Keepest tryst with God in heaven, Seest the angels bow, And souls be shriven-- Here, as there, 'tis breath-sweet even, Far and wide-- Singeth thy little maid, Safe in thy shade, Bridget, Bride! Passing from the early legendary hagiological chronicles of the Scots Gaels, we come to a period when the reader must be content to go again to Irish sources for his knowledge of the continuators of Gaelic literature. What we have said previously of the Irish may be referred to here. The mediæval scribes and bards busied themselves mainly with reproducing the past, though with a vivid coloring out of their own living present. When we have referred all of their subject-matter dealing with the saints and heroic figures of primitive history to its own period, all that remains is curiously little. Unfortunately, it is less than it might have been, if it had not been for the terrible and often wanton destruction of MSS. which has bereft us, in Scotland especially, of some of the richest treasures the Celtic genius has produced. It is only needed to instance the tailor who was found cutting up an ancient MS. for patterns, to show how almost inconceivably wholesale the havoc thus done has been in the last six centuries. Some of the most interesting and valuable of the Scottish contributions to Gaelic literature are in what we may call ballad form. Such is the tragic tale of 'Deirdrê,' in the Glen-mason MS. (thirteenth century), which is preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. Others again are versions of poems correspondent to those given, for instance, in the 'Book of the Dean of Lismore.' Of this heroic poetry much would have been lost if it had not been for the zeal of collectors, who for the last five centuries have been collecting in old MSS. or from the mouths of the Highlanders the ballads and tales of old time. "The last and greatest of the ballad and tale collectors," says Mr. MacNeill, "was Mr. Campbell, who in 1859-60 traversed the whole Gaelic area; and assisted by intelligent Highlanders formed large collections, of which he has given a considerable quantity to the world in his four volumes of tales. All these are genuine productions." We may quote further what the same writer says of the uncertain chronology of these ballads:--"They may have been composed centuries before they were committed to writing. We have fragments, such as the Glen-mason MS., written as early as the twelfth century, in the hand and language common to the learned in both Albin and Erin at the time. The 'Book of the Dean of Lismore,' however, is written phonetically to represent the spoken language of his day, and is mainly in the Perthshire dialect." Cuculain and many other of the heroes that we mentioned in our Irish article reappear in these ballads; and in them the Féinne fight out their ancient battles to the bitter end. A new and rather different coloring is lent, too,