They who rejoiced in the clash of arms, in the music of hounds and horns, and in the feast and the revel, could have small taste for the chiming of bells in the services of religion, for the singing of psalms, and still less for fasting-- ----the waster gaunt and grim, That of beauty and strength robs feature and limb. The bards, it may well be imagined, who were always not only welcome but necessary guests at all the high festivals of the chiefs and princes, would be among the first to lament a change of manners by which their pleasures and honours were abridged or abolished; and to give more effect to their complaint, as well as to conceal its real authors, they put it into the mouth of Oisin, their great master, by poetic licence, though in violation of chronology. They ascribed to him those sentiments which they thought he would have expressed, had he really been the contemporary of Saint Patrick.[3] At the same time it must be admitted, that in the Poem of the Chase at least, such a description of the creative power of the Deity is given by the saint, as is worthy of a Christian missionary, though he is obliged to succumb to the stern indignation of the “Warrior Bard.” Leaving the further consideration of this subject for the present, I proceed to give an analysis of the Poem of the Chase, from which the reader may be enabled in some degree to judge how far Spenser is justifiable in affirming that the poems of the Irish bards “savoured of sweet wit and good invention.”