the small,
The small beast nimbly fly,
And listened to the plunging eels,
The sea-gull's clang on high.

We had no other music
To cheer us on our way:
Till round those sheltering hills we passed
And anchored in this bay.

III--WELSH

The laws governing the life of languages are as elusive as those that
decide the fate of races and empires. Why is the Welsh tongue still
alive and vigorous, and the Irish (_pace_ Dr. Douglas Hyde) moribund?
It is a difficult question, but some light on it may be had by
traversing the early history of Welsh literature.

The like difficulty meets us in both Welsh and Irish: that of deciding
how far the mediaeval scribes and scholars doctored the older material
which fell into their hands. But in Welsh, the separation of the
primitive from the mediaeval element is often even a more difficult
task than in Irish.

In sketching the early course of Welsh literature, we cannot do better
than turn to the striking instance afforded by the name and fame of
Merlin. In legendary Welsh history, Merlin appears under almost as
many guises as he does in the pages of Malory's 'Morte d'Arthur.'
Merddin Emrys (Ambrosius), Merddin Sylvester (Merlin the Wild),
Merddin ab Morvryn (or Merlin Caledonius),--his name and fame vary
according to the chronicler. Of these, Merlin the son of Morvryn, the
most tangible in the list, was also known as Caledonius, because the
Kymry of the sixth century lived in that greater Wales which ranged as
far north as the Caledonian Forest. After the terrible battle of
Arderydd, Merlin, having seen his kindred all but obliterated, was
seized, tradition tells us, with a frenzy, and thereafter his bardic
utterances assumed a more and more mystical and oracular form. This,
added to his mysterious and magnetic personality and wildly impressive
personal presence, may well have led on in process of time, by gradual
legendary accretions, to the final conception of a Merlin miraculous,
supernatural, daemonic! However this may be, nothing can be more
instructive than to compare the late Merlin with the early Merlin, and
to trace his phases in Welsh folk-tale, and define his poetry finally
in the pages of the 'Black Book of Carmarthen.'

The 'Black Book of Carmarthen,' in its strikingly decorative black and
red manuscript, makes a wonderful testament of old Welsh poetry. If we
could solve all its problems and read all that is written between its
lines, we