the Sons of Usnach." The eight-lined metre that occurs in five of the
verse passages in the "Combat at the Ford" has in one case been
reproduced exactly, and in another case nearly exactly, but with one
syllable added to each line; the two passages in this romance that are
in five-syllabled lines have been reproduced exactly in the Irish
metre, in one case with the rhyme-system of the original. With the
rhetoric greater liberty has been used; sometimes the original metre
has been followed, but more often not; and an occasional attempt has
been made to bring out the strophic correspondence in the Irish.


[FN#4] An example of this metre is as follows:--

All the elves of Troom seem dead,
All their mighty deeds are fled;
For their Hound, who hounds surpassed,
Elves have bound in slumber fast.


In the first volume of the collection the presentation has then been
made as near as may be to the form and matter of the Irish; in the
second volume, called "Versified Romances," there is a considerable
divergence from the Irish form but not from its sense. This part
includes the five "Tains" or Cattle-Forays of Fraech, Dartaid, Regamon,
Flidais, and Regamna; which in the originals differ from the five tales
in volume i, in that they include no verse, except for a few lines in
Regamna, most of which are untranslatable. The last four of these are
short pieces written in a prose extremely rapid in its action, and
crowded with incident. They are all expressly named as "fore-tales,"
remscela, or preludes to the story of the great war of Cualnge, which