The author, from time to time, as if quoting an authority,
breaks out with verse; and I think there is no Irish tale in
existence without these rudimentary traces of a prior metrical
cycle. The style and language are quite different, and indicate two
distinct epochs. The prose tale is founded upon a metrical
original, and composed in the meretricious style then in fashion,
while the old metrical excerpts are pure and simple. This is
sufficient, in a country like Ireland in those primitive times, to
necessitate a considerable step into the past, if we desire to get
at the originals upon which the prose tales were founded.
For in ancient Ireland the conservatism of the people was very
great. It is the case in all primitive societies. Individual,
initiative, personal enterprise are content to work within a very
small sphere. In agriculture, laws, customs, and modes of literary
composition, primitive and simple societies are very adverse to
change.
When we see how closely the Christian compilers followed the early
authorities, we can well believe that in the ethnic times no mind
would have been sufficiently daring or sacrilegious to alter or
pervert those epics which were in their eyes at the same time true
and sacred.
In the perusal of the Irish literature, we see that the strength of
this conservative instinct has been of the greatest service in the
preservation of the early monuments in their purity. So much is
this the case, that in many tales the most flagrant contradictions
appear, the author or scribe being unwilling to depart at all from
that which he found handed down.
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