AR
CRAOIBH CONNARTHA NA GAEDHILGE
I NGLEANN FHAIDHLE BRONNAIM AN LEABHAR SEO:
BEANNACHT AGUS BUAIDH
LIBHSE GO DEO





Preface


The romantic tales here retold for the English reader belong neither
to the category of folk-lore nor of myth, although most of them
contain elements of both. They belong, like the tales of Cuchulain,
which have been similarly presented by Miss Hull,[1] to the bardic
literature of ancient Ireland, a literature written with an artistic
purpose by men who possessed in the highest degree the native culture
of their land and time. The aim with which these men wrote is also
that which has been adopted by their present interpreter. I have not
tried, in this volume, to offer to the scholar materials for the study
of Celtic myth or folk-lore. My aim, however I may have fulfilled it,
has been artistic, not scientific. I have tried, while carefully
preserving the main outline of each story, to treat it exactly as the
ancient bard treated his own material, or as Tennyson treated the
stories of the MORT D'ARTHUR, that is to say, to present it as a fresh
work of poetic imagination. In some cases, as in the story of the