I got your letter and parcel of May 1, last night, and I have just read the story. It is extremely well written, and the language is vernacular and perfectly genuine: as I have now got 20 volumes, and half another, I am able to judge. Yours is a version of the story of which I sent you the abstract. If ever I publish the story I see that I must fuse versions, and select from the majority of various readings, under the name of “The Leching of Khene is legg.” The story is mentioned in the Catalogue of the Earl of Kildare’s library amongst the Irish Books, A.D. 1526 (Harleian MSS., 3756, Brit. Museum). I gave this information to Kildare, who has been hunting high and low to find out what was meant, they could not tell him in Ireland. I met him at Lorne’s marriage and lent him my copy, 142 pages from oral recitation. Now you send me 19 more pages, and 3 of another version, 22. Between us we have already recovered something of a story 345 years old at least. Therefore Tradition is respectable; a comparison of versions gives a fair measure of the power of popular memory, so that written Gaelic folk-lore is a kind of measure for other and older written traditions. But as all that is old in history was tradition at first, the study is worth trouble as I judge. The more we can get written the better pleased I shall be. I am exceedingly obliged to you, and hope to thank you in person some of these days. I am, Yours truly, J. F. CAMPBELL. NOTES: [31] In the oldest known version of the Exile of the Son of Usnech (preserved in the 12th century MS., the Book of Leinster) when Noisi sees Deirdre for the first time, he exclaims, ‘’Tis a fair heifer passing by me.’ She answers, ‘Where the bulls are there must needs be fine heifers.’ This is one of the passages relied upon by Prof. Zimmer in support of his contention that old Irish literature is so extremely ‘naturalistic’ in its treatment of sexual matters that we must needs suppose the Aryan Celts were polluted by a rude and more archaic population. I confess I see nothing in either the earlier or the present passage but the simplicity of a race living, 2000 years ago, as it still in part does, very close to nature, and accustomed to frank speaking about natural matters. The whole of this tradition is simply the fitting into a local frame of incidents which are commonplaces in the folk-tales.--A. N. [32] The helm was worked by being caught by the shoulders of the steersman as it worked backwards and forwards (_’g a cheapadh le ’shlinneanan a null ’s a nall_). [33] _A’ chama-dhubh_, the bone of the animal between the knee and shoulder-point (_na bha de’n chnàimh eadar an glùn agus an t-alt-lùthainn_). [34] This discussion is doubtless concerning the spot where tradition says the bristle of the boar wounded Diarmaid when he measured the length of the dead beast.--A. C. [35] Hector MacLean, Ballygrant, Islay: now dead.--A. C. [36] Suobhcail or saobh chiall.