been suggested by them; whilst the variety of the rhythm and the
elaborate laws of the earliest French poetry, which, both in its
Northern and Southern form, dates from the first half of the twelfth
century, almost imply a pre-existing model; and such a model is more
easily traced in Irish than in any other vernacular literature that was
then available. It is indeed nearly as hard to suppose that the
beautiful literature of Ireland had absolutely no influence upon
nations known to be in contact with it, as it would be to hold to the
belief that the ancient Cretan civilisation had no effect upon the liter
ary development that culminated in the poems of Homer.

Before speaking of what the Irish literature was, it may be well to say
what it was not. The incidents related in it date back, according to
the "antiquaries" of the ninth to the twelfth centuries, some to the
Christian era, some to a period long anterior to it; but occasional
allusions to events that were unknown in Ireland before the
introduction of Christianity, and a few to classical personages, show
that the form of the present romances can hardly be pre-Christian, or
even close translations into Old or Middle Irish of Druidic tales. It
has therefore been the fashion to speak of the romances as inaccurate
survivals of pre-Christian works, which have been added to by
successive generations of "bards," a mode of viewing our versions of
the romances which of course puts them out of the category of original
literature and hands them over to the antiquarians; but before they
suffer this fate, it is reasonable to ask that their own literary merit
should be considered in a more serious manner than has yet been
attempted.

The idea that our versions of the romances are inaccurate reproductions
of Druidic tales is not at all borne out by a study of the romances