great. It is the case in all primitive societies. Individual,
initiative, personal enterprise are content to work within a very
small sphere. In agriculture, laws, customs, and modes of literary
composition, primitive and simple societies are very adverse to
change.

When we see how closely the Christian compilers followed the early
authorities, we can well believe that in the ethnic times no mind
would have been sufficiently daring or sacrilegious to alter or
pervert those epics which were in their eyes at the same time true
and sacred.

In the perusal of the Irish literature, we see that the strength of
this conservative instinct has been of the greatest service in the
preservation of the early monuments in their purity. So much is
this the case, that in many tales the most flagrant contradictions
appear, the author or scribe being unwilling to depart at all from
that which he found handed down. For instance, in the "Great Breach
of Murthemney," we find Laeg at one moment killed, and in the next
riding black Shanglan off the field. From this conservatism and
careful following of authority, and the _littera scripta_, or word
once spoken, I conclude that the distance in time between the prose
tale and the metrical originals was very great, and, unless under
such exceptional circumstances as the revolution caused by the
introduction of Christianity, could not have been brought about
within hundreds of years. Moreover, this same conservatism would
have caused the tales concerning heroes to grow very slowly once
they were actually formed. All the noteworthy events of the hero's
life and his characteristics must have formed the original of the
tales concerning him, which would have been composed during his