literal renderings of all the verse passages, but it was found that to
do so would make the volume of an unmanageable size for its purpose.
Literal renderings of all the verse passages in "Etain," the first of
the tales in volume i., are given in the notes to that story; the
literal renderings of Deirdre's lament in the "Sons of Usnach," and of
two poems in "The Combat at the Ford," are also given in full as
specimens, but in the case of most of the poems reference is made to
easily available literal translations either in English or German:
where the literal rendering adopted differs from that referred to, or
where the poem in question has not before been translated, the literal
rendering has been given in the notes. These examples will, it is
believed, give a fair indication of the relation between my verse
translations and the originals, the deviations from which have been
made as small as possible. The form of four-line verse divided into
stanzas has generally been used to render the passages in four-lined
verse in the Irish, the only exception to this rule being in the verses
at the end of the "Boar of Mac Datho": these are in the nature of a
ballad version of the whole story, and have been rendered in a ballad
metre that does not conform to the arrangement in verses of the
original.

The metre of all the Irish four-lined verses in this volume is, except
in two short pieces, a seven-syllabled line, the first two lines
usually rhyming with each other, and the last two similarly
rhyming,[FN#4] in a few cases in the "Boar of Mac Datho" these rhymes
are alternate, and in the extract from the Glenn Masain version of the
"Sons of Usnach" there is a more complicated rhyme system. It has not
been thought necessary to reproduce this metre in all cases, as to do
so would sound too monotonous in English; the metre is, however,
reproduced once at least in each tale except in that of the "Death of