Of hymns and prayers, both in Gaelic and Latin—compositions of the early Celtic Church—there is no lack. The most famous of the Latin ones are those of Sechnall (on St. Patrick) and of Columcille (“The Altus,” “In te Christo,” and “Noli Pater”); and of the Gaelic ones, St. Patrick’s “Deer’s Cry,” Colman’s and Fiacc’s hymns, “Ninine’s Prayer,” Ultan’s and Broccan’s hymns, both in praise of Brigit, “Adamnan’s Prayer,” and the hymns of Sanctain and Mael-isu. When to these we add specimens of homiletic literature and “Cormac’s Glossary” (Cormac, King-Bishop of Cashel, 837–903), which is reckoned by far the oldest attempt at a comparative vernacular dictionary made in any language of modern Europe, and the same author’s “Saltair of Cashel,” we have a very fair representation of what the new literature initiated by the monks and missionaries contained. It is mainly a religious literature, as contrasted with the purely pagan war-stories and romances of the heroes. This ethical movement for a time tended to supplant the natural spontaneous poetical output of the race, yet it could not crush out these older creations, which were independent of books and MSS., and as intense in feeling and true to nature as anything which the classical literatures contain. And so in course of time there came a reaction. The votaries of naturalism so far triumphed in their zeal for the ancient sagas and romances, that they began to have them written down. Zimmer thinks that the earliest redaction of the “Táin Bó Chuailgné” dates from the seventh century. But it is difficult to ascertain when the sagas first found embodiment in ink. The interest in them appears to have been revived immediately before or at the time when the Norsemen arrived and were devastating the country. The devotion of the latter to the characteristic sagas of their own race and nation may have quickened the enthusiasm of the Gael for his own. And the new atmosphere which this rough pagan element introduced to the land, breaking for a time the influence and sway of the Church and of the men of learning in the monasteries, may have conduced further to bring into popular favour the old heroic war-poetry, nerving the heart of the people to withstand the onslaught of the invader in the spirit of the dead heroes. Christianity suffered eclipse for a while, and with it the interests of learning and the religious literature, cultivated so assiduously in the monasteries. By the time that the sagas had come to be written down, the old feeling which had prompted the early missionaries to ignore them was apparently giving way, since there were scribes within the Church eager to commit them to MS. This was a natural and inevitable reaction.