Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/408

400 to be the oldest, invariably picture the warrior as fighting from his war-chariot in the very guise set forth in the pages of Cæsar. We do not know exactly when this custom ceased in Ireland, but it is safe to say hundreds of years before the tenth century. Now this, says M. Pflugk-Hartung, is a matter of no importance. Who does not see that the very contrary is the truth? That even if we knew—which we do not—the exact date of the introduction of iron into Ireland, its mention in a story only gives a clue to the date of the redaction, not of the story itself? that the change from the obsolete metal to the one in use when the scribe wrote is a most natural one, whereas the retention of an entirely obsolete mode of fighting is inexplicable, unless we admit the substantially archaic character of the text in which it is found?

Curiously enough, M. Pflugk-Hartung separates himself from Prof Zimmer on the question of the late date of the Finn cycle. It is easy to see why. Whatever opinion may be held concerning the origin of this cycle, it is certain that the great bulk of the stories composing it belong to a much later stage of composition than do those of the Ultonian cycle. Many, it is quite possible, were first reduced to writing in the tenth and eleventh centuries; many, again, are even later. Now the difference in the presentment of material life is most marked, and M. Pflugk-Hartung may well have felt embarrassed at finding tales probably composed at the very time to which he ascribes the Ultonian cycle, and which yet picture a material life so different and in many respects more advanced. The extraordinary conclusion at which he arrives is, that the Ultonian or Cuchulainn cycle, as we have it, is posterior to that of Finn.

I may here note the interesting Ossianic tales published by M. L. C. Stern in the January number of the Revue Celtique. One of these is important as being a prose amplification of an episode told in verse in the Book of Leinster, the others as being hitherto quite unknown.