Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/147

 Rh gave the babe for that purpose relents, and confides her to a hermit, by whom she is brought up. She becomes the fairest maid in Ireland, and her father, hearing of her beauty, and not knowing who she is, loves her, and takes her to himself He refuses to put her away at the bidding of the saints of Ireland, is cursed by them, and dies a shameful death (p. 535).

The MS. in which this story is found is of the fifteenth century only; but the story forms a portion of annals which stop at the end of the tenth century. Parts of these same annals are found in eleventh century MSS., and the language of our story is, as Professor Meyer tells me, twelfth century in character. We shall not, then, do wrong in assigning the Raghallach story, as we have it, to the twelfth or preceding century, i.e., it is at least of equal age with the oldest English or continental tales in which the unnatural marriage-incident occurs. But we can, I believe, look upon it as much older, substantially as old as the date of the personages it deals with, i.e., as the seventh century. For the old war-chariot (which fell out of use during the period of the Viking invasions of Ireland, during, that is, the ninth and tenth centuries) is still the ordinary vehicle. We learn this from a delightful touch of the Irish story-teller, who, when he wishes to express the extent of Raghallach's passion, "his love towards her was such", says he, "that when her chariot went before, she must needs turn her face backwards upon him; whereas he, if his chariot led, would set his face to her. It is even thought that in Ireland none ever had done the like."

An interesting point in connection with this story is the air of probability it wears. Grant the premiss—the exposed child (a commonplace of early Irish story-telling )—and the sequence of incidents is a possible one, involving no such shock to our moral sense as do the other versions.