Page:West Irish folk-tales and romances - William Larminie.djvu/15

 Rh Let us now compare Ireland as a whole with the Scotch Highlands. The language of both is still, as for fifteen hundred years, practically the same. The inhabitants are of closely-allied race, in part identical, and for many centuries a constant communication was kept up between both countries. The folk-lore is partly alike, partly unlike. The similarity is occasionally very great. There are entire tales which are all but identical as told on both sides of the sea. There is identity of phrases and sentences. In Campbell's version of the "far-travelled tale," "The Battle of the Birds," occurs a striking phrase, in which the raven is said to have carried a man "over seven benns and seven glens and seven mountain moors." Nearly the same phrase occurs in Kennedy's version—"seven mountains (benns), seven glens and seven moors," which is the more surprising, as this story had passed, one does not know how long before, from its Gaelic into its English dress. Compare the phrase from "Morraha" in the present volume—"he sat down and gave a groan and the chair broke in pieces"—with Campbell's "The King of Assaroe"—"his heart was so heavy the chair broke under him." Many other examples could be given. We have before our eyes, so far as Irish and Scotch folk-lore are similar, an example of how two branches of a race originally so closely united as almost to form one, have for some