he has been printed and translated, I found him, to my surprise,
conspicuously lacking in humour. For the comic relief of this volume
I have therefore had to turn mainly to the Irish peasant of the
Pale; and what richer source could I draw from?

For the more romantic tales I have depended on the Gaelic, and, as I
know about as much of Gaelic as an Irish Nationalist M. P., I have
had to depend on translators. But I have felt myself more at liberty
than the translators themselves, who have generally been over-
literal, in changing, excising, or modifying the original. I have
even gone further. In order that the tales should be characteristically
Celtic, I have paid more particular attention to tales that are to be
found on both sides of the North Channel.

In re-telling them I have had no scruple in interpolating now and
then a Scotch incident into an Irish variant of the same story, or
_vice versa_. Where the translators appealed to English folklorists
and scholars, I am trying to attract English children. They translated; I
endeavoured to transfer. In short, I have tried to put myself into the
position of an _ollamh_ or _sheenachie_ familiar with both forms
of Gaelic, and anxious to put his stories in the best way to attract
English children. I trust I shall be forgiven by Celtic scholars for the
changes I have had to make to effect this end.

The stories collected in this volume are longer and more detailed
than the English ones I brought together last Christmas. The
romantic ones are certainly more romantic, and the comic ones
perhaps more comic, though there may be room for a difference of
opinion on this latter point. This superiority of the Celtic folk-
tales is due as much to the conditions under which they have been