Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/442

 400 Reviews.

not do away with the psychological exigency of all sagas, namely, that the opponent- of the hero must be more or less of a villain. It was no discredit in the eyes of the southern bards that Cormac, the great wise king of northern legend, did not enjoy in the Ossianic tales that beau role which was his prerogative elsewhere. Rather were those bards minded to brighten the character of the warrior and to darken the character of the king.

Such, briefly sketched, is Mr. MacNeill's theory. It coincides with the views I expressed twenty years ago, in Gaelic Folk-Tales, in so far as it emphasises the part played in the final development of the cycle by the transference of the high-kingship from the northern kin of the Ui Neill to the southern kin of Brian of the Dalg Cais. It was, to some extant, anticipated by the late W. Larminie, who held the Fenian tales to be the product of people older than and alien to the Milesian Gael. But in its elaboration, in its founding upon historical, genealogical, and literary con- siderations, it is as original as it is remarkable. One of the literary considerations adduced by Mr. MacNeill is of special folklore interest. As we have seen, his theory postulates the doctoring of the Fenian legend to make it accord with Milesian pseudo-history. Now there exists a romantic tale, The Boyish Exploits of Finn, only preserved in a fifteenth century Ms., the content of which is partly the same as that of a pseudo-historical tract found in the eleventh-century Book of the Dun Cow. Twenty-nine years ago I compared these two texts in these pages {Folk- Lore Record, vol. iv.), and showed that the Boyish Exploits was essentially more archaic than the eleventh-century tract. Mr. MacNeill now claims the Boyish Exploits as the one surviving remnant of the Fenian saga before its contamination by the pseudo-history of the second-third centuries, — a claim which would throw it back to the eighth century at least. He maintains that it knows nothing of an established Milesian order, and that it is wholly concerned with feuds between rival divisions of the subject races. If he is correct, then my former contention is justified, and the Boyish Exploits is the oldest full presentment in the Celtic speech-area of the Expulsion and Return Formula, and, as such, a mythico-heroic document of the first importance.