Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/353

 Reviews. 335

dwelling place of the Sidhe." The original Irish merely states that Dechtire and her companions, transformed into birds, flew away " beyond Sliab Fuad." Miss Hull inserted in her translation the following gloss of her own, which she bracketed : " i.e., towards the fairy dwelling of Brugh on the Boyne;" and this gloss seems to be the origin of Lady Gregory's statement. It is a possible nay, a legitimate, deduction from the Irish text, but it is not found in that text. My most serious criticism on this score bears upon the final passage of the book. " But the three times fifty queens that loved Cuchulainn saw him appear in his Druid chariot going towards Emain Macha ; and they could hear him singing the music of the Sidhe." In the original the words I have italicised run : " and they heard him sing tidings of Doomsday and the coming of Christ." Lady Gregory may here quote from some unpublished MS., but if so, it was of the greatest importance to give her autho- rity. Failing such authority, the version she gives can only be a guess, and should have been put forward as such.

I am conscious of the unfairness of judging a book by a standard which the author never had in view. I can only plead the immense importance of early Irish literature — the oldest and most archaic vernacular literature of modern Europe — -for our studies, and the consequent necessity for students to become acquainted with its contents in as accurate and faithful a manner as possible. If Celtic myth and saga were as familiar as Teutonic there would have been no need to deal with Lady Gregory's book in the pages of Folk-Lore. Alfred Nutt.

Donegal Fairy Stories : collected and told by Seumas Mac Manus. Isbister & Co.

Regarded as a fairy-tale book, this is simply delightful. There is something quaint and fresh about the manner of telling, the tales are unhackneyed, and there is an all-pervading humour of the real Irish type ; while the pictures are quite as delightful in their way as the stories. What their value for the student may be it is impossible to say, because the compiler gives no authori- ties ; he does not tell us either where he heard the tales, or how faithful he has been in recording them.