The following traditions, we would fain hope, will not be found quite destitute of utility.  They are some addition to our existing stock of knowledge, either as illustrating English history, manners, and customs now obsolete, or as a collection of legends, having truth for their basis, however disfigured in their transmission through various modifications of error, the natural obscurity arising from distance, and the distorted media through which they must necessarily be viewed.  Perhaps a main source of this inaccuracy arises from the many and heterogeneous uses to which the breakings up, the fragments of tradition have been subjected and applied.  Like those detached yet beautiful remnants of antiquity, built up with other and absolutely worthless materials in the rude structures of the barbarian by whom they have been disfigured, traditions are generally presented to us torn from their original connection with edifices once renowned for beauty and magnificence.  It is our wish, as it has been our aim, to rescue these ruins from degradation and decay.  Gathered from many an uninviting heap of chaotic matter, they are now presented in a different form, and under a more popular aspect.  We cannot pretend to say that we have invariably assigned to them their true origin, or that their real character and position have been ascertained.  Still, we would hope, that, as relics of the past rescued from the oblivion to which they were inevitably hastening, they are not either an uninteresting or inelegant addition to the literature of our country.

FOOTNOTES: 

[6] “They worshipped fire as the representative of the Deity, which they kept continually burning on the tops of their highest mountains.”—­Foreign Quarterly Review, No.  XV.:  Art.  “Popular Poetry,” p. 77.

[7] That Ireland has not always presented so degrading and uncivilised an aspect as now exists in that unhappy country, there is abundant testimony to convince the most incredulous.  Camden, an author by no means partial on this score, says:—­“The Irish scholars of St. Patrick profited so notably in Christianity that, in the succeeding age, Ireland was termed ‘Sanctorum Patria.’” Their monks so excelled in learning and piety, that they sent whole flocks of most holy men into all parts of Europe, “who were founders of the most eminent monasteries both there and in Britain.”

“A residence in Ireland,” says a learned British writer, “like a residence now at an university, was considered as almost essential to establish a literary character.”  By common consent, and as a mark of pre-eminence, Ireland obtained the title of Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum.

At the Council of Constance, in 1417, the ambassadors from England were not allowed to rank or take any place as the ambassadors of a nation.  The point being argued and conceded, that they were tributaries only to the Germans, “they claimed their rank from Henry being monarch of Ireland only, and it was accordingly granted.”—­O’Halloran.