e quite different, and indicate two distinct epochs. The prose tale is
founded upon a metrical original, and composed in the meretricious style
then in fashion, while the old metrical excerpts are pure and simple.
This is sufficient, in a country like Ireland in those primitive times,
to necessitate a considerable step into the past, if we desire to get at
the originals upon which the prose tales were founded.

For in ancient Ireland the conservatism of the people was very great. It
is the case in all primitive societies. Individual, initiative,
personal enterprise are content to work within a very small sphere. In
agriculture, laws, customs, and modes of literary composition, primitive
and simple societies are very adverse to change.

When we see how closely the Christian compilers followed the early
authorities, we can well believe that in the ethnic times no mind would
have been sufficiently daring or sacrilegious to alter or pervert those
epics which were in their eyes at the same time true and sacred.

In the perusal of the Irish literature, we see that the strength of
this conservative instinct has been of the greatest service in the
preservation of the early monuments in their purity. So much is this the
case, that in many tales the most flagrant contradictions appear, the
author or scribe being unwilling to depart at all from that which he
found handed down. For instance, in the "Great Breach of Murthemney,"
we find Laeg at one moment killed, and in the next riding black
Shanglan off the field. From this conservatism and careful following of
authority, and the _littera scripta_, or word once spoken, I conclude
that the distance in time between the prose tale and the metrical
originals was very great, and, unless under such exceptional
circumstances as the revolution caused by the introduction of
Christianity, could not have been brought about within hundreds of
years. Moreover, this same conservatism would have caused the tales
concerning heroes to grow very slowly once they were actually formed.
All the noteworthy events of the hero's life and his characteristics
must have formed the original of the tales concerning him, which would
have been composed during his life, or not long after his death.

I have not met a single tale, whether in verse or prose, in which it is
not clearly seen that the author was not following authorities before
him. Such traces of invention or decoration as may be met with are not
s