Riseth the dawn:—the day is near Day of the Lord, the King of Kings; A day of wrath and vengeance just, Of darkness, clouds, and thunderings: A day of anguish, cries, and tears, When glow of women’s love shall pale; When man shall cease to strive with man, And all the world’s desires shall fail. What now are we to think of this new literature and the other productions, Latin and Gaelic, to which the monasteries of the period gave rise? Is the Columban renaissance really a decadence in comparison with what went before, the old unwritten inheritance? “Yes,” says Darmesteter, and if we accept the antiquity of the oral tradition, I think we must admit the truth of it. The sagas and historic tales, and the poetry that is mingled with them, are of far greater importance from a purely literary point of view. With a wild freedom of imagination and an old-time conception of life untouched by Christian thought, they breathe the spirit of pre-Christian ages, very much in the primitive manner of Homeric poetry; and being intensely human and heroic, they have a charm even for minds set to later ideals. For example, in the _Colloquy or Dialogue of the Ancients_, it is recorded that St. Patrick himself felt a little uneasy at the delight with which he listened to the stories of the ancient Feinn, and in his over-scrupulous sanctity he feared it might be wrong to appreciate and enjoy so much, these worldly narratives. But when he consulted his two guardian angels they not only assured him that there was no harm in listening to the tales, but even desired him to get them written down in the words of ollamhs, “for,” said these wise counsellors, “it will be a rejoicing to numbers and to the good people to the end of time to listen to these stories.” Yet for all this the Columban period _was_ a renaissance. You cannot spring a new creed and new ideas upon a nation without a reawakening of thought and corresponding progress. Over and above his own personal contributions to literature, Columba helped forward the cause of letters in two other ways, namely, by encouraging the bards and the scholars.