Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/439

 Reviews. 397

century, whereas the poems in the Macdonnell Ms. are all in the formal mediaeval metres, and thus approve themselves products of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries at latest.

I do not propose to discuss the poems edited and translated by Mr. MacNeill, as the present volume contains only about half of the Macdonnell collection, and discussion is best reserved until all the poems are accessible. I will only re-emphasise the distinction which, over twenty years ago, I drew in vol. 25 of the Folk-Lore Society's publications {Gaelic Folk-Tales) between the verse and prose presentments of the Ossianic stories. The difference is not alone one of tone and style, — the content and personnel of the stories, the choice of incidents, the importance of themes, and the characterisation of personages vary in a most marked degree. To some, but a far slighter, extent, the Arthurian cycle offers a parallel. The Arthurian matter found in the Middle-English poems which Miss Weston has grouped together under the title "The Gest of Sir Gawayne" differs markedly from that found in Malory.

I would also call the attention of lovers of fine literature to the remarkable quality of many of these poems, which can be fully appreciated in Mr. MacNeill's admirable version. I would especially signal out No. V, Qisin's lament ; No. XXXIII, Grainne's Sleep-song for Diarmaid; No. X, GoU's Parting with his Wife. Here is poetry, exalted in sentiment, poignant in expression.

In addition to his work as editor and translator, Mr. MacNeill has in his Introduction propounded a new, ingenious, and interesting theory concerning the origin and nature of the Ossianic literature, which deserves close attention from students of tradi- tional romance, as will, I trust, be apparent from the following outline and comment.

In texts which go back to the eleventh century at the latest, the deeds of Finn and his warrior clan are worked into a traditional account of Irish history in the third century a.d. which assumed substantially its extant form not later than the ninth century. The thread of the cycle is a feud between the kin of Finn and the Milesian High Kings of Tara ; Finn weds Grainne, daughter of Cormac of Tara, and Oscar and Cairbre, Cormac's