Introduction


Many years have passed by since, delivering the Inaugural Lecture of
the Irish Literary Society in London, I advocated as one of its chief
aims the recasting into modern form and in literary English of the old
Irish legends, preserving the atmosphere of the original tales as much
as possible, but clearing them from repetitions, redundant
expressions, idioms interesting in Irish but repellent in English,
and, above all, from absurdities, such as the sensational fancy of the
later editors and bards added to the simplicities of the original
tales.

Long before I spoke of this, it had been done by P.W. Joyce in his OLD
CELTIC ROMANCES, and by Standish O'Grady for the whole story of
Cuchulain, but in this case with so large an imitation of the Homeric
manner that the Celtic spirit of the story was in danger of being
lost. This was the fault I had to find with that inspiring book,[3]
but it was a fault which had its own attraction.

[3] I gave this book--_The History of Ireland_ (HEROIC
PERIOD)--to Burne-Jones in order to interest him in Irish myth
and legend. "I'll try and read it," he said. A week afterwards
he came and said--"It is a new world of thought and pleasure
you have opened to me. I knew nothing of this, and life is
quite enlarged. But now, I want to see all the originals. Where
can I get them?"

I have only spoken of prose writing above. But in poetry (and in
Poetry well fitted to the tales), this work had already been done