Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/37

Rh by the Turks at the time the romance was invented to make the inventor suppose that it had always belonged to them, even in the time of Niall of the Nine Hostages. We know that romances of this kind continued to be invented at a much later date, but I fancy none of these ever penetrated to Scotland. One of the most popular of romantic tales with the scribes of the last century and the first half of this, was "The Adventures of Torolbh MacStairn," and again, the "Adventures of Torolbh MacStairn's Three Sons," which most of the MSS. ascribe to Michael Coiminn, who lived at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and whose romance was certainly not propagated by professional story-tellers, as I have tried to prove was the case with the earlier romances, but by means of numerous manuscript copies; and it is also certain that Coiminn did not relate this tale as the old bards did, but