, employing a
variety of metres and not seeking to conform their diction to the manner
of the ballads in the "Reliques" or the "Border Minstrelsy." Ferguson's
"Lays of the Western Gael" (1865) is a series of historical ballads,
original in effect, though based upon old Gaelic chronicles. "Congal"
(1872) is an epic, founded on an ancient bardic tale, and written in
Chapman's "fourteener" and reminding the reader frequently of Chapman's
large, vigorous manner, his compound epithets and spacious Homeric
similes. The same epic breadth of manner was applied to the treatment of
other hero legends, "Conary," "Deirdre," etc., in a subsequent volume
(1880). "Deirdre," the finest of all the old Irish stories, was also
handled independently by the late Dr. R. D. Joyce in the verse and manner
of William Morris' "Earthly Paradise." [18] Among other recent workers
in this field are Aubrey de Vere, a volume of selections from whose
poetry appeared at New York in 1894, edited by Prof. G. E. Woodberry;
George Sigerson, whose "Bards of the Gael and the Gall," a volume of
translations from the Irish in the original metres, was issued in 1897;
Whitley Stokes, an accomplished translator, and the joint editor (with
Windisch) of the "Irische Texte "; John Todhunter, author of "The Banshee
and Other Poems" (1888) and "Three Bardic Tales" (1896); Alfred Perceval
Graves, author of "Irish Folk Songs" (1897), and many other volumes of
national lyrics; and William Larminie--"West Irish Folk Tales and
Romances" (1893), etc.

The Celtism of this Gaelic renascence is of a much purer and more genuine
character than the Celtism of Macpherson's "Ossian." Yet with all its
superiority in artistic results, it is improbable that it will make any
such impression on Europe or England as Macpherson made. "Ossian" was
the first revelation to the world of the Celtic spirit: sophisticated,
rhetorical, yet still the first; and it is not likely that its success
will be repeated. In the very latest school of Irish verse, represented
by such names as Lionel Johnson, J. B. Yeats, George W. Russell, Nora
Hopper, the mystical spirit which inhabits the "Celtic twilight" turns
into modern symbolism, so that some of their poems on legendary subjects
bear a curious resemblance to the contemporary work of Maeterlinck: to
such things as "Aglivaine et Salysette" or "Les Sept Princesses." [19]

The narrative ballad is hardly one of the forms of high art, like the
epic, t