Mr. Nutt's statement of the age of the main body of the Cuchulainn romances is as follows:—
The great bulk of this literature is, as I have said, certainly older than the twelfth century; but we can carry it back much farther, apart from any considerations based upon the subject-matter. Arguments of a nature purely philological, based upon the language of the text, or critical, based upon the relations of the various MSS. to each other, not only allow, but compel us to date the redaction of the principal Cuchulainn stories, substantially in the form under which they have survived, back to the seventh to ninth centuries. Whether or no they are older yet, is a question that cannot be answered without preliminary examination of the subject-matter. In the meantime it is something to know that the Cuchulainn stories were put into permanent literary form at about the same date as Beowulf, some one hundred to two hundred and fifty years before the Scandinavian mythology crystallised into its present form, at least two hundred years before the oldest Charlemagne romances, and probably three hundred years before the earliest draft of the Nibelungenlied. Irish is the most ancient vernacular literature of modern Europe, a fact which of itself commends it to the attention of the student.
Mr. Nutt gives us an admirable summary of the many tales in which his hero's career is unfolded. The parallel drawn between Cuchulainn and Achilles is wonderfully close. There are even some points which might be added, such as the warning to Thetis that if Achilles went to the siege of Troy he would gain immortal glory but meet an early death, while if he remained at home he would live to a good old age. On overhearing a similar prophecy made to his father by a Druid, Cuchulainn at a tender age assumed arms and went forth on his first exploit.
We are not, however, fond of parallels between classic and mediæval mythology. The setting of the classical hero belongs to another stratum of society and another conception of life. What is borne in upon us more than any other fact in considering the early myths of Celtic Britain is their primeval flavour. They are gropings of the untutored human mind in his early conceptions of the world, and in the ruder stages of his existence. The civilisation of the Greek is not only many stages beyond them, as Mr. Nutt points out; it is in every way opposed to them. The Greek who gave us our modern conception of Achilles, a conception near to his own time and order of society, was probably
