HEROIC ROMANCES OF IRELAND


TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH PROSE AND VERSE, WITH PREFACE, SPECIAL
INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES

BY

A. H. LEAHY


IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I





PREFACE


At a time like the present, when in the opinion of many the great
literatures of Greece and Rome are ceasing to hold the influence that
they have so long exerted upon human thought, and when the study of the
greatest works of the ancient world is derided as "useless," it may be
too sanguine to hope that any attention can be paid to a literature
that is quite as useless as the Greek; which deals with a time, which,
if not actually as far removed from ours as are classical times, is yet
further removed in ideas; a literature which is known to few and has