Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original lovely illustrations. See 14749-h.htm or 14749-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/4/14749/14749-h/14749-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/7/4/14749/14749-h.zip) THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN AND OTHER BARDIC ROMANCES OF ANCIENT IRELAND by T. W. ROLLESTON With an Introduction by Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. LL.D. And with Sixteen Illustrations by Stephen Reid New York Thomas Y. Crowell & Company Publishers AR CRAOIBH CONNARTHA NA GAEDHILGE I NGLEANN FHAIDHLE BRONNAIM AN LEABHAR SEO: BEANNACHT AGUS BUAIDH LIBHSE GO DEO Preface The romantic tales here retold for the English reader belong neither to the category of folk-lore nor of myth, although most of them contain elements of both. They belong, like the tales of Cuchulain, which have been similarly presented by Miss Hull,[1] to the bardic literature of ancient Ireland, a literature written with an artistic purpose by men who possessed in the highest degree the native culture of their land and time. The aim with which these men wrote is also that which has been adopted by their present interpreter. I have not tried, in this volume, to offer to the scholar materials for the study of Celtic myth or folk-lore. My aim, however I may have fulfilled it, has been artistic, not scientific. I have tried, while carefully preserving the main outline of each story, to treat it exactly as the ancient bard treated his own material, or as Tennyson treated the stories of the MORT D'ARTHUR, that is to say, to present it as a fresh work of poetic imagination. In some cases, as in the story of the Children of Lir, or that of mac Datho's Boar, or the enchanting tale of King Iubdan and King Fergus, I have done little more than retell the bardic legend with merely a little compression; but in others a certain amount of reshaping has seemed desirable. The object in all cases has been the same, to bring out as clearly as possible for modern readers the beauty and interest which are either manifest or implicit in the Gaelic original. [1] CUCHULAIN, THE HOUND OF ULSTER. By Eleanor Hull.