When this is the case with regard
to the great heroes of the Iliad, I fancy it will be some time
before the same problem will have been solved for the minor
characters, and as it affects Thersites, or that eminent artist
who dwelt at home in Hyla, being by far the most excellent of
leather cutters. When, therefore, Greek still meets Greek in an
interminable and apparently bloodless contest over the disputed
body of the Iliad, and still no end appears, surely it would be
madness for any one to sit down and gaily distinguish true from
false in the immense and complex mass of the Irish bardic
literature, having in his ears this century-lasting struggle over a
single Greek poem and a single small phase of the pre-historic life
of Hellas.
In the Irish heroic literature, the presence or absence of the
marvellous supplies _no test whatsoever_ as to the general truth or
falsehood of the tale in which they appear. The marvellous is
supplied with greater abundance in the account of the battle of
Clontarf, and the wars of the O'Briens with the Normans, than in
the tale in which is described the foundation of Emain Macha by
Kimbay. Exact-thinking, scientific France has not hesitated to
paint the battles of Louis XIV. with similar hues; and England,
though by no means fertile in angelic interpositions, delights to
adorn the barren tracts of her more popular histories with
apocryphal anecdotes.
How then should this heroic literature of Ireland be treated in
connection with the history of the country? The true method would
certainly be to print it exactly as it is without excision or
condensation.
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