Quiggin; and in the case of the two versions of "Etain," more
especially for the part taken direct from the facsimile, I have to
express gratitude for the kind and ready help given to me by Professor
Strachan. Professor Strachan has not only revised my transcript from
the facsimile, and supplied me with translations of the many difficult
passages in this of which I could make no sense, but has revised all
the translation which was made by the help of Windisch's glossary to
the Irische Texte of both the versions of "Etain," so that the
translations given of these two romances should be especially reliable,
although of course I may have made some errors which have escaped
Professor Strachan's notice. The three other romances which have been
translated from the Irish in Irische Texte have not been similarly
revised, but all passages about which there appeared to be doubt have
been referred to in the notes to the individual romances.

It remains to add some remarks upon the general character of the tales,
which, as may be seen after a very cursory examination, are very
different both in tone and merit, as might indeed be expected if we
remember that we are probably dealing with the works of men who were
separated from each other by a gap of hundreds of years. Those who
have read the actual works of the ancient writers of the Irish romances
will not readily indulge in the generalisations about them used by
those to whom the romances are only known by abstracts or a
compilation. Perhaps the least meritorious of those in this collection
are the "Tains" of Dartaid, Regamon, and Flidais, but the tones of
these three stories are very different. Dartaid is a tale of fairy
vengeance for a breach of faith; Flidais is a direct and simple story
of a raid like a Border raid, reminding us of the "riding ballads" of
the Scottish Border, and does not seem to trouble itself much about
questions of right or wrong; Regamon is a merry tale of a foray by boys