els of the native prosody; and in the heyday of French
influence, the patrons of letters in Ireland probably insisted on
hearing the foreign compositions in their original dress, as these
nobles were doubtless sufficiently versed in Norman-French to be able
to appreciate them. But a still more potent factor was the
conservatism of the hereditary Irish poet families. A close
corporation, they appear to have resented every innovation, and were
content to continue the tradition of their ancestors. The direct
consequence of this tenacious clinging to the fashions of by-gone
days rendered it impossible, nay almost inconceivable, that the
literary men of Ireland should have exerted any profound or immediate
influence upon England or western Europe. Yet, nowadays, few serious
scholars will be prepared to deny that the island contributed in
considerable measure to the common literary stock of the Middle Ages.

We might expect to find that direct influence, as a general rule, can
be most easily traced in the case of religious themes. Here, in the
literature of vision, so popular in Ireland, a chord was struck which
continued to vibrate powerfully until the time of the Reformation. In
this branch the riotous fancy of the Celtic monk caught the medieval
imagination from an early period. Bede has preserved for us the story
of Fursey, an Irish hermit who died in France, A.D. 650. The greatest
Irish composition of this class with which we are acquainted, the
_Vision of Adamnan_, does not appear to have been known outside the
island, but a later work of a similar nature met with striking
success. This was the _Vision of Tundale_ (Tnudgal), written in Latin
by an Irishman named Marcus at Regensburg, about the middle of the
twelfth century. It seems probable that this work was known to Dante,
and, in addition to the numerous continental versions, there is a
rendering of the story into Middle English verse.

Closely allied to the Visions are the _Imrama_ or "voyages" (Lat.
_navigationes_). The earliest romances of this class are secular,
_e.g., Imram Maelduin_, which provided Tennyson with the frame-work
of his well-known poem. However, the notorious love of adventure on
the part of the Irish monks inevitably led to the composition of
religious romances of a similar kind. The most famous story of this
description, the_ Voyage of St. Brendan_, found its way into every
Christian country in Europe, and consequently figures in the South
En