Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/412

 358 Obituary.

years formed one of the main features ; to Eriu, and to the Zeitschrift fur Celtische Philologie, or were brought out in Anecdota Oxoniensia, the publications of the Royal Irish Academy, and elsewhere. All we can here attempt is to indicate a few of the more important of these publications, under the various heads into which they may be grouped. In history, he edited the oldest Irish annals which can be assigned to a special date and author, viz. the eleventh-century Atinals of Tighernach, written partly in Irish and partly in Latin, of which several fragmentary copies remain. In hagiology, Three Middle-Irish Homilies, or the Lives of Ss. Patrick, Brigit, and Columba (187 1 ), and the Corpus of material relating to St. Patrick, which was published in the Rolls Series, and named, from the fullest of these lives of the saint. The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick (1887). Equally important from the point of view of early social history and folklore, was the publication of the collection of Irish saints' lives from the Book of Lismore. Con- nected with these are the martyrologies of CEngus the Culdee, and of Gorman, the former of which, in particular, sheds invalu- able light upon the ecclesiastical and social conditions of the ancient Celtic church. In romance, there is no cycle to which his prolific pen has not made valuable contributions. The Battle of Moytura belongs to the most ancient legendary cycle of the early gods; such tales as the Tragical Death of the sons of Usnech, the Destruction of the Hostal of Da Derga, and of the Hostal of Da Choga, the Siege of Howth, and the Death of Cuchulainn, illustrate the heroic period of Ireland; the Battles of Crinna, of Allen, and of Cam Conaill, the destruction of Dind Righ, and the tale of Boromha, the legendary-historic period. He had a special affection for those tales of oversea voyages which connect themselves with visions of the unseen world both in Irish Pagan and Christian literature, and which furnish us with some of the most radiant dreams of the ancient Celts : Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise and the Voyage of Maelduin illustrate the pagan ideal, and those of Snedgus and Mac Riagla, the Sons of O'Corra, of Columcille's Clerics, and pieces like the First and Second Visions of Adamnan, the Vision of Fursa, the Two Sorrows of Heaven's Kingdom, the Ever-new Tongue,