Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/30

xxvi for the language in both versions is only measured prose:—

It may, however, be objected that the sea-runs are so common and so numerous, that one might easily usurp the place of another, and that this alone is no proof that the various story-tellers or professional bards, contented themselves with remembering the incidents of a story, but either extemporised their own runs after what flourish their nature would, or else had a stock of these, of their own composing, always ready at hand. Let us look, then, at another story of which Campbell has preserved the Highland version, while I have a good Irish MS. of the same, written by some northern scribe, in 1762. This story, "The Slender Grey Kerne," or "Slim Swarthy Champion," as Campbell translates it, is full of alliterative runs, which the Highland reciter has