history, and, at another, thought of everything but it. Unlike
those who write on other subjects, the author of a work on Irish
history has to labour simultaneously at a two-fold task--he has to
create the interest to which he intends to address himself.

The pre-Christian period of Irish history presents difficulties
from which the corresponding period in the histories of other
countries is free. The surrounding nations escape the difficulty by
having nothing to record. The Irish historian is immersed in
perplexity on account of the mass of material ready to his hand.
The English have lost utterly all record of those centuries before
which the Irish historian stands with dismay and hesitation, not
through deficiency of materials, but through their excess. Had
nought but the chronicles been preserved the task would have been
simple. We would then have had merely to determine approximately
the date of the introduction of letters, and allowing a margin on
account of the bardic system and the commission of family and
national history to the keeping of rhymed and alliterated verse,
fix upon some reasonable point, and set down in order, the old
successions of kings and the battles and other remarkable events.
But in Irish history there remains, demanding treatment, that other
immense mass of literature of an imaginative nature, illuminating
with anecdote and tale the events and personages mentioned simply
and without comment by the chronicler. It is this poetic literature
which constitutes the stumbling-block, as it constitutes also the
glory, of early Irish history, for it cannot be rejected and it
cannot be retained. It cannot be rejected, because it contains
historical matter which is consonant with and illuminates the dry
lists of the chronologist, and it cannot be retained, for popular
poetry is not history; and the task of distinguishing In such