modern world.


[FN#1] The only possible exceptions to this, assuming the latest
possible date for the Irish work, and the earliest date for others, are
the kindred Welsh literature and that of the Anglo-Saxon invaders of
Britain.


The exact extent of the direct influence of Irish literature upon the
development of other nations is hard to trace, chiefly because the
influence of Ireland upon the Continent was at its height at the time
when none of the languages of modern Europe except Welsh and
Anglo-Saxon had reached a stage at which they might be used for
literary purposes, and a Continental literature on which the Irish one
might have influence simply did not exist. Its subsequent influence,
in the tenth and eleventh centuries, upon Welsh, and through Welsh upon
the early Breton literature (now lost) appears to be established; it is
usually supposed that its action upon the earliest French compositions
was only through the medium of these languages, but it is at least
possible that its influence in this case also was more direct. In
Merovingian and early Carlovingian times, when French songs were
composed, which are now lost but must have preceded the extant chansons
de geste, the Irish schools were attracting scholars from the
neighbouring countries of Europe; Ireland was sending out a steady
stream of "learned men" to France, Germany, and Italy; and it is at
least possible that some who knew the Irish teachers realized the merit
of the literary works with which some of these teachers must have been
familiar. The form of the twelfth-century French romance, "Aucassin
and Nicolete," is that of the chief Irish romances, and may well have