poetry, as distinguised from metrical composition, these ancient
bards knew little. The bardic literature, profoundly poetic though
it be, in the eyes of our ancestors was history, and never was
anything else. As history it was originally composed, and as
history bound in the chains of metre, that it might not be lost or
dissipated passing through the minds of men, and as history it was
translated into prose and committed to parchment. Accordingly, no
tale is without its defects as poetry, possessing therefore
necessarily, a corresponding value as history. But that there was
in the country, in very early times, a high and rare poetic culture
of the lyric kind, native in its character, ethnic in origin,
unaffected by scholastic culture which, as we know, took a
different direction; that one exquisite poem, in which the father
of Ossian praises the beauty of the springtime in anapaestic
[Note: Cettemain | cain ree! | ro sair | an cuct |
"He, Fionn MacCool, learned the three compositions which distinguish
the poets, the TEINM LAEGHA, the IMUS OF OSNA, and the DICEDUE
DICCENAIB, and it was then Fionn composed this poem to prove
his poetry." In which of these three forms of metre the Ode to
the spring-time is written I know not. Its form throughout is
distinctly anapaestic.--S. O'G.] verse, would, even though it
stood alone, both by the fact of its composition and the fact
of its preservation, fully prove.

Much and careful study, indeed, it requires, if we would compel
these ancient epics to yield up their greatness or their beauty, or
even their logical coherence and imaginative unity--broken,
scattered portions as they all are of that one enormous epic, the
bardic history of Ireland. At the best we read without the key. The
magic of the names is gone, or can only be partially recovered by