pisodes in
their lives into which the bardic fancy wandered. If these new forms
of the tales or episodes were imaginatively true to the characters
round which they were conceived and to the atmosphere of the time,
they were taken up by other bards and became often separate tales, or
if a great number attached themselves to one hero, they finally formed
themselves into one heroic story, such as that which is gathered round
Cuchulain, which, as it stands, is only narrative, but might in time
have become epical. Indeed, the Tain approaches, though at some
distance, an epic. In this way that mingling of elements out of the
three cycles into a single Saga took place.

Then when Christianity came, the Irish who always, Christians or not,
loved their race and its stories, would not let them go. They took
them and suffused them with a Christian tenderness, even a Christian
forgiveness. Or they inserted Christian endings, while they left the
rest of the stories as pagan as before. Later on, while the stories
were still learned by the bards and recited, they were written down,
and somewhat spoiled by a luxurious use of ornamental adjectives, and
by the weak, roving and uninventive fancy of men and monks aspiring to
literature but incapable of reaching it.

However, in spite of all this intermingling and of the different forms
of the same story, it is possible for an intelligent and sensitive
criticism, well informed in comparative mythology and folklore, to
isolate what is very old in these tales from that which is less old,
and that in turn from that which is still less old, and that from what
is partly historical, medieval or modern. This has been done, with
endless controversy, by those excellent German, French, and Irish
scholars who have, with a thirsty pleasure, recreated the ancient
literature of Ireland, and given her once more a literary name among
the nations--a name which, having risen again, will not lose but
increase its brightness.

* * * * *

As to the stories themselves, they have certain well-marked
characteristics, and in dwelling on these, I shall chiefly refer, for
illustration, to the stories in this book. Some of these
characteristic elements belong to almost all mythological tales, and
arise from human imagination, in separated lands, working in the same
or in a similar way on the doings of Nature, and impersonating them.
The form, however, in which these original ideas a