far as I am aware, wholly unknown in Scotland, the second
comparatively unknown. What is the explanation? Professor Zimmer not
having established his late-historical view as regards Finn, and the
general opinion among scholars having tended of recent years towards the
mythical view, we want to know why there is so much more community in
one case than in the other. Mr O'Grady long since seeing this
difficulty, and then believing Finn to be historical, was induced to
place the latter in point of time before Cuchulain and his compeers. But
this view is of course inadmissible when Finn is seen not to be
historical at all. There remains but one explanation. The various bodies
of legend in question are, so far as Ireland is concerned, only earlier
or later, as they came into the island with the various races to which
they belonged. The wider prevalence, then, of the Finn Saga would
indicate that it belonged to an early race occupying both Ireland and
Scotland. Then entered the Aryan Gael, and for him henceforth, as the
ruler of the island, his own gods and heroes were sung by his own bards.
His legends became the subject of what I may call the court poetry, the
aristocratic literature. When he conquered Scotland, he took with him
his own gods and heroes; but in the latter country the bardic system
never became established, and hence we find but feeble echoes of the
heroic cycle among the mountains of the North. That this is the
explanation is shown by what took place in Ireland. Here the heroic
cycle has been handed down in remembrance almost solely by the bardic
literature. The popular memory retains but few traces of it. Its
essentially aristocratic character is shown by the fact that the people
have all but forgotten it, if they ever knew it. But the Fenian cycle
has not been forgotten. Prevailing everywhere, still cherished by the
conquered peoples, it held its ground in Scotland and Ireland alike,
forcing its way in the latter country even into the written literature,
and so securing a twofold lease of existence ... The Fenian cycle, in a
word, is non-Aryan folk-literature partially subjected to Aryan
treatment."

The whole problem is extremely complex, and several other writers have
written upon it. Mr Borlase, for instance, has argued in his big book on
the Dolmens that the cromlechs, and presumably the Diarmuid and Crania
legend, is connected with old religious rites of an erotic nature coming
down from a very primiti