In this respect it may be said that the Celts produced their best literature first. This literature was long in coming to the birth. It took centuries to evolve. But when it did appear it proved a new creation. The mind of a people lived in it, spoke through its tales. Generations of ancestors, lost and speechless in the slumber of the ages, found in it life and utterance. So far as this stream has gained in volume through its course down the centuries, it has done so by expansion. Each succeeding age harks back to the past and draws from the original, imitating and transcribing, until now in the great books of sagas and modern literature thereon, we have a mighty river of Gaelic lore. Yet nothing so original, nothing so characteristic in this line has ever been added to the early contribution. The Celtic genius seems to have found its fullest and most distinctive expression then, in the days before writing, and before Christianity was introduced, and ever since it has been drawing inspiration from its oldest creations. Take away this stream, and the peculiar interest of Celtic literature is gone. How many centuries the sagas were in the making before they took final shape as we read them, can never be known. They passed from generation to generation by oral delivery, and it was only in the seventh or eighth century of our era that they ultimately found embodiment in writing. This much can be inferred, though we have no copies earlier than the end of the eleventh century and middle of the twelfth, those from which these latter drew their texts having perished long ago. But as this stream flowed on from a past as remote and mysterious as the sources of the Nile were in the days of Herodotus, suddenly a new and independent one takes its rise. And this latter stream can be traced to its source in the fifth century of our era. It emanated not, as in the other case, from the pagan heart of the race in its more primitive phase, but in that heart overtaken and surprised by the new doctrines of Christianity. This was really a new departure—a new beginning. The two streams had little in common. In essence and colour they seemed as if they belonged to two different worlds, which indeed was the case, in point of outlook and underlying thought. As literature the old was better. It represented the real quintessence of the Celtic genius before it was diverted into new channels. And this is what makes critics like M. Darmesteter, while fully admitting the glorious significance of the new stream as a literary renaissance, yet consider it a decadence in contrast with the earlier. For all this, the far-reaching significance of the new creation must not be lost sight of. It is probable that even then the ancient stream had reached its full flood, and but for the advent of the latter, which came with the new thought, it may have gradually subsided with the old order and never have found a way to posterity.