Reviews. 401
A full criticism of Mr. MacNeill's theory would lead me too far. For one thing, it is presented in a tentative, fragmentary- form that makes criticism difficult. Nowhere is there a clear statement respecting the historic movements postulated for the second-third centunes, nowhere a hint of the way in which the ethnological relations between the free and subject races or of both to the earlier Ulidians are conceived. Does Mr. MacNeill regard all three as Gael ? But I may say at once that the theory strikes me as involving far too great a break with Irish tradition as extant from the seventh century onwards. Whilst prepared to regard the major part of Irish history prior to the fourth century Niall as being euhemerised and historicised heroic romance, I am not at present prepared to admit such a historico- literary process as Mr. MacNeill postulates. Further, with the best will in the world I cannot detect in the Fenian legends any trace of a " subject " or " servile " origin. On the contrary ! The Fenian warriors are all very fine gentlemen, — gentlemen for whom warfare, the chase, and dalliance are the sole objects in life worth
consideration.
Alfred Nutt.
ViTAE Sanctorum Hiberniae. Partim hactenus ineditae ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum recognovit prolegomenis notis indicibus instruxit. Carolus Plummer, A.M. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910. 8vo. pp. cxcii-t-273, 390.
Nowhere, perhaps, is the line of demarcation between the Pagan and Christian systems of thought reduced to narrower and more shadowy dimensions than in the history of early Celtic Chris- tianity. If the settlement of the Christian faith in Ireland was a peaceful one, inviting few calls to what their early teachers called "red martyrdom," or the suffering of actual death for the faith, it was largely because the teachers of that faith were not missionaries coming from abroad, to whom the native customs and beliefs would at every point present antagonistic elements calling for complete uprooting and reversal, but men born and bred in the
