Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/450

408 element, and the discrimination of the native material from the foreign admixture with which it has undoubtedly become assimilated.

Mr. Plummer's introduction is so detailed and complete that it offers few points for comment. There is an accidental slip on p. clxvii. of " Genesis " for " Exodus," and on p. clxxxi. it may be remarked that the connection between fairies and angels has always retained its hold on the Irish mind, the fairies being popularly supposed to be the angels who fell with Lucifer. The Editor seems to lean to the popular theory that as a rule the chief came over first to Christianity, bringing his tribe or clan along with him. We have never seen sufficient reason for accepting the view that in Ireland the people accepted Christianity in masses,—we do not hear of the baptism of whole tribes together. In many cases, such as that of King Laery or King Murtough macErca, the prince was the most determined opponent to the new doctrine; in others, such as that of King Aedh, who gave a site for a church to St. Columcille within his royal fort of Derry, the church seems to have been admitted as a friendly experiment. In the larger number of cases the desire for learning seems to have been the lure which attracted the young chiefs, as it attracted the people, to the monastic schools, and there they imbibed Christian instruction. We hear of thirty sons of kings and princes studying at one time at the school of St. Brendan (Life of Moiling, Whitley Stokes, p. lo), and in numerous instances it was the repose and learning of the monastic life or of a hermitage which attracted the close kin of chiefs. Many of the "Saints" were of royal birth, but, though this no doubt facilitated the spread of the new doctrine among their septs, we have never been able to see proof that there were forcible or even voluntary conversions of whole tribes at once in Ireland such as occurred in Normandy under Charlemagne or in Norway under St. Olaf