In the ensuing brief sketch of some of the main features of this subject, at once so fascinating and so important, no attempt is made to do other than to interest, and perhaps allure further, the general reader. For convenience's sake, this brief paper may be divided into four sections:--Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish. I--IRISH "From what dragon's teeth, and when sown, sprang forth this warlike crop?" asks Mr. Standish O'Grady, writing in his 'History of Ireland' of the host of famous heroic men and women whose names have come down to us from the antique periods of the Gael. "Out of the ground they start," he tells us, "the armies of her demigods and champions,--beautiful heroic forms,--in the North the Red Branch, in the South the Ernai or Clan Dega, in the West Queen Meave and her champions, in the Southeast that mysterious half-red Meave and her martial grooms!" A wonderful world! that heroic Ireland, the old Ireland of Queen Meave and Cuculain, which only now for the first time is become at all a possible region for the most of us. It is due to the remarkable modern band of Irish writers and scholars represented by Mr. O'Grady in the one category, and his older namesake, Mr. Standish Hayes O'Grady of the 'Silva Gadelica,' in the other, that this literature is at last unsealed for those readers who have no Gaelic equipment to aid them. With their aid Queen Meave emerges into new life in poetry and romance; Cuculain is seen fighting afresh his ancient battles; and St. Patrick encounters again the primitive Ossian: all these, fortunately, are now as much within the reach of an American audience as their classic prototypes in Homer or in the northern sagas. These few more familiar names, out of the vast number which threaten confusion in the old Irish romances and bardic books, may serve as clues in the perplexing labyrinth of a subject which seems at first so difficult to penetrate. Take Queen Meave, for instance: how do we arrive at her place and story, so early in the centuries? She belongs to the second great cycle of Irish legendary history, in which she has Cuculain, Conor mac Nessa, Fergus, and Deirdrê, as companions in romance. In this cycle the dramatic centre is the fierce interminable war between Connaught and Ulster, brought about by the treacherous murder of the sons of Usnach. The story of their tragic end, and of the melancholy death of Deirdrê, is one of the most moving in all Irish tradition. But the master-romance of the cycle is not that of Deirdrê, but of Queen Meave and her foray in quest of the famous bull of Louth; a tale familiar in Irish under its title of 'The Cattle-spoiling of Cooley.'