for the language in both versions is only measured prose:—
"Then they gave an eager very quick courageous high-spirited flood-leap
To meet and to face the sea and the great ocean.
And great was the horror * * * * *
Then there arose before them a fierceness in the sea,
And they replied patiently stoutly strongly and vigorously,
To the roar of the green sided high-strong waves,
Till they made a high quick very-furious rowing
Till the deep-margined dreadful blue-bordered sea
Arose in broad-sloping fierce-frothing plains
And in rushing murmuring flood-quick ever-deep platforms.
And in gloomy horrible swift great valleys
Of very terrible green sea, and the beating and the pounding
Of the strong dangerous waves smiting against the decks
And against the sides of that full-great full-tight bark."
It may, however, be objected that the sea-runs are so common and so numerous, that one might easily usurp the place of another, and that this alone is no proof that the various story-tellers or professional bards, contented themselves with remembering the incidents of a story, but either extemporised their own runs after what flourish their nature would, or else had a stock of these, of their own composing, always ready at hand. Let us look, then, at another story of which Campbell has preserved the Highland version, while I have a good Irish MS. of the same, written by some northern scribe, in 1762. This story, "The Slender Grey Kerne," or "Slim Swarthy Champion," as Campbell translates it, is full of alliterative runs, which the Highland reciter has re-
