nal composition, then
actually imagined and written. It does not even purport to deal with the
ethnic times. _Its heroes are Christian heroes. They attend Mass._ The
poem is not true, even to the leading features of the late period of
history in which it is placed, if it have any habitat in the world of
history at all. Attila, who died A.D. 450, and Theodoric, who did not
die until the succeeding century, meet as coevals.

Turn we now from the sole boast of Germany to one out of a hundred in
the Irish bardic literature. The Tan-bo-Cooalney was transcribed into
the Leabhar na Huidhre in the eleventh century a manuscript whose date
has been established by the consentaneity of Irish, French, and German
scholarship. Mark, it was transcribed, not composed. The scribe records
the fact:--

"Ego qui scripsi hanc historian aut vero fabulam, quibusdam fidem
in hac historia aut fabula non commodo."

The Tan-bo-Cooalney was therefore _transcribed_ by an ancient penman to
the parchment of a still existing manuscript, in the century before
that in which the German epic is presumed, from style only, and in the
opinion of Germans, to have been _composed_.

The same scribe adds this comment with regard to its contents:--

"Qaedam autem poetica figmenta, quaedam ad delectationem
stultorum."

Such scorn could not have been felt by one living in an age of bardic
production. That independence and originality of thought, which caused
Milton to despise the poets of the Restoration, are impossible in
the simple stages of civilisation. The scribe who appended this very
interesting comment to the subject of his own handiwork must have been
removed by centuries from the date of its compilation. That the tale
was, in his time, an ancient one, is therefore rendered extremely
probable, the scribe himself indicating how completely out of sympathy
he is with this form of literature, its antiquity and peculiar
archaeological interest being, doubtless, the cause of the
transcription.

Again, a close study of its contents, as of the contents of all the
Irish historic tales, proves that in its present form, whenever
that form was superadded, it is but a representation in prose of a
pre-existing metrical original. Under this head I have already made some
remarks, which, I shall request the reader to re-peruse [Note: Pages 23
to 27]

Once more, it deals with a particular event in Irish history, and with
distinct and definite kings, heroes