Brash: Ogam inscribed Monuments of the Gaedhil (1879); MacAlister: Studies in Irish Epigraphy, vol. 1 (1897), vol. 2 (1902), vol. 3 (1907); Rhys: in Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries (Edinburgh, 1892); Ridgeway: Date of the First Shaping of the Cuchulain Saga (1905), in Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. II; Joyce: Social History of Ancient Ireland, vol. I, Chap. 2; Preface to fac-simile edition of the Book of Ballymote. NATIVE IRISH POETRY By PROFESSOR GEORGES DOTTIN. [Note.--This chapter was written in French by M. Dottin, who is a distinguished professor and dean at the University of Renacs, France. The translation into English has been made by the Editors.] By the year 1200 of the Christian era, a time at which the other national literatures of Europe were scarcely beginning to develop, Ireland possessed, and had possessed for several centuries, a Gaelic poetry, which was either the creation of the soul of the people or else was the work of the courtly bards. This poetry was at first expressed in rhythmical verses, each containing a fixed number of accented syllables and hemistichs separated by a pause: _Crist_ lim, | _Crist_ reum, | _Crist_ in degaid _Crist_ indium | _Crist_ issum | _Crist_ úasum | _Crist_ dessum | _Crist_ úasum This versification, one of the elements of which was the repetition of words or sounds at regular intervals, was transformed about the eighth century into a more learned system. Thenceforward alliteration, assonance, rhyme, and a fixed number of syllables constituted the characteristics of Irish verse: Mésse ocus Pángur bÁN cechtar náthar fria sáindAN bith a _ménma_ sam fri SEILGG mu _ménma_ céin im sáinchEIRDD. As we see, the consonants in the rhyme-words were merely related: _l, r, n, ng, m, dh, gh, bh, mh, ch, th, f_ could rime together just as could _gg, dd, bb_. Soon the poets did not limit themselves to end-rhymes, which ran the risk of becoming monotonous, but introduced also internal rhyme, which set up what we may call a continuous chain of melody: is aire caraim DOIRE ar a reidhe ar a ghlOINE 's ar iomad a aingel fIND ó 'n CIND go aoich arOILE. This harmonious versification was replaced in the seventeenth century by a system in which account was no longer taken of consonantal rhyme or of the number of syllables.