gend
and mythology, and particularly the three spirited pieces that stand
first in his collection (1832)--"The Battle-Flag of Sigurd," "The Wooing
Song of Jarl Egill Skallagrim," and "The Sword Chant of Thorstein Randi."
These stand midway between Gray's "Descent of Odin" and the later work of
Longfellow, William Morris and others. Since Gray, little or nothing of
the kind had been attempted; and Motherwell gave perhaps the first
expression in English song of the Berserkir rage and the Viking passion
for battle and sea roving.

During the nineteenth century English romance received new increments of
heroic legend and fairy lore from the Gaelic of Ireland. It was not
until 1867 that Matthew Arnold, in his essay "On the Study of Celtic
Literature," pleading for a chair of Celtic at Oxford, bespoke the
attention of the English public to those elements in the national
literature which come from the Celtic strain in its blood. Arnold knew
very little Celtic, and his essay abounds in those airy generalisations
which are so irritating to more plodding critics. His theory, e.g., that
English poetry owes its sense for colour to the Celts, when taken up and
stated nakedly by following writers, seems too absolute in its ascription
of colour-blindness to the Teutonic races. Still, Arnold probably
defined fairly enough the distinctive traits of the Celtic genius. He
attributes to a Celtic source much of the turn of English poetry for
style, much of its turn for melancholy, and nearly all its turn for
"natural magic." "The forest solitude, the bubbling spring, the wild
flowers, are everywhere in romance. They have a mysterious life and
grace there; they are Nature's own children, and utter her secret in a
way which makes them something quite different from the woods, waters,
and plants of Greek and Latin poetry. Now, of this delicate magic,
Celtic romance is so pre-eminent a mistress that it seems impossible to
believe the power did not come into romance from the Celts."

In 1825 T. Crofton Croker published the first volume of his delightful
"Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland." It was
immediately translated into German by the Grimm brothers, and was
received with enthusiasm by Walter Scott, who was introduced to the
author in London in 1826, and a complimentary letter from whom was
printed in the preface to the second edition.

Croker's book opened a new world of romance, and introduced the English
rea