, dean of Lismore,
early in the 16th century. Another miscellany is the _Duanaire Finn_, a
MS. in the Franciscan monastery in Dublin, compiled from earlier MSS. in
1627. This "song-book," which has been edited for the Irish Texts
Society by John MacNeill (part i. 1908), contains no less than
sixty-nine Ossianic ballads, amounting in all to some ten thousand
lines. Other Ossianic poems of dates varying from the 15th to the 18th
century have been published in the _Transactions of the Ossianic
Society_ (Dublin, 1854-1861), including amongst others "The Battle of
Gabhra," "Lamentation of Oisin (Ossian) after the Fenians," "Dialogue
between Oisin and Patrick," "The Battle of Cnoc an Air," and "The Chase
of Sliabh Guilleann." These ballads still survive amongst the peasants
at the present day. We further possess a number of prose romances, which
in their present form date from the 16th to the 18th century; e.g. _The
Pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne_, _Finn and Grainne_, _Death of Finn_,
_The Clown in the Drab Coat_, _Pursuit of the Gilla Decair_, _The
Enchanted Fort of the Quicken-tree_, _The Enchanted Cave of Ceis
Corann_, _The Feast in the House of Conan_.

At the present moment it is impossible to give a complete survey of
the other branches of medieval Irish literature. The attention of
scholars has been largely devoted to the publication of the sagas to
the neglect of other portions of the wide field. An excellent survey
of the subject is given by K. Meyer, _Die Kultur der Gegenwart_, i.
xi. 1. pp. 78-95 (Berlin-Leipzig, 1909).

Nature poetry.

We have already pointed out that as early as the Old Irish period
nameless Irish poets were singing the praises of nature in a strain
which sounds to our ears peculiarly modern. At the present time it is
difficult to say how much of what is really poetic in Irish literature
has come down to us. Our MSS. preserve whole reams of the learned
productions of the _filid_ which were so much prized in medieval
Ireland, but it is, generally speaking, quite an accident if any of the
delightful little lyrics entered in the margins or on blank spaces in
the MSS. have remained. The prose romances sometimes contain beautiful
snatches of verse, such as the descriptions of Mag Mell in _Serglige
Conculaind_, _Tochmarc Etaine_, and the _Voyage of Bran_ or the _Lament
of Cuchulinn over Fer Diad_. Mention has also been made of the exquisite
nature poems ascribed to Finn, which have