Wars were gay, and but light was fray
Ere at the Ford his steeds made stay: 
Never, till hour of doom,
Ferdia’s form shall fade;
High as a cliff it loomed,
Now is but left his shade.

Three great armies went this Raid,[FN#66]
All the price of death have paid;
Choicest cattle, men, and steeds
Lie in heaps, to tell my deeds.

[FN#66] The metre is that of the Irish.

Widely spread their battle-line,
Less than half their host was mine;
Though to war stout Croghan came,
All I slew, for me a game!

None the battle neared like thee,
None of all whom Banba nursed
Passed thy fame; on land, on sea,
Thou, of sons of kings, art first!

SPECIAL NOTE

ON THE “COMBAT AT THE FORD”

The episode translated in the foregoing pages is not only one of the famous examples on which Irish literature can fairly rest its claim to universal recognition, but it also affords an excellent instance of the problems involved when it comes to be studied critically.  These problems, upon the solution of which must to some extent depend our estimate of the place of Irish in the general development of European literature) axe briefly dealt with in Mr. Leahy’s Preface, as well as in his special Introduction (supra, pp. 114, 115), but may perhaps be thought worthy of somewhat more detailed examination.

The existence of two markedly different versions of the “Tain bo Cuailnge,” one, obviously older, represented by the eleventh-century Ms. Leabhar na h-Uidhri (L.U.), and the fourteenth-century Ms. Yellow Book of Lecan (Y.B.L.); the other, obviously younger, by the twelfth-century Book of Leinster (L.L.), was pointed out by Professor Heinrich Zimmer twenty-seven years ago in his study of the L.U. heroic saga texts (Keltische Studien V.:  Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung, vol. xxviii.).  The conclusion that he drew from the fact, as also from the peculiarities disclosed by his analysis of the L.U. texts, is substantially that stated by Mr. Leahy:  “On the whole it seems as if the compiler of the manuscript from which both the Leabhar na h-Uidhri and the Yellow Book of Lecan were copied, combined into one several different descriptions of the ‘War,’ one of which is represented by the Book of Leinster version.”  He furthermore emphasised a particular aspect of this compiler’s activity to which Mr. Leahy also draws repeated attention; he (the compiler) was a man interested in the historical and antiquarian rather than in the literary side of the texts he harmonised and arranged:  hence his preference for versions that retain archaic and emphasise mythical elements; hence his frequent interpolation of scraps of historical and antiquarian learning; hence his indifference to consistency in the conduct of the story, and to its artistic finish.  Professor Zimmer urged that the “compiler” was no