ious
of schoolmen. The result was the remarkable body of Irish poetry which
belongs to the last three centuries, and which contains many of the
characteristics of folk-song and culture poetry, in a most tuneful and
idiosyncratic fashion quite its own. Let us listen again to Dr. Hyde
on this point:--

"What the popular ballads of the folk had been like prior to
the seventeenth century we have no means of knowing. No
scribe would demean his learned pen by committing them to
paper; but from that date down to the beginning of the
present century the bards--the great houses being
fallen--turned instinctively to the general public, and threw
behind them the metres that required so many years of study
in the schools, and dropped at a stroke several thousand
words which no one understood except the great chiefs or
those trained by the poets, while they broke out into
beautiful but at the same time intelligible verse, which no
one who has once heard and learned is likely to forget. This
is to my mind the real glory of the modern Irish nation; this
is the sweetest creation of Gaelic literature; this is the
truest note of the enchanting Irish siren, and he who has
once heard it and remains deaf to its charm has neither heart
for song nor soul for music. The Gaelic poetry of the last
two centuries is the most sensuous attempt to convey music in
words ever made by man. It is absolutely impossible to convey
the lusciousness of sound, richness of rhythm, and perfection
of harmony in another language."

Discounting what we will in the natural enthusiasm of one who has
devoted himself heart and soul to the cause of the Gaelic tongue and
of Irish literature, quite enough remains to carry the contention for
the continuing interest of native Irish poetry after so many
centuries. That such a poetry and such a language should suddenly
decay after so noble and enriched a record in the past, is nothing
short of a tragedy in the history of tongues.

Dr. Hyde's own collection of the 'Love Songs of Connacht' is the best
example that American readers could possibly have of this Irish
poetry, the late flowering of so venerable and noble a tree. And with
this work, and some of the collections of the folk-tales still current
in Erse-speaking Ireland, made by Dr. Hyde, Mr. Jeremiah Curtin, and
Mr. Larminie, and Englished for us, we must bring