brooke's "Reliques of Irish Poetry," published in the end of the last century; the Rev. Dr. Drummond's "Ancient Irish Minstrelsy," published in 1852; Lady Ferguson's graceful and interesting book, "The Story of the Irish before the Conquest" (1868); and Mr. Standish O'Grady's ably written volume, the "History of Ireland" (Vol. I., The Heroic Period 1878).

[III.] With one partial exception. In "The Book of the Dun Cow," "The Voyage of Maildun" is divided into parts or chapters, which are numbered on the margin in Roman numerals, each chapter relating to one particular island; but no spaces are left, and the chapters have no headings. In this tale I have followed the old sub-division.

[IV.] "Deirdrè," by Robert D. Joyce, M.D., M.R.I.A. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son.

[V.] O'Curry, Atlantis, Nos. vii. and viii., page 390.

[VI.] See the ballad and air of "The Fairy King's Courtship," in the author's "Ancient Irish Music," page 1.

CONTENTS.

THE FATE OF THE CHILDREN OF LIR; OR, THE FOUR WHITE SWANS.