Again, with the advent of Christianity, and the hold which the new
faith took upon the finest and boldest minds in the country, it is
plain that the golden age of bardic composition ended. The loss to
the bards was direct, by the withdrawal of so much intellect from
their ranks, and indirect, by the general substitution of other
ideas for those whose ministers they themselves were. It is,
therefore, probable that the age of production and creation, with
regard to the ethnic history, ceased about the fifth and sixth
centuries, and that, about that time, men began to gather up into a
collected form the floating literature connected with the pagan
period. The general current of mediaeval opinion attributes the
collection of tales and ballads now known as the Tan-Bo-Cooalney to
St. Ciaran, the great founder of the monastery of Clonmacnoise.

But if this be the case, we are enabled to take another step in the
history of this most valuable literature. The tales of the Leabhar
na Huidhre are in prose, but prose whose source and original is
poetry. The author, from time to time, as if quoting an authority,
breaks out with verse; and I think there is no Irish tale in
existence without these rudimentary traces of a prior metrical
cycle. The style and language are quite different, and indicate two
distinct epochs. The prose tale is founded upon a metrical
original, and composed in the meretricious style then in fashion,
while the old metrical excerpts are pure and simple. This is
sufficient, in a country like Ireland in those primitive times, to
necessitate a considerable step into the past, if we desire to get
at the originals upon which the prose tales were founded.

For in ancient Ireland the conservatism of the people was very