Reviews. 327
Not only the monks, but the whole nation, were the custodians of their literature, as is shown by the number of copies of all ages that remain of the old romances that have never seen the inside of a monastery. They have been copied and re-copied by the people themselves. With an extraordinary constancy, the national inheritance of the Pagan tales has been handed on by village scribes and hedge schoolmasters. This constancy may have checked original invention, but it has had the good effect of preserving for us at greater length many tales of which only an outline exists in the monastic records. In several instances, the later versions are the fullest.
With regard to the author's remarks on the moribund condition of the Irish tongue, we can only here say that he does not seem to have kept himself au coura?it with the events of to-day. The eagerness with which a whole nation is rising to reclaim its mother- tongue is one of the most extraordinary movements going on about us. Even in and about London there are some twenty weekly classes for the study of the Irish Gaelic language and of Irish songs, each attended by something like forty or fifty persons on an average. All over Ireland classes are being held, voluntarily taught by the native speakers to the younger generation. The establishment of new Gaelic Publishing Societies, the output of books in Irish Gaelic, their considerable sale, the large sums of money collected for these purposes, are unmistakable signs of the same enthusiasm. The leaders are embarrassed and well-nigh overwhelmed by the mass of work entailed by the unexpected development of the movement. Has the author not heard of these things ? And if he has heard of them, is it fair to ignore them ?
Notes on the Togail Bruidne Da Derga. Edited with Translation by Dr. Whitley Stokes. Libraire fimile Bouillon, Paris.
In his edition of Togail Bruidne Da Derga, or " The Destruction of the Great House of Da Derga," Dr. Whitley Stokes has placed before the public another of those famous stories drawn from the romance of ancient Ireland, in which the 7?iotif of the tragedy is the breaking of the tabus or geasa set round the person of a native monarch, Conaire the Great, King of Tara, who reigned, accord- ing to the Irish annalists, about the beginning of the Christian era.
