ys of Monk and Hermit,
Religious Invocations, Reflections and Charms and Lamentations for the
Dead, including a remarkable early Irish poem entitled "The Mothers'
Lament at the Slaughter of the Innocents" and a powerful peasant poem,
"The Keening of Mary." The Irish section is ended by a set of songs
suggested by Irish folk-tunes.

Of the early Irish Religious Poetry here translated it may be observed
that the originals are not only remarkable for fine metrical form but
for their cheerful spirituality, their open-air freshness and their
occasional touches of kindly humour. "Irish religious poetry," it has
been well said, "ranges from single quatrains to lengthy compositions
dealing with all the varied aspects of religious life. Many of them give
us a fascinating insight into the peculiar character of the early Irish
Church, which differed in so many ways from the Christian world. We see
the hermit in his lonely cell, the monk at his devotions or at his work
of copying in the scriptorium or under the open sky; or we hear the
ascetic who, alone or with twelve chosen companions, has left one of the
great monasteries in order to live in greater solitude among the woods
or mountains, or on a lonely island. The fact that so many of these
poems are fathered upon well-known saints emphasises the friendly
attitude of the native clergy towards vernacular poetry."[A]

I have endeavoured as far as possible to preserve in my translations
both the character of these poems and their metrical form. But the
latter attempt can be only a mere approximation owing to the strict
rules of early Irish verse both as regards alliteration and vowel
consonance. Still the use of the "inlaid rhyme" and other assonantal
devices have, it is to be hoped, brought my renderings nearer in vocal
effect to the originals than the use of more familiar English verse
methods would have done.

The same metrical difficulties have met me when translating the Welsh
sacred and spiritual poems which form the second division of this
volume. But they have been more easy to grapple with--in part because I
have had more assistance in dealing with the older Cymric poems from my
lamented friend Mr. Sidney Richard John and other Welsh scholars, than I
had in the case of the early Irish lyrics--in part because the later
Welsh poems which I have rendered into English verse are generally in
free, not "strict," metres, and therefore present no great difficulty to
the transla