On the other hand, we know nothing of the ancient forms of Irish poetry. The earliest poems that have come down to us have a metrical form which is not native. Earlier than these--in the fifth and sixth centuries--there is evidence for the cultivation of “rhetorics,” or metrical prose, but this too appears to be of foreign origin.[261] The unique feature in Irish literature, namely, the fact that the early epic, as it has come down to us, appears in prose instead of poetry may be due, at least in part, to the disappearance of native metrical forms before the fifth century. It may be that the prose epics originated in paraphrases of early poems such as we find, for instance, in the _Völsunga Saga_, which is a paraphrase of older poems dealing with the story of Sigurthr. Or the change may have been more automatic, the outcome of a process of metrical dissolution similar to that of which the beginnings may be seen in certain Anglo-Saxon and German poems. Such metrical dissolution would be favoured, if not necessitated, by the extensive phonetic changes which took place in Ireland in the fifth century. But into this question it is not necessary to enter here. It is sufficient to point out that Irish Saga literature, according to all appearances, began in the heroic epic, a form which in all other literatures, including Norse, originated in poetry. The preservation of poetry, narrative or other, by oral tradition is a common enough phenomenon among many peoples, but the traditional prose narrative, except in such primitive forms as folk-tales, is very rare. Since we find it both in Ireland and Iceland--and apparently in no other European countries--and since we have found so many other connections between these two countries, the theory that the Icelandic Saga owes its origin, however indirectly, to the Irish Saga, seems to deserve more serious consideration from scholars than it has yet received. FOOTNOTES [224] It has been stated (cf. E. Mogk: _Geschichte der Norwegisch-Isländischen Literatur_. Strassburg, 1904, p. 830) that many of Saxo’s stories came from Norway, where they had been collected by an Icelander in the twelfth century. There can be no doubt that stories of some kind relating to families and localities--especially stories which accounted, or professed to account for local names--were current in Norway down to this time. Such stories form the basis of many of the _Fornaldar Sögur_, but in all probability these had been familiar to Icelanders from the first settlement of the island, or at least during the tenth century. We have no evidence that they ever gained literary form in Norway. (Cf. Finnur Jónsson: _Old Norske Litteraturs Historie_, II., p. 791.)