[17] In modern Irish, "Leathnuighidh folt fada fraoch," _i.e._, "Leathnuighidh fraoch folt fada, foirbridh (fásaidh) canach (ceannabhán) fann fionn," _i.e._, "Spreads heath its long hair, flourishes the feeble, fair cotton-grass." [18] Here is the first verse of this in the original. The Old Irish is nearly unintelligible to a modern. I have here modernised the spelling:-- "Mac Mogachoirb Cheileas CLÚ Cun fearas CRÚ thar a gháibh Ail uas a Ligi--budh LIACH--- Baslaide CHLIATH thar Cliú Máil." The rhyming words do not make perfect rhyme as in English, but pretty nearly so--_clu cru, liath cliath, gáibh máil_. CHAPTER XXII EARLY SAGA AND ROMANCE During the golden period of the Greek and Roman genius no one ever wrote a romance. Epics they left behind them, and history, but the romance, the Danish saga, the Irish _sgeul_ or _úrsgeul_ was unknown. It was in time of decadence that a body of Greek prose romance appeared, and with the exception of Petronius' semi-prose "Satyricon," and Apuleius' "Golden Ass," the Latin language produced in this line little of a higher character than such works as the Gesta Romanorum. In Greece and Italy where the genial climate favoured all kinds of open-air representations, the great development of the drama took the place of novelistic literature, as it did for a long time amongst the English after the Elizabethan revival. In Ireland, on the other hand, the dramatic stage was never reached at all, but the development of the _úrsgeul_, romance, or novel, was quite abnormally great. I have seen it more than once asserted, if I mistake not, that the dramatic is an inevitable and an early development in the history of every literature, but this is to generalise from insufficient instances. The Irish literature which kept on developing--to some extent at least--for over a thousand years, and of which hundreds of volumes still exist, never evolved a drama, nor so much, as far as I know, as even a miracle play, although these are found in Welsh and even Cornish. What Ireland did produce, and produce nobly and well, was romance; from the first to the last, from the seventh to the seventeenth century, Irishmen, without distinction of class, alike delighted in the _úrsgeul_.