Or how the rowan's guardian snake Was roused by order of the king; Or how, from out the water, Fraech To Finnabar restored her ring. And though, in greater tales, they chose Speech mired with song, men's hearts to sway, Such themes as these they told in prose, Like speakers at the "Feis" to-day. To men who spake the Irish tongue That form of Prose was pleasing well, While other lands in ballads sung Such tales as these have loved to tell: So we, who now in English dress These Irish tales would fain And seek their spirit to express, Have set them down in ballad verse; And, though to Celts the form be strange, Seek not too much the change to blame; 'Tis but the form alone we change; The sense, the spirit rest the same. CONTENTS THE PRELUDES TO THE RAID OF CUALGNE TAIN BO FRAICH - Page 1 THE RAID FOR DARTAID'S CATTLE - Page 69 THE RAID FOR THE CATTLE OF REGAMON - Page 83 THE DRIVING OF THE CATTLE OF FLIDAIS - Page 101 THE APPARITION OF THE GREAT QUEEN TO CUCHULAIN - Page 127 APPENDIX IRISH TEXT AND LITERAL TRANSLATION OF PART OF THE COURTSHIP OF ETAIN - Page 143 TAIN BO FRAICH INTRODUCTION The Tain bo Fraich, the Driving of the Cattle of Fraech, has apparently only one version; the different manuscripts which contain it differing in very small points; most of which seem to be due to scribal errors. Practically the tale consists of two quite separate parts. The first, the longer portion, gives the adventures of Fraech at the court of Ailill and Maev of Connaught, his courtship of their daughter, Finnabar, and closes with a promised betrothal. The second part is an account of an expedition undertaken by Fraech to the Alps "in the north of the land of the Long Beards," to recover stolen cattle, as well as his wife," who is stated by O'Beirne Crowe, on the authority of the "Courtship of Trebland" in the Book of Fermoy, to have been Trebland, a semi-deity, like Fraech himself. Except that Fraech is the chief actor in both parts, and that there is one short reference at the end of the second part to the fact that Fraech did, as he had promised in the first part, join Ailill and Maev upon the War of Cualnge, there is no connection between the two stories. But the difference between the two parts is not only in the subject-matter; the difference in the style is even yet more apparent. The first part has, I think, the most complicated plot of any Irish romance, it abounds in brilliant descriptions, and, although the original is in prose, it is, in feeling, highly poetic. The second part resembles in its simplicity and rapid action the other "fore tales" or preludes to the War of Cualnge contained in this volume, and is of a style represented in English by the narrative ballad.