make a part of Irish
literature accessible to many, especially among my young countrymen, who
have not opportunity to read the translations of the chief scholars,
scattered here and there in learned periodicals, or patience and time to
disentangle overlapping and contradictory versions, that they may judge
for themselves as to its "lowness" and "want of imagination," and the
other well-known charges brought against it before the same Commission.

I believe that those who have once learned to care for the story of
Cuchulain of Muirthemne, and of Finn and Lugh and Etain, and to
recognise the enduring belief in an invisible world and an immortal life
behind the visible and the mortal, will not be content with my
redaction, but will go, first to the fuller versions of the best
scholars, and then to the manuscripts themselves. I believe the forty
students of old Irish lately called together by Professor Kuno Meyer
will not rest satisfied until they have explored the scores and scores
of uncatalogued and untranslated manuscripts in Trinity College Library,
and that the enthusiasm which the Gaelic League has given birth to will
lead to much fine scholarship.

A day or two ago I had a letter from one of the best Greek scholars and
translators in England, who says of my "Cuchulain": "It opened up a
great world of beautiful legend which, though accounting myself as an
Irishman, I had never known at all. I am sending out copies to Irish
friends in Australia who, I am sure, will receive the same sort of
impression, almost an impression of pride in the beauty of the Irish
mind, as I received myself." And President Roosevelt wrote to me a
little time ago that after he had read "Cuchulain of Muirthemne," he had
sent for all the other translations from the Irish he could get, to take
on his journey to the Western States.

I give these appreciative words not, I think, from vanity, for they are
not for me but for my material, to show the effect our old literature
has on those who come fresh to it, and that they do not complain of its
"want of imagination." I am, of course, very proud and glad in having
had the opportunity of helping to make it known, and the task has been
pleasant, although toil-some. Just now, indeed, on the 6th October, I am
tired enough, and I think with sympathy of the old Highland piper, who
complained that he was "withered with yelping the seven Fenian
battalions."

II. THE AGE AND ORIGIN OF THE STORIES O