t from purely archaeological sources.
Professor Ridgeway of Cambridge University, working on archaeological
lines, expresses himself as follows: "From this survey of the
material remains of the _la Tern_ period found actually in Ireland,
and from the striking correspondence between this culture and that
depicted in the _Tain Bo Cualnge_, and from the circumstance that the
race who are represented in the epic as possessing this form of
culture resemble in their physique the tall, fair-haired, grey-eyed
Celts of Britain and the continent, we are justified in inferring (1)
that there was an invasion (or invasions) of such peoples from Gaul
in the centuries immediately before Christ, as is ascribed by the
Irish traditions, and (2) that the poems themselves originally took
shape when the _la Tene_ culture was still flourishing in Ireland.
But as this could hardly have continued much later than A.D. 100, we
may place the first shaping of the poems not much later than that
date and possibly a century earlier."

This conclusion would make the earliest putting together of the Irish
epics almost contemporaneous with Augustus Caesar.

So much for the history and growth of Irish letters.

REFERENCES:

Brash: Ogam inscribed Monuments of the Gaedhil (1879); MacAlister:
Studies in Irish Epigraphy, vol. 1 (1897), vol. 2 (1902), vol. 3
(1907); Rhys: in Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries
(Edinburgh, 1892); Ridgeway: Date of the First Shaping of the
Cuchulain Saga (1905), in Proceedings of the British Academy, vol.
II; Joyce: Social History of Ancient Ireland, vol. I, Chap. 2;
Preface to fac-simile edition of the Book of Ballymote.

NATIVE IRISH POETRY

By PROFESSOR GEORGES DOTTIN.

[Note.--This chapter was written in French by M. Dottin, who is a
distinguished professor and dean at the University of Renacs, France.
The translation into English has been made by the Editors.]

By the year 1200 of the Christian era, a time at which the other
national literatures of Europe were scarcely beginning to develop,
Ireland possessed, and had possessed for several centuries, a Gaelic
poetry, which was either the creation of the soul of the people or
else was the work of the courtly bards. This poetry was at first
expressed in rhythmical verses, each containing a fixed number of
accented syllables and hemistichs separated by a pause:

_Crist_ lim, | _Crist_ reum, | _Crist_ in degaid
_Crist_