itself no proof of the Druidic origin of that form of the romance, nor
even of the existence of that element in the romance's earliest form:
upon such a principle the archaic character of the motif of the
"Oedipus Coloneus" would prove it to be the oldest of the Greek
tragedies, while as
a matter of fact it seems to be doubtful whether the introduction of
this motif into the story of Oedipus was not due to Sophocles himself,
although of course he drew the idea of it, if not from the original
legend of Oedipus, from some other early legend.

The most satisfactory test of the authorship of an Irish romance, and
one of the most satisfactory tests of its date, is its literary
character; and if we look at the literary character of the best of the
Irish romances, there is one point that is immediately apparent, the
blending of prose and verse. One, the most common, explanation of
this, is that the verse was added to the original tale, another that
the verse is the older part, the prose being added to make a framework
for the verse, but a general view of some of the original romances
appears to lead to a very different conclusion. It seems much more
probable that the Irish authors deliberately chose a method of making
their work at once literary and suited to please a popular audience;
they told their stories in plain prose, adding to them verse, possibly
chanted by the reciters of the stories, so that while the prose told
the story in simple language, the emotions of pity, martial ardour, and
the like were awakened by the verse. They did not use the epic form,
although their knowledge of classical literature must have made them
familiar with it; the Irish epic form is Romance. They had, besides
the prose and what may be called the "regular" verse, a third form,
that of rose, or as it is sometimes called rhetoric, which is a very
irregular form of verse. Sometimes it rhymes, but more often not; the