story. Indeed, it is not at all improbable
that LL. contains elements which represent a tradition antedating the
composition of LU. At all events, LL. has these strong points in its
favour, that, of all the versions, it is the most uniform and consistent,
the most artistically arranged, the one with most colour and imagination,
and the one which lends itself most readily to translation, both in itself
and because of the convenient Irish text provided by Professor Windisch's
edition. In order to present the Tain in its completest form, however, I
have adopted the novel plan of incorporating in the LL. account the
translations of what are known as conflate readings. These, as a rule, I
have taken from no manuscript that does not demonstrably go back to a
twelfth or earlier century redaction. Some of these additions consist of
but a single word: others extend over several pages. This dovetailing could
not always be accomplished with perfect accuracy, but no variants have been
added that do not cohere with the context or destroy the continuity of the
story. Whatever slight inconsistencies there may be in the accounts of
single episodes, they are outweighed, in my opinion, by the value and
interest of the additions. In all cases, however, the reader can control
the translation by means of the foot-notes which indicate the sources and
distinguish the accretions from the basic text. The numerous passages in
which Eg. 1782 agrees with LU. and YBL. have not all been marked. The
asterisk shows the beginning of each fresh page in the lithographic
facsimile of LL., and the numbers following "W" in the upper left hand
margin show the corresponding lines in the edition of the Irish text by
Windisch.

* * * * *

In general, I believe it should be the aim of a translator to give a
faithful rather than a literal version of his original. But, owing to the
fact that so little of Celtic scholarship has filtered down even to the
upper strata of the educated public and to the additional fact that the
subject matter is so incongruous to English thought, the first object of
the translator from the Old Irish must continue to be, for some time to
come, rather exactness in rendering than elegance, even at the risk of the
translation appearing laboured and puerile. This should not, however, be
carried to the extent of distorting his own idiom in order to imitate the
idiomatic turns and expressions of the original. In