form and in literary English of the old Irish legends, preserving the atmosphere of the original tales as much as possible, but clearing them from repetitions, redundant expressions, idioms interesting in Irish but repellent in English, and, above all, from absurdities, such as the sensational fancy of the later editors and bards added to the simplicities of the original tales.

Long before I spoke of this, it had been done by P.W. Joyce in his OLD CELTIC ROMANCES, and by Standish O'Grady for the whole story of Cuchulain, but in this case with so large an imitation of the Homeric manner that the Celtic spirit of the story was in danger of being lost. This was the fault I had to find with that inspiring book,^[3] but it was a fault which had its own attraction.

Since then, a number of writers have translated into literary English a host of the Irish tales, and have done this with a just reverence for their originals. Being, in nearly every case, Irish themselves, they have tried, with varying success, to make their readers realize the wild scenery of Ireland, her vital union with the sea and the great ocean to the West, those changing dramatic skies, that mystic weather, the wizard woods and streams which form the constant background of these stories; nor have they failed to allure their listeners to breathe the spiritual air of Ireland, to feel its pathetic, heroic, imaginative thrill.

They have largely succeeded in their effort. The Irish bardic tales have now become a part of English literature and belong not only to grown up persons interested in early poetry, in mythology and folk-customs, but to the children of Ireland and England. Our new imaginative stories are now told in nurseries, listened to at evening when the children assemble in the fire-light to hear tales from their parents, and eagerly read by boys at school. A fresh world of story-telling has been opened to the imagination of the young.

This could not have been done in the right way if it had not been for the previous work of Celtic scholars in Ireland, and particularly on the Continent, in France and Germany. Having mastered medieval Irish, they have translated with careful accuracy many of the ancient tales, omitting and changing nothing; they have edited them critically, collating and comparing them with one another, and with other forms of the same stories. We have now in English, French, and German the exact representation of the originals with exhaustive commentaries.

When this necessary work was finished—and it was absolutely necessary—it had two important results on all work of the kind Mr Rolleston has performed in this book—on the imaginative recasting and modernizing of the ancient tales. First, it made it lawful and easy for the modern artist—in sculpture, painting, poetry, or imaginative prose—to use the stories as he pleased in order to give pleasure to the modern world. It made it lawful because he could reply to those who objected that what he produced was not the real thing—"The real thing exists; you will find it, when you wish to see it, accurately and closely translated by critical and competent scholars. I refer you to the originals in the notes to this book. I have found the materials of my stories in these originals; and it is quite lawful for me, now that they have been reverently preserved, to use them as I please for the purpose of giving pleasure to the modern world—to make out of them fresh imaginative work, as the medieval writers did out of the original stories of Arthur and his men." This is the defence any re-caster of the ancient tales might make of the lawfulness of his work, and it is a just defence; having, above all, this use—that it leaves the imagination of the modern artist free, yet within recognized and ruling limits, to play in and around his subject.

One of those limits is the preservation, in any remodelling of the tales, of the Celtic atmosphere. To tell the Irish stories in the manner of Homer or Apuleius, in the manner of the Norse sagas, or in the manner of Malory, would be to lose their very nature, their soul, their nationality. We should no longer understand the men and women who fought and loved in Ireland, and whose characters were moulded by Irish surroundings, customs, thoughts, and passions. We should not see or feel the landscape of Ireland or its skies, the streams, the woods, the animals and birds, the mountain solitudes, as we feel and see them in the original tales. We should not hear, as we hear in their first form, the stormy seas between Scotland and Antrim, or the great waves which roar on the western isles, and beat on cliffs which still belong to another world than ours. The genius of Ireland would desert our work.

And it would be a vast pity to lose the Irish atmosphere in the telling of the Irish tales, because it is unique; not only distinct from that of the stories of other races, but from that of the other branches of the Celtic race. It differs from the atmosphere of the stories of Wales, of Brittany, of the Highlands and islands of Scotland. It is more purely Celtic, less mixed than any of them. A hundred touches in feeling, in ways of thought, in sensitiveness to beauty, in war and voyaging, and in ideals of life, separate it from that of the other Celtic races.

It is owing to the careful, accurate, and critical work of continental and Irish scholars on the manuscript materials of Irish Law, History, Bardic Tales, and Poetry; on customs, dress, furniture, architecture, ornament, on hunting and sailing; on the manners of men and women in war and peace, that the modern re-teller of the Irish tales is enabled to conserve the Irish atmosphere. And this conservation of the special Irish atmosphere is the second result which the work of the critical scholars has established. If the re-writer of the tales does not use the immense materials made ready to his hand for illustration, expansion, ornament and description in such a way that Ireland, and only Ireland, lives in his work from line to line, he is greatly to be blamed.

Mr Rolleston has fulfilled these conditions with the skill and the feeling of an artist. He has clung closely to his originals with an affectionate regard for their ancientry, their ardour and their distinction, and yet has, within this limit, used and modified them with a pleasant freedom. His love of Ireland has instilled into his representation of these tales a passion akin to that which gave them birth. We feel, as we read, how deep his sympathy has been with their intensity, their love of wild nature, their desire for beauty, their interest in humanity and in character, their savagery and their tenderness, their fairy magic and strange imaginations that suddenly surprise and charm. Whenever anything lovely emerges in the tale, he does not draw attention to it, but touches it with so artistic a pencil that its loveliness is enhanced. And he has put into English verse the Irish poems scattered through the tales with the skill and the temper of a poet. I hope his book will win what it deserves—the glad appreciation of old and young in England, and the gratitude of Ireland.

The stories told in this book belong to three distinct cycles of Irish story-telling. The first are mythological, and are concerned with the early races that are fabled to have dwelt and fought in Ireland Among these the Tuatha De Danaan were the final conquerors, and held the land for two hundred years They were, it is supposed, of the Celtic stock, but they were not the ancestors of the present Irish. These were the Milesians (Irish, Scots or Gaelic who, conquering the Tuatha De Danaan, ruled Ireland till they were overcome by the English.) The stories which have to do with the Tuatha De Danaan are mythical and of a great antiquity concerning men and women, the wisest and the best of whom became gods, and who appear as divine beings