Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/352

 334 Reviews.

the cycle ; tales of diverse date, origin, and nature, being thrown into an harmonious chronological sequence, which distorts when it does not disguise their real character. I must further express my regret, and also my surprise, at Lady Gregory's occasional choice of version and incident. The older version, for instance, of Deirdre's fate in the Children of Usnach is incomparably grander, sterner, more fraught with tragic passion, than that which she has selected.

It is, however, specially in connection with two characteristics of Lady Gregory's work that the would-be student must be warned against accepting her presentment of the Ulster tales as adequate or exact. In the first place she has (legitimately perhaps, from her point of view), omitted or softened what may be called the barbaric traits of her original, such, for instance, as Deirdre's drinking the blood of her dead lover. Many of these omissions and changes are made in deference to modern delicacy (as is also the case in Miss Hull's book). Personally, I feel that greater occasion is given to the enemy to blaspheme by the suppression than by the frank recognition of the fact that the Irish heroic romances are the outcome of very archaic social conditions. In any case the student loses such valuable detail as the final incident of the Wooing of Emer, proving as it does the existence of the droit du Seigneur amongst the early Irish. In some cases the editor's reticence tells against her hero from our point of view : thus Cuchulainn rejects Emer's suggestion that he should court her sister rather than herself, upon the specific ground that he holds none but a virgin worthy of his attention. Lady Gregory omits this. In the second place, the changes which she makes affect our estimate of the mythical element in these stories. In some cases there is room for difference of opinion. Thus there are two versions of Cuchulainn's birth ; in one, it is due to his mother's swallowing an insect in water, the insect, as is implied, being the god Lugh transformed ; in the other, she is carried off by a supernatural being, and when she is found again by her kinsfolk the birth takes place. Lady Gregory has thrown these two accounts into one, the swallowing incident preceding the abduction. The original versions are so fragmentary and obscure that one cannot say that this interpretation is an im- possible one, but it does not strike me as probable. Again, Lady Gregory places the hero's birthplace at " Brugh na Boinne, the