And great is the blindness and sinful darkness and ignorance and perverseness of those who teach and write and compose in Gaelic, that with the view of obtaining for themselves the vain rewards of this world, they are more desirous, and more accustomed to preserve the vain, extravagant, false, and worldly histories concerning the Tuath de Dananns and Milesians, Fionn, the son of Cumhail, and his heroes the Feinn, and many others, which I shall not here mention, nor attempt to examine, than they are to write, and to teach, and to compose the sincere words of God and the perfect way of truth. For the world loves falsehood more than the truth, and as a proof of it, worldly sinful men will pay for falsehood, and will not listen to the truth though they have it for nothing. A great portion of the darkness and ignorance of such persons arises, too, from the aforesaid truths not being taught in good books, understood by all who speak the general language or habitual Gaelic tongue. This was a volte-face from the sympathetic attitude of the Dean of Lismore, and no doubt included him in its sweeping indictment. Yet we may take it as representing the attitude of the leaders of the Reformation towards the literature as well as the beliefs and cults tolerated by the Latin Church. For a time the great evangelical movement, which had spread from Germany over England and Scotland, had little effect in the Highlands. The people remained widely indifferent to religious influences of every kind, except such lingering influence as the Roman Catholic Church continued to exert upon them; but when at length they came once more under the influence of evangelical preachers, like Robert Bruce and others, the precedent set by Carsewell and the reformers seems to have been less or more uniformly followed; and with every revival of clerical authority there appeared an unmistakable tendency towards a revival of clerical intolerance, painfully detrimental to wholesome literature, as well as to music, athletic sports, and amusements of every kind. Consequently since the Reformation Gaelic oral literature has been gradually disappearing, until, in the words of Mr. Alexander Carmichael, “it is now becoming meagre in quantity, inferior in quality, and greatly isolated.” In his own collection, which represents the latest gleaning in this field of Gaelic lore, we see the influence of the Church and the old pagan traditions strangely intermingled. The very title, “Hymns and Incantations,” suggests the double influence, the two streams which have been running parallel, approaching each other, mingling and separating all through Celtic literature.