interest in Celtic literature among outsiders is exemplified in some of the work of the English poet Gray, who died in 1771. His poem of "The Bard," reflected, if it did not initiate, the notions long afterwards fashionable of the character of the Celtic bards and of the spirit of their poetry. Gray had the reputation in his time of being an antiquarian. He made an English version of the vision-poem on the battle of Clontarf from the Icelandic saga of Burnt Njal, and from this same poem part of the inspiration of his "Bard" is acknowledged by him to have been derived. Gray also wrote English versions of some Welsh poems, and the novelty of poetic expression which he borrowed here seems to have baffled for once the critical experience of Johnson, who contents himself with saying that "the language is unlike the language of other poets." "The Bard" was published in 1755, and, if I am not mistaken, its weird rhapsodical spirit contained the germ of the Celtic literary revival, for Gray's "Bard" may be regarded as the literary parent of Macpherson's "Ossian." In 1760, five years after the publication of "The Bard," appeared the first collection of Macpherson's pretended translations, entitled "Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland." The consequences of this publication are fitly described by Dr. Magnus MacLean: "The arrival of James Macpherson marks a great moment in the history of Celtic literature. It was the signal for a general resurrection. It would seem as if he sounded the trumpet, and the graves of ancient manuscripts were opened, the books were read, and the dead were judged out of the things that were written in them." In 1764 was published Evans's "Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards"—which supplied Gray with fresh material. In 1784 appeared "Musical and Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards," and from that time onward the stream of translations from Welsh to English was fairly continuous. Notwithstanding the controversy that soon arose about the authenticity of Macpherson's compositions, their direct influence and vogue went on increasing for half a century. Among those who shared in the Macpherson craze were Goethe and Napoleon Bonaparte. In France, de Villemarqué published his "Chants populaires de la Bretagne," a collection of poems from the Breton. In Scotland, Macpherson had several imitators. In Wales, the new movement took shape in the revival of the National Eisteddfod in 1819. In Ireland, the first fruits of Macpherson's genius are found in Walker's "Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards," published in 1786, and in Charlotte Brooke's "Reliques of Irish Poetry," published in 1789. The originals in this case were genuine, including a number of poems of the kind called, since Macpherson's time, Ossianic.1 The English versions supplied by Miss Brooke were in close imitation of the style and diction of Macpherson. The same influence extends to Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy," published in 1831.

The expansion of the new Celtic consciousness is exemplified in the publication in 1804 of a tract in French on the Irish Alphabet by Jean Jacques Marcel. The first important philological treatise on the Celtic languages was published by the French philologist Pictet in 1837, dealing with "the affinity of the Celtic languages to Sanscrit." Next year, 1838, appeared Bopp's work in German, showing the relation of the Celtic languages to Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, German, etc. The Celtic literary enthusiasm was henceforth supplemented by solid scientific research.

In these particulars is presented, I think, a fairly accurate sketch of the wholly modern development of the Celtic consciousness. I wish to recall here the fact that from the earliest traceable traditions of the Gaelic people down to the time of George Buchanan, there is not found the slightest glimmer of recognition that the Celts of Ireland were Celts, or that they were more nearly akin to the Celts of Britain and the Continent than to any other population of white men. The second fact which I wish particularly to emphasise is that throughout all its history the term Celtic bears a linguistic and not a racial significance.

It need hardly be re-stated here that the Celts are a linguistic offshoot of a prehistoric people whose descendants—also in the line of language—comprise many ancient and modern populations in Europe and Asia. It would be out of place now to discuss the central location from which the various branches of this prehistoric people spread themselves over so wide an area. Indeed, it is a facile and fanciful assumption to suppose that the spreading took place from one central habitat. It is enough to say that, whereas the earlier philologists took for granted that the original population, before its division into various linguistic groups, was located in Western Asia, the later philologists are strongly inclined to place its home in Europe, in the region south-east of the Baltic Sea.

The oldest known geographical descriptions of Europe are those of Hecatæus, who flourished about 500 years before the Christian Era, and Herodotus, about half a century after him. Their knowledge of the European mainland, north of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean and its inlets, was of the most vague and general kind. They divided the whole of northern and middle Europe between two peoples, the Scythians in the eastern, and the Celts in the western parts. They also knew of the Iberians in the south-west, in the Spanish peninsula and the adjoining parts of France. Herodotus, however, recognised to the west of the Celts a people whom he calls Kunēsioi and Kunētai, and in the furthest north of Europe a population distinct from the Celts and Scythians, but unknown to him by any name of their own, for he calls them Hyperboreans, i.e., out and out northerns. In the time of Eratosthenes, about 200 B.C., this knowledge does not appear to have been very much increased among the Greeks. They knew, however, of the existence of the islands of Ireland, which they called Ierne, and Britain, which they called Albion, and also of a country beyond the Baltic; but they still divided the northern mainland of Europe between the Celts and the Scythians.

I have already remarked how ancient Irish tradition ignores the Celtic origin and affinities of the Irish. We may go farther and say that our ancient writers, when they set about exploring the geographical knowledge of the world that came to them in Latin writings, had it very definitely in their minds that the Irish were not of Celtic origin; for, of the three great populations of northern and western Europe known to the oldest classical writers—the Iberians, the Celts, and the Scythians—they excluded the Celts, and included the other two, some selecting the Iberians and others the Scythians as the ancestral people from which the Gaels were descended.

The reason why to the Greek mind, in the early centuries of history, the Celts appeared to occupy so much of Middle Europe and to occupy it so exclusively, was I think this: the Celts at that time actually occupied the upper valleys of the Danube, the Rhone, the Rhine, and the Elbe, and the high ground between. These rivers were the principal highways of such transcontinental commerce as then