Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/245

Rh The outcome of this and of the preceding studies of Professor Zimmer is that the Irish Saga literature preserved in the great 11th century MSS. assumed substantially the form under which it has come down to us in the 7th and 8th centuries, that this form is practically altogether pagan, and that it gradually become more and more contaminated by Christianity. This, if true, is a result of the highest importance. A pagan 7th century Irish saga of the variety and complexity of the 11th century texts presupposes a vigorous, complex, and fairly advanced national culture; it is furthermore evident that this must have existed before the introduction of Christianity. The paradoxical opinion has been advanced that Ireland owes its literary and social culture entirely to the Christian missionaries, but surely these had other work on hand than to invent an immense body of literature, pagan both in its general spirit and in its details, for no other purpose, as it would seem, than to afford their successors the opportunity of gradually modifying it in a Christian sense—a task never thoroughly carried out, but which engaged the energies of monkish scribes well on into the 13th century. Surely, too, however fertilising the effect of the new culture upon the pagan bards and medicine men, it could not have enabled them to create, ex nihilo, such a coherent and complex body of mythic and heroic traditions.

Professor Zimmer thus represents what may be styled the “Liberal-Conservative” view of Irish antiquity, which, whilst rejecting the “High-Tory” claim to the 3,000 years of authentic history found in the mediæval annalists, yet admits the archaic character of the earliest Irish